If people picked baby names on the basis of historical importance, the world today would be full of Orvilles and Wilburs.

But it’s not.

Still, I would have to say that few people have changed the course of history more than the Wright Brothers of Dayton, Ohio.  Exactly 100 years ago, these bicycle-making brothers achieved the goal of powered human flight, piloting the very first airplane that could be controlled in the air.  In the process, they developed steering techniques that are still being used in 21st-century airplanes, spacecraft, submarines, and robots.

Pilots in the congregation, am I right?  Were these guys world-changers … or what?

On December 17, 1903, Orville took off from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, near Kitty Hawk, and flew the gasoline-powered Wright Flyer for 12 seconds.  That same day, Wilbur piloted the plane for 59 seconds, covering a grand total of 852 feet.

What a shock this was to people who never expected humans to fly.  It revolutionized travel and transport, and gave people a whole new perspective on the world.  Of course, we now take flying for granted, and we consider air travel to be just another big business. Art Buchwald jokes that Orville and Wilbur quickly ran into trouble with their airplane back in 1903.  In his humor column, he writes that two weeks after their first flight they started an airline, Wright Brothers Express, which flew between Dayton and Akron, Ohio.  And then, two weeks after that, they filed for bankruptcy.

Orville said: "We didn't expect business to be that bad.  People just weren't flying as much as we expected."

Wilbur said: "We offered discount fares, frequent-flyer miles and free coffee -- and we still had to go into Chapter 11." (Art Buchwald, "Taking the Ultimate Flier," The Washington Post, January 7, 2003, C2).

We joke about frequent-flyer miles and free coffee today, but no one was laughing when the first Wright flight took place.  In fact, jaws dropped.  People were stunned.  The news of controlled flight over Kitty Hawk was just about as shocking as the message of John the Baptist, a revolutionary who blasted the status quo of his society by calling people to repentance.

“ You brood of vipers!” John says to the crowd by the River Jordan.  “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Luke 3:7).  He blasts these baptism-seekers, insulting them by comparing them to a nest of poisonous snakes slithering away from a fiery doom.  Like prophets who have come before, John speaks of divine judgment and the wrath of God, predicting that an overpowering force from heaven will come to destroy the wicked of the world.

This is not a warm and wonderful worship experience.

But John is a world-shaker, not a community-maker.  Like the Wright Brothers of Dayton, Ohio, he’s not interested in staying home and tinkering with the bicycles of his friends and neighbors.  Instead, he feels compelled by God to turn his back on comfort and take off in an unexpected direction.  He powers up his own prophetic flying machine and stuns the people of God with a radical call to repentance.

“ Bear fruits worthy of repentance,” John insists (v. 8).  Turn yourself around and get yourself in line with the righteousness of God.  If you’ve got two coats, give one to a person who doesn’t have one.  If you are a tax collector, collect no more than what is right.  If you are a soldier, don’t extort anyone by threats or false accusation.  That’s righteous and ethical living, says John, and you better start practicing it if you want to escape divine judgment (vv. 10-14).

The bottom line for John is that you’ve got to conform your life to the will of God.  No impressive spiritual heritage or remarkable religious résumé is going to pull you out of the fire of divine judgment.  “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’” warns John, “for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children of Abraham” (v. 8).

When it comes to being right with God, no family connection is going to help you.  The “children of Abraham,” once so unique and precious in the eyes of God, are now like the bicycles cluttering the Wright Brothers’ shop.  They are seen by John as being common, predictable, earthbound – as plenteous as the rocks of the Judean countryside.  But people who “bear fruits worthy of repentance”?  These folks are the new-fangled flying machines, the ones who can break the bonds of earth and soar. 

According to John, people who repent are the true children of God.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a tax collector, a sinner, a soldier, or a student.  If you turn yourself around and head down the runway built by God, you’re going to find yourself suddenly airborne, and soaring to new spiritual heights.   

