In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea. … But when he saw many of the 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 that befits repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” (Matt. 3:1-12)
“You brood of vipers!” Not exactly what the political and religious elite would expect to hear. But then, St. John the Baptist wasn’t your ordinary preacher. It is doubtful he ever opened with a cheery, “Good morning, everyone!”
Why had they come? To see a wild man dressed in animal skins? To see a holy man who might arouse the masses? Perhaps they had come to observe and judge him, to signal their superior virtue to the other benighted souls presenting themselves for a baptism of repentance.
St. John wastes no time in cutting them down to size. Don’t count on your pedigree to save you or the fact that you are circumcised. Don’t count on your ritual purity or the punctilious way you keep to the letter of the Law. No, even now the axe is laid to the root. Unless you actually live as sons of Abraham in the fullest sense, don’t expect his paternity to save you.
What does it mean, to be a son of Abraham? First, Abraham lived by faith. Not only faith as believing (although it includes that) but faith as doing. “By faith Abraham obeyed” (Heb. 11:8). The obedience of faith led Abraham out of his secure home in Ur to wander the wilderness in search of the homeland promised to him by the voice he had heard. We rightly believe this was the voice of God. But Abraham couldn’t possibly have had the same certitude. It was perilous to obey, but he stepped out in faith. And while he went out hoping to find a new homeland, neither he nor the patriarchs who died after him ever saw this great nation concretely realized. “They all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar…” (Heb. 11:13).
Second, Abraham loved nothing and no one more than God. Once Sarah had at long last borne their son Isaac, Abraham might have relaxed in the conviction that the great nation was finally getting off the ground. But no. “God tested Abraham, and said to him, ‘Abraham! … Take your son, your only-begotten son Isaac, whom you love, and … offer him … as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I will tell you.’” (Gen. 22:1-2). Can it be true that God would bring Abraham so far and then cut off his hope?
Look at Abraham’s response. He did not argue with God or bargain with him as he had before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:16-19:29). His response is not just yes, but as Jon Levinson translates it from the Hebrew, “Ready” (Levinson, 126). Ready to carry out God’s will without hesitation.
Isaac was not just any child. Actually, Abraham had fathered another child—Ishmael (Gen. 16)—and would later have more children by his wife Keturah (Gen. 25:1-6). But Isaac was the Beloved Son, the Chosen Son, and the Son of Promise. Everything rested on Isaac. This test threatened to end it all. “If Abraham had failed to heed, he would have exhibited not so much a lack of faith in the promise as a love for Isaac that surpassed even his fear of God. … The aqedah, in short, tests whether Abraham is prepared to surrender his son to the God who gave him” (Levinson, 126).
Let that sink in. The Aqedah was a test of complete and total obedience that would cost everything. Or so Abraham could only have thought. Not only would Abraham’s heart be broken with Isaac’s death, but the promise would come to an end. There could be no possibility of a future nation springing from his own loins. His years of wandering would go down in total failure. The heir to his property would be a servant, and that would be the end of it. Hindsight always gives 20-20 vision. We know that God intervened. Abraham had no such guarantee.
Abraham and Isaac made the three-day journey into the wilderness and prepared to offer the sacrifice. At the last minute, an angel intervened, telling Abraham that the ram/lamb in the thicket could be used as a substitutionary holocaust. The Christological Typology is rich here, as is the Typology of the Passover. Both Isaac and the Lamb are Types of Christ. And later in the Paschal Mystery, God will accept the holocaust of the Beloved Son without substitution, as the Lamb whose blood takes away the sins of the world.
Are the Pharisees and Sadducees aware that being sons of Abraham involves a complete obedience of faith and a love for God that supersedes any other love in their life? Probably not. But they are probably not alone in this misconception.
St. John was preparing his hearers for Christ and His baptism, a baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire. The sacrament of baptism Christens the soul, infusing grace and making the recipient a partaker of the divine nature. It enables the recipient to respond to Christ with the obedience of faith and the ability to love God above all things, as Abraham did at the very foundations of salvation history. The soul is called to active participation in this grace for the gift to reach fruition. Christians who think of baptism the way the Sadducees and Pharisees thought of their Abrahamic sonship might listen to what St. John had to say to them: “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 3:10).
Even better, we might heed what Jesus said: “He who loves father or mother, son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and he who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses it will find it” (Matt 10:37). As St. John Paul taught, we are called to the total gift of self, however that presents itself in the course of our lives. Nothing less will do. Are we ready?
Further Reading:
- Genesis, chapters 12-25
- Hebrews, chapter 11
- For a Jewish perspective: Jon Levinson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son.
