December 13, 2009
The Third Sunday of Advent (Year C)
Zephaniah 3:14-20; Canticle 9 from Isaiah; Philippians 4:4-7;
Luke: 3:7-18
John, whom we just heard from, was a preacher. He was also Jesus’ cousin, a bit of a radical, an aesthetic, and a bit scary – even for his day and time.
In this passage from the gospel of Luke this morning, John is preaching to those who have come a long way to hear him, and, frankly, his preaching style makes me wonder! He begins "You brood of Vipers! You snakes! You who are fleeing, when you should be preparing!”
I don’t think he would get many passing marks at any seminary I know for his approach to the “good news.” Insulting the congregation rarely allows them to hear what follows, and in this case that is too bad, because what follows is some pretty sound Christian theology – before there was even Christianity to have a theology about!
The crowds respond to his admonition and damning words by asking a question which is also not too common in our modern way of understanding preaching, that is questions from the congregation, but nonetheless we are told they asked, “Then what are we to do?”
This is a question which, of course, we all ask when presented with such dire predictions: what can we do to prevent this from happening to us? What can we do to save ourselves? What can we do to “fix” it? These are almost instinctual reactions to disaster or the prediction of disaster: to find a way around it by our own hand and our own direction, to fix the circumstances, to pull ourselves out of the way of harm.
And imagine what John starts telling them “to do!” He tells them to share their coats with those who do not have one, as well as their food, to collect only the honest portion of taxes (if you are a tax collector). But let’s face it, that means for all of us non tax collectors that we are to be honest in our commerce and dealings with one another, not cheating others for our own gain, and most of all not to exhorting people by threatening them, withholding wages or money under false pretenses, and never accusing or threatening people falsely.
This litany of proper behavior seems to me to mirror the life of Christ and certainly his teachings. And even though I agree that this teaching is at the very heart of being faithful people, I do not think I would stand up in this pulpit and say, “All you who work at one particular kind of work, say engineers, or medical workers, or teachers, or administrators, or, well, you name it, all of you must give up half of your salary for those who do not have a salary,” and expect that anyone could or would hear me, let alone change their lives so dramatically as to actually do it. So again John’s sermon continues to be hard to hear.
But we have heard it for centuries and maybe we have missed the impact of it because we think we know the end of the story – the one whose imminent coming, the one whose sandals John does not feel worthy to untie is coming, has come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth some two thousand plus years ago. We have that expectation that Jesus will be “born soon,” but we are remembering that other birth, the one long ago. And because he was born then, he has for all time fixed whatever is lacking in us for all time. So that, now, if we but wait and try to live good faithful lives, we have nothing to worry about. I think actually that John would be horrified at that idea, and I wonder if that is really what God intends in this season of waiting and preparing for the coming of Christ into our lives in a profoundly new and transforming way. I wonder if we are missing the “not knowing” part of this admonition from John, the not knowing in Zephaniah’s proclamation of restored fortunes, the not knowing of Isaiah’s joyful adoration for the inhabitants of Zion or the not knowing in the rejoicing that Paul extols to the Philippians. In each of these readings we have heard this morning, and especially hearing of John who had not yet baptized Jesus and did not recognize Jesus as the messiah until after that baptism, they didn’t know. When John was shouting, “You brood of vipers!” Jesus was just his younger cousin! In each case these lessons we heard this morning were not really predictions of a baby in a manger in midwinter. In fact if you had told the preachers that this was the case, they would have shaken their heads and asked, “What about David’s line? Royalty? Rescuing us from the Romans?” They were, in each case, hopeful declarations of preparing for an unknown and unknowable, awesome presence of God in transforming and life changing ways, but not truly knowing what or who Jesus would be.
John’s reference to the material changes that the people could make in preparation for this coming of the messiah was not because the material world is the realm of the values that God was bringing, it seems to me, but rather the urgent reminder that what we do with the material goods that we have, prepares us for the time when Christ will come again. The things of this world are teaching tools for being citizens of God’s impermeable and permanent kingdom to come when Christ comes again, in ways that we cannot predict, any more than Zephaniah, Isaiah, Paul or John could.
We may have an idea about that coming world based on the past, based on remembering, based on history, which is what we celebrate in this time of Advent and Christmas. But about the only thing I am certain of, or any of us can be certain of, is that our notions of who and how Christ is going to be will be rapidly dissolved when we see who the renewed Christ, the actual Christ who has come again, actually comes. Then we will know what “Christ come again” brings to us and desires with us. I fear, as John feared that day when he so urgently admonished the folks who had come so far to see him, I fear that “Christ come again” will be as shocking as a baby in a manger certainly would have been to the prophets. I fear Christ will be as demanding that we put others first in all ways of our living, and that giving up half of our possessions for others will be but a drop in the bucket of what Christ will urge that we forgo, give up, share, serve for the sake of others, even the very others that we most disapprove of now. But because I am not a prophet, and am merely trying to make sense of these lessons for our time and in our community, I fear that what Christ demands of us will be something perhaps way beyond any of these things.
The good news that John promised is that the coming messiah, the coming Christ, would winnow away the unnecessary in their lives and refine them with a fire of transformation that would purify. I hope that means that our souls will be so focused on our love of Christ who has come again that we will be able to freely forgo the material things that have been our practice tools for citizenship in Christ’s new reign in favor of a new way of seeing each other, God and the world, a way that brings peace and joy and hope and a constant presence of an eternally living God.
But I don’t know. I don’t know. We don’t know. The prophets didn’t know. We can only go forward in hope and love, in peace and expectation, preparing with the tools we have at hand and following the Jesus we remember and have learned of from the past. Such is the human condition. We live between the world that was and the world that is coming. We do that in the now of faithfulness, trusting that what is coming will be more than what we can imagine, and that we will recognize it from our faithful remembering and current practice.
May the rest of your Advent be full of God’s grace, hopefulness, and promise! And may we all take the opportunity to reflect on John’s “difficult to hear” admonition as told in the gospel of Luke this morning. May we each step closer to living the ideal he presents in our own preparation for the coming of Christ again.
Amen.
The Reverend Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd