You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to. Lord, the day of Jesus Christ is at hand who can endure it?

Transcription

1 Sermon for Sunday, December 9, 2018 Advent 2 Year C You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. 1 Sinners all: prepare for the ax and for the unquenchable fire that will burn out all impurities. The day of the Lord, the day of Jesus Christ is at hand who can endure it? Who dares to confess? Who can repent into that change of mind, being, soul and self? The steam, smoke and glimmer from the refiner s fire can be seen on the horizon giving a faint light, preparing us as we prepare for the coming of the Day of the Lord. Are you tired of fire and brimstone? Of the direness of these readings from the last month and just can t wait until we can get to the little, peaceful baby in the manger? Honestly, I have to say that I am; I m not particularly good at the whole fire and brimstone style of preaching I would have been terrible at preaching at revival meetings, just not my thing. But I think preparation is one of my things: You see, I love planning at least some things. I love planning meals; I love planning trips. And, however much it may seem that my imagination is lacking or limited, I love 1 Luke 3:7-8. Granted, this is in next week s lectionary reading, but because of the Sunday School program, I m focusing on the entirety of John the Baptist this week. I m also fairly freely using all parts of this week s lectionary readings (with the possible exception of the Philippians text).

2 planning worship and doing lesson plans; this is where I like to think the theatre-me meets the math-me; but who knows, maybe that s just my selfperception and isn t based in any external reality. I love flights of imagination, but sometimes just hopefully not too often being based in external reality is still important. Luke, perhaps to further his goal of writing an orderly account (Luke 1:3), places his story in an external reality of history and geography as he begins what some consider the beginning proper of his gospel what we heard this morning as the gospel lesson. As an aside, don t totally trust either Luke s history or geography at several points in the gospel they also don t jive with reality. I mention the inconsistencies not to delve into the details here but because, whether it is the mentioning of Augustus, Quirinius and the census in the Christmas story or this listing here, Luke seems to have an additional, and frankly more important, purpose behind locating the story historically and geographically: that purpose is to highlight socio-economic and political contrasts, and to proclaim how the coming of the Lord upends these.

3 Advent gives us time to prepare for the world to be turned upside down by what would flow from that peace-creating (hmmm?) baby of Bethlehem. Luke introduces today s scene by mentioning seven who s who people of power, people who were the movers-and-shakers of the 1 st century world especially in the far-flung province of Palestine; these were people who lived their lives in extravagance, in power, palaces and temples. And then there s John: While we know from chapter 1 that both his father Zechariah and his mother Elizabeth were from priestly families, he s really a nobody, who doesn t hang out in palaces or temples, but in the wilderness. To this one not, as one may expect, to the chief priests or kings or governors the word of God comes. But the word that comes to John is not an easy one; its harshness affects people from commoners, to tax collectors, to soldiers and maybe right on up the ladder to the religious elite represented by Annas and Caiaphas, and perhaps all up the political-social ladder from Herod to Pilate to Tiberius. God s word to John is not an easy word; and Luke s own twist on it is that the more one has to lose, the harder the word is, for the word turns the world upside down.

4 Truly who can repent into that change of mind, being, soul and self called for by the word? Each of us may want to jump and say, I can! But can I, really? Can you, really? Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, we are not the ragged preacher living in the liminal spaces of wilderness; we are much more closely related to the likes of Herod and Pilate maybe not with palaces, but with a roof over our heads, heaters that work, and food on our tables, in our refrigerators or purchasable from grocery stores. We live in world of abundance that would have been unimaginable in the Biblical world, except among the very elite. Can we really be ready for what Malachi, Zechariah and John call for? Are we really ready to rethink, restructure, and likely destroy the systems and structures that we see as normal, but which inhibit the way of the Lord for those who are outside? Maybe what we need is not fire and brimstone per se, but rather an honest, and perhaps harsh and convicting, assessment of whether or not we are [preparing] the way of the Lord (Luke 3:4); remember such an assessment is also a part of Advent: Are we preparing for the arrival of the Lord? In its original context of Isaiah 40 that which Luke quotes deals with preparing the way back to Jerusalem across the wilderness from exile in

5 Babylon; however, Luke turns this into John s words, calling for the way of the Lord to still be prepared but where is not specified. It takes only a little imagination to assume that he s talking about the preparation taking place in our society, our lives and in our hearts, so that, to the poor, the outcast, the disenfranchised and the judged, we may exemplify the tender mercy of our God and appear as the dawn from on high (Luke 1:78). John will tell the crowds who come to him, Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise (Luke 3:11); they are to do this to prepare the way of the Lord. Maybe sharing is a better image of preparation than the image of bulldozers, cranes and dynamite making a road through the mountains. But, like bulldozers, cranes and dynamite blowing up mountains and moving them to fill in valleys, preparing the way of the Lord within ourselves may be just as violent and just as destructive; while Isaiah, Luke and John knew anything of these modern marvels of destruction, they were still quite keen on the challenging effects of preparing for the Lord. Brood of vipers! Repent! Become new, for only by becoming new can we live into the upending kingdom-image that is described by Zechariah, Mary, John

6 and later by Jesus. That becoming new is behind the concepts of baptism and repentance. The Greek term translated as repentance is, meaning a change of mind. But I find the Hebrew concept of shoov more instructive (and relatable); I learned this vocabulary word with the pneumonic shove just think about what happens when you are shoved: It might hurt, but you stop and you change direction the very heart of what repentance means. So, brood of vipers Repent! Become new by changing your direction into the values of the kingdom instead of those of the world. John may come off as calling for the impossible almost as much as some of the Old Testament prophets he emulates did. But, if we let go of ourselves, then what he asks really isn t that hard: share with those who lack, be fair, and do not use your position or power to gain an unfair advantage over others. The struggle is the first part of that conditional phrase, if we let go of ourselves. Contrary to what we sometimes think, letting go of ourselves is not easy; self-sufficiency, self-reliance, self-centeredness and the proverbial pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps are strongly imbued in nearly every aspect of our culture not that different from the first century. Perhaps this too is why Luke began this passage with his recitation

7 of the who s who, all of whom achieved their position due to deception, conceit, intrigue, or collaboration with the enemy. Yet, this is the opposite of what John calls the people to do, and the opposite of what Jesus calls us to do. Maybe it s the gap between the assumptions of easy to follow and of normal that makes being called a brood of vipers so difficult. But neither we nor the crowd are left there in desperation; instead we are given a way to the easy to follow instructions; remember the song of Zechariah, celebrating John s birth, which was our psalmody this morning: By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace (Luke 1:78-79). Child of God, God is coming; the light is beginning to peek over the horizon, preparing us to see the true, full light of salvation, through Christ our Lord, which will lead us into the way of peace. Amen.