One Man Intervention

An intervention is more than inconvenient; it is an intrusion into one's personal life. What business do family members and friends have in telling you how to live your life? That is the mildest response an addict can have to being the center of a concentrated effort to get him or her into rehab. From what few episodes I've seen of the cable TV series "Intervention," the addict's reaction is often much more emotional and much more negative. On one episode I recall the young woman in question spewing her loved ones with a seemingly endless string of expletives (which, when bleeped, sounded like the heart monitor of someone having a very bad case of atrial fibrillation). She then stormed off and paced up and down the road outside her house, crying and cursing. I don't remember whether she was ever convinced to go into rehab.

In his hilarious but harrowing memoir "Dry," Augustin Burroughs recalls being outraged but a bit less outwardly offensive at his intervention. That's because it was done by coworkers and his boss and the upshot of refusing rehab was to be fired. He was nevertheless extremely resentful and it took a while before he saw how bad his problem was and how deep in denial he was. One of the exercises rehab made him do was estimate how much alcohol he consumed, year by year, since he began drinking, which was in his childhood. The numbers surprised and alarmed him. Also astounding was the fact that he constantly took antihistamines because he was one of those rare individuals who is actually allergic to alcohol. Another shock hit him when he first returned home after rehab. His apartment was full of empty bottles. He had not noticed them until he was fully sober. In the end he carted out several trashcans full of empty liquor bottles, an unsettling and previously unseen reminder of how severe his problem had become.

Intervention did not exist in the days of Jesus. Besides, when the whole world is sick and enslaved to sin, where do you get the non-addicts to perform it? So John the Baptist is doing it all by himself. And, unlike the rules of staging an intervention, he isn't using very objective language. He is, quite frankly, insulting the residents of Judea, calling them a brood of vipers. The specific vipers he referred to were thought to chew their way out of their mother's womb. I'm sure he offended people and even got heckled but a lot of folks actually responded appropriately to John. Why?

Years ago I had a young patient who had a very rare condition. The doctors and parents knew the child had medical problems and they treated the symptoms and complications but they didn't know what was at the root of the child's disorder. And this was before the internet. The mother did a lot of research and found his condition through the National Organization of Rare Disorders that collects what little was known about various diseases too uncommon for research and treatment to be profitable. Her son's condition was one of only about 100 documented cases worldwide. There was no cure, only treatment, but after living with this mystery for 2 years, the parents were just happy to know the name and cause of their son's congenital condition. They found that there was a small group of parents and patients who, by banding together, were trying to get researchers to learn more about this disability.

I heard other patients say that, after suffering for years, they were just glad that the cause of their misery had a name. It is hard to fight a nameless, undefined enemy. Even if the diagnosis brought little hope, they were encouraged by the fact that at least they knew what they were dealing with.

As in the time of Samuel, it had been a long time since there had been a prophet declaring the Word of the Lord to his people. Maybe that's why people flocked to John despite his inflammatory rhetoric. They knew they had problems but no one was telling them what it was. Then as now they did have people telling them what they wanted to hear. The Zealots told them the problem wasn't them; it was the Romans who occupied their country. Scapegoats are always popular. Get rid of the bad people and all of our problems will be solved. They are still doing that in the Middle East. "If we just got rid of all the (Arabs, Jews, Palestinians, Muslims, Shiites, Sunnis, etc) all of our problems would be solved." We do it here. "If we just got rid of all of the (illegal aliens, gays, homophobes, unions, conservatives, liberals, brown people, white people, etc) all of our problems would be solved." It doesn't work that way. Logistically it is impossible. The Nazis devoted considerable resources to exterminating the Jews. They killed 6 million but the Jews still survive. And had they succeeded, would Nazi Germany have been saved from all or most of its problems? No. Scapegoating not only harms innocents; it diverts us from our real problems. They tend to be closer to home. The comic strip Pogo was on the mark when it mangled Caesar's declaration of victory "We have met the enemy and he is ours" into "We have met the enemy and he is us." 

