December 7, 2025
Advent 2/ Year A
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex CT
Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
Many, many years ago when my children were small, they, like most kids who are not yet old enough to stay home by themselves, got dragged places they might rather not be. Like church. Not necessarily on Sunday mornings, but when I – working two jobs and going to school at night – needed some practice time on the organ at the church I was serving, especially times of the year like this, which – as Anthony can attest – require a bit more of a church musician. So, I would pack a bag for them with snacks and books and schoolwork and off we would go.
On one of the first times they had to suffer through one of those endless (to them) practice sessions, they got so bored that they started thumbing through the bibles in the pew racks, and they made a discovery. “Look, ma! It says
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them. (Isaiah 11:6)
You never told us there were animals in the bible! It’s like a zoo!”
At least the animals they found were these rather than Noah’s Ark when God destroyed everything on earth.
What they did not know is that this Peaceable Kingdom they had stumbled upon was an ancient prophecy that pointed the people of Israel toward the kingdom of God. It points us in the same direction this morning when John proclaims that “the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 3:1).
Now, I know that we all have this idea in our heads that this John, the one we call The Baptist, is Jesus’s cousin, that he leapt in his mother Elizabeth’s womb when Mary showed up with an unplanned divine pregnancy. But that is not Matthew’s story; it’s Luke. Here, John just shows up. It helps if you know that Matthew is the gospel writer who is most intent on convincing the Jews that Jesus is the one foretold by the prophets, and that John is Elijah whose reappearance marked the beginning of the fulfillment of that prophecy. In other words, John’s backstory in this gospel is embedded much deeper in Jewish tradition than it is in Luke.
So, here’s this wild man out in the desert yelling at people to repent, and the funny thing is, they don’t turn and run the other direction when they see him coming. In fact, they flock out to the wilderness to find him. You have got to be really desperate to seek out someone like John, led by the kind of desperation that puts you on your knees when your world is turned upside down by tragedy or grief or an unexpected and unwelcome turn. Yes, you’ve got to be out of options to subject yourself to the kind of tongue-lashing John can give. But notice that he wasn’t doing this in Jerusalem or Nazareth where all the people were. He was out in the desert, and still the people came.
Why?
Maybe they had had enough of living under Roman occupation.
Maybe they were poor and sick and looking for something, anything, that might help.
Maybe they were just sick and tired of being sick and tired.
And so, they went and were told to repent, to turn around, to be washed of what came before so that they would be ready.
“Look! He’s coming. I am not the one you are waiting for, but he is on the way. So, turn around. Get ready.”
Since moving up here from New Jersey where I almost never drove my car anywhere, I find myself on the road a lot. On most days, when I am riding around, my radio is tuned to either NPR, Symphony Hall on Sirius XM, or whatever interesting ballgame happens to be going on. Every now and then, though, I change things up and listen to music that’s of a more recent vintage.
On one of my recent car rides, over the radio came the unmistakable blues-y voice of British singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse. Back in 2007 at the age of 24, she won an armload of Grammy Awards for the song Rehab and the album Back to Black. Amy Winehouse was known as much for her struggle with drugs and alcohol as she was for her music (and her bouffant hairdo and cat’s-eye make-up), and Rehab was her anthem. The song was written when her recording company and manager were trying to do an intervention and get her to enter a rehab facility for addiction. She refused to go, and sings in the opening of the song:
They tried to make me go to rehab,
I said “no, no, no.”[1]
Now, I don’t know of anybody who wants to go to rehab. Whether you need to get sober or recover from surgery or an injury or regain the use of physical functions after a stroke or other medical event, rehab is hard. It is work. It is painful. It can take a long, long time. But avoiding rehab is to shield ourselves from healing and wholeness. Without going to rehab, we may never regain the use of those limbs. We may never know the tranquility of being clean of drugs and alcohol. We continue to risk losing our jobs, our relationships, our freedom. Rehab may be hard, but the alternative can be infinitely worse
Four years after winning those Grammy’s, after a tumultuous and well-publicized public life, Amy Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning at the age of 27. They tried to make her go to rehab; she said no, no, no.
When John the Baptist appears in the wilderness shouting at us to repent, he’s telling us that we need to go to rehab. Can’t you just imagine this scraggly, smelly, wild man with locust wings stuck in his teeth and honey dripping down his chin bellowing at us that we’ve picked up some addictive beliefs and behaviors that we need to shed? We have forgotten who and whose we are. We’ve built up barriers between ourselves and the truth of the Gospel and taken to heart only those parts we want to believe. We have glossed over the admonition that to be a Jesus follower means that we follow him all the way to the cross. We have watered down the hard parts and cherry-picked the ones that suit us best.
And this peculiar prophet is just getting warmed up.
We somehow think they we are able to manage our lives very well on our own, thank you very much, and if we just do the right things everything will be just fine. God can stay over there in the corner until we have need of something really big. We’ve gotten used to building our own towers of strength and stability, and what I have is mine, all mine, because I’ve earned it, and all those other people can do the same. We have created a God that fits neatly into our world view, accepting and affirming our choices, our successes, our wealth, our political views.
Friends, this unwelcome prophet is saying that we all need to go to rehab. We are the brood of vipers. Sure, we can say that we come to church every week and know all the words to the Creed, and we serve on this or that committee, but if we have divorced what we do in here from how we live out there, in the world, then we have missed the point; we have not produced good fruit, and the ax stands ready.
We need to go to rehab. [2]
And it may sound like bad news, but it is Good News. The reign of God is at hand. Our job – our only job – is to be ready. To repent doesn’t mean beating ourselves up over all the bad we’ve done. No, it means to turn around. Turn toward the light and pay attention. You will know that the day has come when you see signs of that Peaceable Kingdom foretold so long ago, when all of creation lives in love and relationship with each other and the God who made us.
It’s time to go to rehab. Don’t say “no.”
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUmZp8pR1uctoxic
[2] I first encountered this idea of John the Baptist calling us to rehab in a sermon by a Yale classmate, Ashley Hurst, when she preached at First Presbyterian Church in New Haven. She was recovering from a severe knee injury at the time, going through rehab.