In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of
Judea, proclaiming,
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he
said,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight.’”
Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt
around his waist,
and his food was locusts and wild honey.
Then the people of Jerusalem
and all Judea were going out to him,
and all the region along the Jordan,
and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their
sins.
But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for
baptism, he said to them,
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath
to come?
Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to
yourselves,
‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’;
for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up
children to Abraham.
Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees;
every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut
down and thrown into the fire.
“I baptize you with water for repentance,
but one who is more powerful than I is coming after
me;
I am not worthy to carry his sandals.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his
threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary;
but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
***
I like to imagine this scripture, and as crazy as it is,
with John the Baptist, out in the wilderness, dressed in camel’s hair, eating
locusts and wild honey, baptizing some and reprimanding others, “you brood of
vipers,” its not the wildness that interests me most, but the intimacy of the
touch of baptism between two opposing sides.
It is hard for me to imagine John and the Pharisees and
Sadducees coming together like that. John first yelling at the them, “Who
warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” It’s a legitimate question. Is this
powerful ruling class of people there merely to take stake of the land and the
Jordan River running through it and observe its erratic occupant John hiding
their bets on his understand of God verse their own. Or have they come to
experience his message for themselves and be transformed? The text doesn’t say,
but we can tell that the sides were drawn long before this stand off. The
Pharisees and Sadducees and John the Baptist each come with a history that
precedes them. The Pharisees and Sadducees are known for abusing power in law
and in the church for generations and John the Baptist, is known for disrupting
that power from the prophesy of his birth, which recalled,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
Each side is known John and the Pharisees and Sadducees, and
it is with this historic understanding that they come to the river Jordan.
I imagine it like the protests at Standing Rock. In these
too a history known. The Native Americans whose Thanksgiving holiday is marked
with the memory of a people who turned against them. Native Americans whose
generosity at that first meal, was meet with greed which later became Manifest
Destiny. Native Americans who once knew a country without boarders and called
it their home, with sacred sites and hunting grounds and water unbound, and the
circle of life in balance, now come to the borders of their small Standing Rock
Reservation, where they have been exiled in their own country, as treaty after
treaty was broken because a signature meant their word.
Specifically, “the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is a successor
to the Great Sioux Nation, a party to the two Treaties of Fort Laramie in 1851
and 1868 which promised the land to the tribe forever. The reservation established
in the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie included extensive lands that would be
crossed by the proposed pipeline. The Tribe has a strong historical and
cultural connection to such land. Despite the promises made in the two Fort Laramie
treaties, in 1877 and again in 1889, Congress betrayed the treaty parties by
passing statutes that took major portions of this land away from the Sioux. In
the modern area, the Tribe suffered yet another loss of lands, this time in
connection with the same Oahe dam and Reservoir created without the tribe’s
consent.
Since July, “the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (“Tribe”) has
brought forth it’s official complaint to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in
connection with federal actions relating to the Dakota Access Pipeline (“DAPL”),
a 1,168-mile-long crude oil pipeline running from North
Dakota to Illinois.
One violating 1889’s Clean Water Act (“CWA”) and Rivers and Harbors Act (“RHA”)
as DAPL crosses hundreds if not thousands of federally regulated rivers,
streams, and wetlands along its route. One such authorization allows DAPL to
construct the pipeline underneath Lake
Oahe, approximately half
a mile upstream of the Tribe’s reservation. Others authorize the DAPL to
discharge into waters of the United
States at multiple locations in the Tribe’s
ancestral lands.
Likewise, the Tribe seeks to uphold the National Historic
Preservation Act (“NHPA”) which requires that, prior to issuance of a federal
permit or license, federal agencies shall take into consideration the effects
of that “undertaking” on historic properties and ensure that the tribe is
notified and is given time to object and for the issue to be resolved.” By law,
“Until this process is complete, the action in question cannot go forward.”
All action was supposed to come to a halt, but instead we
have two armies battling in North
Dakota. It began as bulldozers and peaceful prayerful
protesters and has escalated to rubber bullets, fire hoses pushing protesters
back in freezing temps, with dogs unleashed on the Native Americans by military
and mercenary police. But if that doesn’t seem unjust, if the Native Americans
isn’t the side with which you side, what strikes me most is that the little
white and more wealthy town of Bismark, beside the reservation, which was on
the pipeline’s original course, also protested about the pipeline and the route
was changed because of a potential threat to Bismarck’s water supply.
If the we lay the scripture over the newspaper, our
Pharisees and Sadducees come from Bismark, and places like it, they are not
it’s common people, but it’s authorities, it’s ones in control of the law and
the land, and they have come out to the wilderness, to the water, to the river,
to the reservation, to the boarder, to those in exile, to see what the fuss is over,
what might usurp their power by putting peace before progress. They are
standing at the line. And John yells, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to
flee from the wrath to come?”
But if you notice, while condemning them, John also welcomes
them. He includes them by saying they are fleeing, rather than standing their
ground. It is as if the Standing Rock Souix have said the pilgrims once again,
“I see you are fleeing, what has brought you here.” It’s a different
trajectory, a Christian one of welcome, of inviting in, of sharing a cornucopia
of resources. And the authorities have a choice, they can join or stand
against.
John continues, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We
have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to
raise up children to Abraham.”” John knows, that the history of power is on
their side and for generations the authorities, the Pharisees and Sadducees
have deemed God is on their side because of it. But John reminds them from whom
power comes, it comes from God, which is not won or earned, it is grace. Grace
God has given to all, and Grace John extends to them.
And something must have happened, because, we hear John say,
“I baptize you with water for repentance.” I don’t know how Pharisees and Sadducees
got to that place in John’s arm’s in the Jordan. I don’t if all at once they
all got in, and the entered the stream, or if one by one they defected and
joined the other side, walking toward John and his followers. But somehow,
theses opposing sides, of oppressor and oppressed, are now upside down, the
oppressed holding the oppressor, John holding the Pharisees and Sadducees, the
Native Americans holding the authorities, and dipping them in the water,
baptizing them proclaiming repentance. That in that water freezing fire hoses
have turned into living streams of life. This water which was in contention is
now the connection.
John says, “one who is more powerful than I is coming after
me;
I am not worthy to carry his sandals.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his
threshing floor
and will gather his wheat into the granary;
but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
And I think if water and John the Baptist can do this, what
might Jesus and the Holy Spirit do with fire. Might it look like a land without
borders, where sacred and historic sites are revered, and we find ourselves a
country not of the pilgrim’s progress, but of the First People’s welcome, a
welcome grander than John the Baptist, a welcome so humbling that we are not
worthy to carry it’s moccasins.
 |
