Luke 3:7-18
At Fr. Jeff’s ordination on Wednesday, the
preacher, the Rev. Dr. James Farwell, began with a great question: “What did you all come out to see?” He was asking about the ordination, but the
reference was to Jesus asking the crowds about that crazy prophet John the
Baptist. And now, we’ve come out to hear John the Baptist, too, in our Gospel reading
today. It’s not exactly the Good News we
might expect to hear just before Christmas.
We’re waiting for the baby in the manger, and John is getting us ready
for “the wrath to come” with “unquenchable fire” (Luke 3:7,17). Ho, ho, ho.
Last Sunday, we heard the first part of
John the Baptist’s story, as Luke tells it.
Into a particular place and time, this prophet came to do what prophets
do: Speak for God. That’s what it means to be a prophet. It’s not about foretelling the future; it’s
about telling people God’s word right now.
So, out in that dry and dusty desert, John
began his message with applause lines, red meat for peasants struggling under
the thumb of the Roman Empire. That’s
what we heard last week, when John was channeling the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah had brought comfort and hope to God’s
people 500 years earlier, when they’d been defeated by the Babylonians and
taken off into exile. They had watched their
army and their Temple crumble. They’d
been carted off to a foreign land to serve a foreign power. But in that historical moment, God had
intervened, telling Isaiah to speak words of restoration and hope: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight” (Luke 3:4). The valleys will
be filled in, Isaiah had said, and the mountains leveled, and the crooked paths
straightened, and the rough ways smoothed out.
For the people in exile, that wasn’t just symbolic language about the
coming of the Messiah, which is how we hear it.
For them, this was a promise that, literally, God would make a road across
the punishing desert wilderness between Babylon and Jerusalem because God was
about to free the people from exile and bring them home.
So, in last week’s Gospel story, 500 years
later, John the Baptist was channeling Isaiah and promising the people that God
was about to act again, as in the days of exile. You didn’t have to be a historian to make the
connection. This time, the oppressors were
the Romans, occupying God’s promised land.
And when John said, “All flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke
3:6), the crowd heard him talking about the Lord kicking some Roman heinie and putting
God’s own king on the throne. I think
that’s what the crowds went out to see and hear: a fiery preacher telling them that the bad
guys were about to get what’s coming to them.
But then, John the Baptist takes salvation
in a whole different direction with the words we pick up in today’s Gospel reading.
After the applause lines about judgment against
the bad guys, John turns on the crowd. “You
brood of vipers,” he says. “Who warned
you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Luke 3:7). Wait, what?
He’s going after us? Yeah, and he’s
just getting started about their self-righteousness: “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have
Abraham for our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise
up children to Abraham. Even now,” John
goes on, “the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that
does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Luke 3:8-9)
OK, the folks in the crowd are thinking, that’s not what we came out to hear! We’re the good guys, John, remember? We’re the ones struggling under the Romans,
with no decent income, and no opportunity, and taxes out the wazoo. You’re supposed to be preaching the coming
vindication, John, not naming what’s wrong with us.
So, after a moment of awkward silence, somebody
pipes up with the question they’re all wondering: Well, “what then should we do?” (Luke 3:10). I think John’s answer is beautifully, and
deceptively, simple: “Whoever has two
coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do
likewise.” (Luke 3:10-11) If you want to
get right with God, get right with the person next to you, John says. Salvation comes from turning toward God by turning
toward neighbor.
That question from Fr. Jeff’s ordination,
the question Jesus asked the crowds – it’s still relevant for us. What have we
come out today to see and hear? Well,
honestly, most of us have come out to see Christmas coming, right? Even if we couch that in churchy terms, it’s
still about looking forward to the baby in the manger. To mark Advent here at St. Andrew’s, we use
the color blue – in Western art, the color of Mary, the mother of Jesus. We focus our Advent hearts on expectation,
pregnantly waiting for what Jesus is about to do within us and among us. Filled with hope, we long for the One who
will save us and heal us and make us whole.
All that is right and good – and it’s how my heart usually spends
Advent, too.
