December 15, 2024
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott
Luke 3:7-18
As I’ve spent the week thinking about this Gospel, I’ve been finishing papers for this semester’s seminary classes, including a class that looked at twenty-first century churches and what it means to be missional. I’ve read about churches that do prayer walks through their neighborhoods, churches that partner with community groups, churches that are trying to be outward facing rather than inward facing. As I’ve written a final paper that synthesizes all the texts, I’ve thought about John the Baptist and his approach to the seekers that came to him.
In seminary, we have not been trained to use the language that John does; imagine if I stood here and preached the kind of sermon that John preached. Imagine if I called the congregation a brood of vipers—not just snakes, but the offspring of snakes. If I used this language week after week, I imagine it wouldn’t be too long before you called Bishop Strickland.
But look at how the people in today’s Gospel respond. I would be the one stomping away, saying “You can’t call me a baby snake. I don’t have to listen to this. Don’t threaten me with an ax and with fire.” No, the people in our Gospel today ask, “What, then, should we do?”
John the Baptist’s answer contains multitudes. In it, we get a foreshadowing of some of the narrative story arcs that we’ll find throughout the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts—which scholars believe were written by the same person and should be read together, as two parts of the same story.
John the Baptist is asked the same question by three very different groups of people, all of whom have been told that the time to repent is now, lest they be like non-producing trees, thrown into the fire. Scholars have puzzled over the first group, “the crowds” who do the asking. Some Bible commentators suggest that this part of the crowd was the rich part. They are the ones, in this time period, who have extra coats and food.
But given the specificity of the next two groups, I think we’re meant to see the crowds as “everybody”—it’s a group that can include the very wealthy to those of more moderate means. If we’re very rich, we have an extra coat. But even if we’re not very rich, we likely have something we can share, like food. Even if we don’t have extra luxury items, like a coat would have been in first century times, we can share something that will sustain life.
Tax collectors are the next group that asks John to tell them what they should do. The language of the Gospel shows what a surprise it is to find them among the group following John the Baptist. Like Jesus will do later, John does not turn them away, but he does have specific instructions for them: “Collect no more than the amount proscribed to you.” You may remember that tax collectors were paid a percentage of what they collected, which gave perverse incentives to them to collect more than what was owed. Keep in mind that the population was already taxed at 30-40%--no wonder tax collectors were so hated, often linked with sinners in the same breath—the Pharisees will ask the disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with sinners and tax collectors? Later in the Gospel of Luke, a tax collector will get a name-- Zachaeus, chapter 19,--and we will see what can happen when one becomes serious about repentance.
The third group, the soldiers who ask the same question have a different sort of power, and they can wield that power without caring who they hurt. There will be no Senate investigations, no suspensions. They, too, must harness the impulse to take more than what is owed.
Notice how these last two groups are outsider groups—tax collectors were shunned by the Jews, and Roman soldiers would be avoided. Today’s Gospel prefigures Christ’s actions, with Zacchaeus and others, with Jesus eating with sinners and healing community by way of inclusion. It also prefigures the actions of the disciples and apostles in the book of Acts, where the first Christians were primarily Jews who learned to share, and then the group was widened to include a Gentile here, a Gentile there—starting with Cornelius in Acts 10, and then many, many more, as we see in the letters of Paul. John’s 3 groups of questioners gives a foreshadowing of what will come.
John calls the people who come to him a brood of vipers, but he doesn’t leave them dejected. He gives them a choice—this life or that life? A tree that bears good fruit or a non-producing tree that faces the ax and the fire?
Last week I mentioned that John is preaching a message of repentance, but John delivers a message far deeper far more than a need to apologize and feel bad for all the ways that we’ve gone wrong, the way that repentance has come to be preaches. The Greek word is metanoia, which means a turning around. It’s a reorientation, a fundamental transformation of outlook, a mental and spiritual U-turn.
A wide variety of people came to John because they knew that their current lives were not working—the crowds, the people working for the government, the military, all sorts of people came to John to find out what to do. They came to John—a weirdo in the wilderness who called them a brood of vipers. We hear the story today and feel a tremor of truth.
Like those people who came to John, we, too, can look around us and see that regular old life is not working for the vast majority of people. We see fractures all around us and worry about what is coming.
John’s answer to the question of “What then should we do?” is still relevant to us here, so many centuries later. Notice how mild it seems, at first glance: share your excess. Not give everything you have to the poor so that you, too will be poor, but share your excess. In your job, act with integrity. Don’t abuse the power that you have, but use it wisely. Don’t act in ways that make people fearful. Don’t issue threats. Imagine what a different world we would have if everyone did this—how our interpersonal relationships would improve, how our communities could reknit themselves together, how our geopolitical relations would lead to a world of more flourishing.
John has good news for us this Advent season—the time is getting very late, but it is not too late. There is time to turn around. God has not given up on this creation the way that so many people have given up on God and everything else. John calls on all of us to repent, to make a u-turn, to come back to the covenant with God. It’s good news for all of us.