But maybe the problem isn't us but the way we are doing things. If we follow this technique or program or regimen, the problems will be licked. Not a week goes by that I don't receive a postcard or email or flyer proclaiming a hitherto unknown method of making a church grow or increase its giving. And while the touted program might have a lot of truth to it, the idea that merely implementing it will yield magical results is patently untrue, unless, perhaps, you were doing absolutely nothing. This way of thinking didn't even work with the Law. The Pharisees told people the problem was they weren't obeying the entire Law of Moses, along with all the addenda the rabbis had attached to it. It was a very comprehensive system that dictated what to do in just about every situation. And this is, after all, God's law. So why didn't it make things all better?

Any medical professional will tell you one of the biggest problems we have is patient compliance. Rare is the patient who does everything the doctor prescribes or does it in the way the nurse or physical therapist teaches them to. It's hard to give up all smoking, or to keep track of every morsel you eat, or do your exercises with a painful new knee, or practice safe sex, or use the communications techniques taught in your marriage counseling sessions. We like our solutions to be easy to implement. Why can't everything work like an infomercial gizmo so we can simply "set it and forget it?"

At first it looks as if John buys into the "you're simply doing it wrong" mindset. When people ask him what should they do, he gives commonsense advice: Share your excess with people who have nothing. Don't cheat people. Don't abuse your power and don't be greedy. And certainly those are good things to do. They are a start. But even John recognizes these as treating the symptoms. Like a GP who recognizes that the disease is beyond his powers to cure, he tells his patient they have to go to a specialist if they really want to get well rather than merely learn to cope.

"I baptize you with water but one who is more powerful than I is coming. I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." Baptism was at this time a matter of total immersion. When he came, the Messiah wasn't going to apply the Holy Spirit sparingly, on this small problem area or that tiny patch. God's Anointed was going to immerse God's people in God's Spirit. No halfway measures will do. Nothing but a full Silkwood decontamination shower by the Spirit of God himself would suffice. Not a rad of resistance could remain. 

But what does John mean by baptizing people not only with the Holy Spirit but with fire? Fire had various uses and therefore could be used to symbolize different things. 2 seem more likely than most here. First, fire was used to refine metals. The impurities could be removed only by heating gold or iron ore to high temperatures. The resulting metal would be pure. Secondly, fire was used to burn the inedible parts of grain. After winnowing the wheat from the chaff, the dry covering was burned as waste. So John could mean that the Messiah would purify the people who followed him. He could also mean he will judge and consign those who didn't comply to the trash fires. Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom where Jerusalem burned the city's trash, was the word Jesus used to signify Hell. So which are you? Wheat or chaff? Gold or slag? A light to the world or a pile of refuse to be burned? Don't wait to find out, says John. Repent: change your mind, turn your life around. And then get baptized to signify the fact that you are making a clean start on a new life.

But that's just the beginning. John knows the people need to do more than just change a few habits. He also knows he is not the guy tasked to do that. He is a herald. He is to tell people to get ready because the king is coming. There are things only a king can accomplish. Or we wouldn't need a king.

Advent is about heeding John's cry and getting ready for the king. Of course, we are looking at what is to us the past. We know who the king is and what he will do. We know all the spoilers, as geeks would say. And yet Advent is not merely about Jesus' coming as a powerless baby but also about his next coming as our powerful Lord. And it is also about his coming not just to one couple as the gift of a newborn but also his coming to anyone who welcomes him as the giver of new life. "Let every heart prepare him room" says the carol and that too is what we do at Advent. If Jesus were coming to stay at your house, you'd clean the whole place and take out the garbage. If he is coming to stay in your heart, you'd do the same. Get rid of the greed, deceit, and violence there. Throw out the trash. Be generous to others, knowing what you do for them you do for him.

But this guest isn't going to be content to lie around and relax. If John is like the TV show "Intervention," Jesus is more like "Extreme Makeover." He has big plans for you, your heart and your life. He doesn't just want them clean but redone, remade, larger than before. Because your heart, the person you are, and the life you live are going need to be a lot bigger to accommodate our awfully big God.