The Rev. Joseph G. Crippen is the senior pastor of Mount Olive Lutheran Church, a small Lutheran church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. (ELCA)
According to his church bio, he is a “gifted presider, counselor, and preacher who’s passionate about proclaiming God’s love for all people and serving the church as it seeks to faithfully pursue its mission.”
During a recent sermon on the gospel reading in Matthew 3, Crippen puts John the Baptist on blast, condemning him as a hate-filled, violence-encouraging, anti-Jesus bigot, and comparing his rhetoric criticizing the Pharisees and Sadducees to Trump cruelly insulting the Somalis in his state.
Specifically, his crashout seems to be over Matt 3:7-11, which he deems hateful, inflammatory, unloving, and lacking nuance.
“But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
Crippen declares:
“No more of this,” Jesus cried out. On the night of Jesus’ arrest and trial, Peter slashed someone’s ear off to defend Jesus, and Jesus wanted none of it. “No more of this,” Jesus said, and healed the man’s ear.
I believe Jesus would say the same thing to John the Baptist about these harsh words. John did a lot of good. He pointed to Jesus as Messiah. He suggested very helpful, concrete ways to turn toward God in repentance. But this speech, it’s hate-filled, inflammatory, without nuance, and with all due respect to John, Jesus’ way has nothing to do with it.
He continues:
But you tell me, do you really think we need to hear more public leaders defame whole groups? Haven’t we had enough of that already? With the insults and the defamation? The easy stereotypes, the calls for destruction? A president who calls this week some of his own citizens “worthless, criminals, garbage” because they come from Somalia?
Who sees an immigrant do a bad thing and suddenly is filled with hate-filled rhetoric to ban all immigrants, including friends of this congregation who are dear to us. Aren’t you tired of hate-filled rhetoric that doesn’t see human beings, but publicly insults, offers stereotypes, invites violence?
He concludes:
But you might say, “well, this is John the Baptist, though. He’s preparing the way for Messiah. He’s on the right side.” And you might even say, “these are Pharisees and Sadducees after all. It’s likely they deserved it.”
Are you sure? Are you certain that every Pharisee and every Sadducee of this time deserve to be called “snakes?” Threatened with destruction, with being cut off from Abraham’s family? What about Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea?
Matthew says that these Pharisees and Sadducees came for John’s baptism. He doesn’t say they came to judge or critique. They apparently came for the same reason the others did, for a baptism of repentance. Yet John assumes they’re all wicked? They all have ulterior motives? That just seems wrong.