But then comes John the Baptist, God’s
inconvenient spokesperson, crashing the Christmas party to remind us what Jesus
is coming to save us from. It’s actually not so much our enemies –
whoever we see gaining advantage over us, whoever has wronged us most recently,
whatever system gives its breaks to people who don’t deserve it. Whether we’re white or brown, rich or poor,
empowered or excluded, we can probably identify some people or some system that
fits those categories, somebody who’s the bad guy. These days, in our culture, we’re taking that
to an art form, with everybody finding some part of the system to blame for
their problems and, at the same time, implicitly justifying themselves as the
injured party.
Well, out there in the wilderness, beholden
to nobody, John the Baptist brings us the rough Good News of holy honesty. We should look at ourselves, John says, not
blame someone else; work on ourselves, John says, not assume we’re the good guys.
Now, that could lead us to a theologically squishy conclusion: that God isn’t concerned with the nature of
our choices or the character of our society; that any outcome is OK, as long as
we’re sufficiently humble about it. But
John the Baptist won’t let us stop there.
God does have a clear
agenda. Those who have more need to share
with those who have less. Those who have
the opportunity to game the system need to play by the same rules as everybody
else. Those who have power in whatever
form – political, economic, social – those who have power need to exercise it following
God’s own model of sacrificial love.
So, like the guy who piped up in the crowd,
we might well ask John the Baptist, “OK then, what specifically should we do?”
Here’s another deceptively simple
answer: Start by recognizing that we
need saving, and that what we need saving from is sin. After all, in this season of Advent, we could
just as easily have chosen to deck the halls here with the penitential purple
we put out at Lent, rather than pregnant blue.
Even the name of the Messiah we’re waiting
for tells this truth about our need to be saved. “Jesus” is an Anglicized version, of a Greek
version, of a very old Hebrew name, Yeshua, which is given as “Joshua” in other
parts of Scripture. Remember Joshua in
the Old Testament? He saved God’s people
from their 40 years in the wilderness by leading them into the land and the
life of promise. So, when the angel visits
Mary in one Gospel story and visits Joseph in another, and when the angel tells
them of this baby about to be born, the angel says to both Mary and Joseph, “You
shall name him Yeshua,” what we call “Jesus”; and that name means, “he saves.”
But, what does he save us from? In Matthew, the angel tells Joseph it’s about
saving people from their sins. In Luke, the
angel tells Mary it’s about saving regular folks from oppression by bringing down
the powerful from their thrones, and lifting up the lowly, and filling the hungry
with good things, and sending the satisfied away.
So, as we wait for the One who will chop
down the unproductive trees and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire, I think this is what John the Baptist would tell
us to do: Act in ways that save us, and in
ways that save God’s world, from sin. Look
into our hearts and question the self-righteous assumptions we make. Look around us, and see who needs a coat and
some food, and then provide it. Look at the
systems we inhabit, and see what’s keeping people down, and then help make
changes that offer hope. Look at the divisions
that infect our city and infect our hearts – where some people with light skin
see people with dark skin as inherently threatening – and work to build relationships
instead.
That kind of saving action can take many
forms, and no one response is right. In
fact, in a big-tent place like St. Andrew’s, we run the gamut. I know people who volunteer in classrooms and
gardens in Kansas City schools. I know people
who help educate children in rural Haiti.
I know people who work to elect candidates they trust to be agents of
healing and reconciliation. I know
people who put signs in their yard to protest climate change and its effects on
the people of our planet. I know people
who serve as personal shoppers at the Free Store for folks without warm coats. I know people who show up at rallies to raise
the minimum wage. I know people who
helped launch a social enterprise and now prepare people for living-wage jobs
as dog groomers. In each case, I believe, the
intent is to help save us from sin – the separation of our hearts from one
another, and our separation from God’s intentions for the children God loves.
We will disagree about the right paths,
and I think God honors that, so long as we honor one another in the process. Not every path fits each disciple’s feet. But God is clear about where those paths must
lead, and we proclaim it each time we gather to witness a baptism: Seeking and serving Christ in all people,
loving our neighbor as ourselves. Striving
for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of every human being. And – when we come up short in our work to
resist evil and when we fall into sin – repenting and returning to the
Lord.
That’s our Christmas card from John the Baptist:
the rough good news of showing us our
sin. But without knowing that, what are
we hoping our Savior will save us from?
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