This is a whole new way of moving through life.  The old mode of travel was to assume that religious identity served as your ticket.  If you were a child of Abraham, you had a pass to ride the religious railroad any place it went, from local synagogue to Jerusalem Temple.  But suddenly, for John, spiritual lineage, heritage, and reputation count for nothing.  He’s interested in taking flight, not riding the rails, and the way to break free of the earth and fly with God is through repentance and righteous living.

What good news this is, for the people of John’s day … and for us.  Sure, John sounds a bit harsh when he speaks of wrath and fire and judgment, but he is really just trying to get people to break out of their religious ruts.  The fact is that his invitation is an amazing opportunity for people like tax collectors and soldiers, people who were often looked down upon because of their cooperation with the Roman Empire.  But here John invites everyone to turn to the Lord, even those who are stuck in lousy jobs, unhappy with their lot in life, feeling isolated and alone.  John invites people everywhere to improve their future by lining up with God and becoming people of righteousness.  Everyone is welcome, and that includes you … and me.

It’s as though John gives us a whole new dimension to life, just as the Wright Brothers did.  If you think about it, Orville and Wilbur did more than simply invent powered human flight – they actually changed the way we see our world.  Before air travel, people traveled in just two dimensions, moving north and south and east and west, crossing the lines that separate town from town, nation from nation.  But once people could fly, the artificial boundaries that divide us began to disappear.  From the air, distances shrink and the horizon stretches.  “The world seems grander and more interconnected,” notes the author of the Wright Brothers website.  “This three-dimensional vision has revealed a universe of promises and possibilities.”  The world economy, awareness of our environment, space exploration – all are, to some degree, the results of the inventive minds of the Wright Brothers.  (“The Wright Story,” Wright Brothers Website,www.first-to-fly.com/History/Wright%20Story/wright%20story.htm.  Retrieved May 19, 2003)

From travel in two dimensions to travel in three dimensions – that is the gift of Orville and Wilbur Wright.  And from children of Abraham to people of righteousness – that is the world-changing contribution of John the Baptist.

Orville, Wilbur and John.  They are great names … powerful names … history-making names.  If you are an expectant mother, maybe you should reconsider your baby names!

What?  You still don’t like the idea of a baby Orville?  Or Wilbur?

Whatever name we go by, the challenge still remains for us to put together a righteous life, a moral life, a life full of the “fruits worthy of repentance.”  This isn’t very easy, because righteousness is not a do-it-yourself job.  It is hard to put together, harder than even the airplanes that the Wright Brothers assembled in their bicycle shop a century ago.  To bear fruits worthy of repentance, we need more than good intentions, more than strong desires, more than willing spirits … we need a Messiah.  In order to get close to God, we need someone who is sent from God. 

Back in the day, people thought the Messiah might be John the Baptist.  But when asked about his identity, John said, “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” (v. 16).  John sees himself as far less than a slave in comparison to the coming Messiah, one not even worthy to touch his filthy footwear, and John predicts that the One who is on his way will baptize the people of the world with both Holy Spirit and fire.  The Messiah’s baptism will purify us like a refining fire, and will fill us with the powerful Spirit of God himself.  This is a life-changing gift, a life-enriching gift, a gift that we receive at baptism, a gift that little Steven Farzan receives today.  It is only with the presence of God’s Spirit within ourselves that we have any hope of living the righteous life that the Lord desires for us.

We cannot be good without God, you see.  We simply cannot be good without God.  We need his Spirit in our hearts, minds, and bodies if we are going to live righteous lives and bear fruits worthy of repentance.  The life of faith can never be neatly tied up in an earthly designation such as “children of Abraham,” but instead it always requires going beyond what we can understand, comprehend, control, and describe.  It demands that we find a source of power, and then throw ourselves into the mighty wind that God has blown across the landscape of our lives.

Power and wind.  Those are some mighty forces, aren’t they?  They come to us as gifts of God, and together they sound like a formula for flying.

Jesus the Messiah baptizes us with Spirit and with fire, and invites us to soar with him into a life of repentance and righteousness.  It doesn’t matter who we are, or what we’ve done.  With his mighty wind beneath our wings, we can ascend to a whole new level of living, one in which we are right with God and right with one another.

Whether it’s 1903 or 2003, this is the right flight to take.  Amen.

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