John the Baptist’s message was a call to repentance: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.’ It is as if he was saying: ‘We are on the very edge of really letting ourselves live under the Father’s will. But there is a big obstacle. We need to repent!’ When it comes to doing the Father’s will. There is a huge obstacle – we have discussed this already when we looked at the house built on sand. The big obstacle is the power of our own self-will. But the text tells us that the people came to John to be baptised in the River Jordan, and that they were confessing their sins!
Is there a difference between the sins and self-will? Look at what John said to the Sadducees and Pharisees. He accused them of being a brood of vipers. Strong stuff! What made him use such a bitter metaphor? The image is gruesome – we cringe at images of writhing, hissing snakes.
Surely, it is not much to do with the failings and weakness we usually think of as sins. There is something more powerful at work, and we can overlook it. We may overlook it, but daily we experience it. As soon as anything in our day comes up against our self-will, the reaction is immediate. And it turns us in an instant from being a happy, peaceful, kindly human being into a seething ball of reaction and anger. We are only conscious of our self-will and its power when something or someone challenges or comes up against us. Reflect for a moment on those incidences that happen in a car, or in the supermarket, or in any situation where we get upset. What is really happening? It is not that my self-will is being exposed. Suddenly, the veneer of my kindly façade is torn down and the viper is revealed. Strong stuff indeed!
