Advent 3

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Advent 3
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John’s Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 14, 1997

TEXT: Luke 3:7-18 - “Bear fruits worthy of repentance. . . . . ‘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. . . . . . So with many other exhortations, he (John Baptist) proclaimed the good news to the people.”

ISSUE: On this “Stir up” Sunday, taken from the Collect of the Day, John Baptist is indeed stirring up the people. He calls them to repentance and gives specific examples of exactly what he means. He calls for changed lives among the common and powerless people in preparation for a new age, when God’s Anointed will come among his people and increase the power of the Holy Spirit within them. While John may well appear coarse and threatens judgement, it is in repentance and open preparation for the coming of the Christ that people have good news. In their brokeness there is new hope; Christ comes again.
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This third Sunday of Advent is the one we refer to as “Stir-up Sunday.” Its title comes from the Collect of the Sunday that God will stir-up his power and come among us, because we are so hindered by our sins we need God’s presence and help. We are in desperate need of God’s help and deliverance according to the prayer.
Incidentally this is also the Sunday that we light the rose candle on the Advent Wreath as a remembrance that there is great joy in the anticipated coming of the Lord. For some of us this is sort of mixed message. It is hard to be joyful when you are under judgement for your sins.
In this morning’s Gospel reading from Luke, John the Baptist really comes on strong. People are piqued by his preaching and curios about whether or not he is the anticpated Messiah. They go to see this peculiar man preaching in the desert. wilderness. When they find him they are met by what seems to us to be an insulting message. To them it was a terrible insult to their honor. “You brood of snakes, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come.” Eugene H. Peterson’s paraphrase from his book, The Message, gives a more graphic picture: “Brood of Snakes! What do you think you’re doing slithering down here to the river. Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to deflect God’s judgment? It’s you life that must change, not your skin. . . . .” John calls for real repentance and change in the lives of these people. For him their biological ancestry does not matter. What matters is their moral courage and the courageous faithful devotion to God. Descendents of Abraham are a dime a dozen. What counts is your life Is it green and blossoming, or is it deadwood for the fire? (Peterson)
Well, the crowd begins to ask John what they should do. What are the expectations to be made of them? John replies with some specific advice. John goes on to say to these people that if they have two coats, then give one away. This time was one when goods and supplies were in very limited supply. If someone had two coats it was likely that someone else had none. If someone has too much food, it was likely that someone was going without. John calls for an end to being greed. It was not honorable in this society, nor in any other I would suggest. Among these very poor folk who had come out to John, there were few if any who were rich or particularly well off. At the time to be generous to your neighbor did not mean to be kind to strangers. In the culture of this time, your neighbor was your kinsman. The broader idea of neighbor does not come until Jesus expresses a wider appreciation of neighbor in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. What John saw in his time was a people who were not even very sensitive to the needs of their own kinsman. Self gratification and self-centeredness was his concern. John is addressing the issue that change begins with his own, right close to home. He begins to make them sensitive to needs outside themselves. If they are to be a people who will be washed and baptized and immersed into the new Kingdom of God, it will require a personal change.
Tax collectors we are told also come to him. Poor dear tax collectors. They were a mess. Actually they were toll collectors who collected tolls at bridges, or a borders, or on certain roads, at gateways and landings. These were men who could not get jobs anywhere else. They were not particularly liked as the tolls eventually went to the Romans. They were sort of losers of the time. They were considered unclean persons, because they had to examine and root through and touch things that might have been considered unclean. Furthermore in order to get the jobs, they often had to put large sums of money up front and hoped they could collecrt enough money to break even, and hopefully to make a living. It was a system that was open to abuse and they were not profitable. Few tax collectors were rich. They were just part of the dispossessed and among the really poor and rejected.
These were the poor souls who came out to John, looking for a Messiah, new hope, a new way, a new Kingdom. But according to John, the way to that Kingdom and hope was to be converted and changed. In a society were there was a lot of lying and cheating and deception to maintain whatever honor you might have, these tax collectors were expected to be honest, and to exact the fair tolls and taxes. They were to be honorable not just in the sight of man, but in the sight of God. They were to be ready for a new Kingdom that is God’s kingdom.
And there were also some soldiers there. These soldiers that went out into the wilderness were Jewish soldiers, or a kind of police force. Again, they were not loved by their fellows. They were controlled by Herod; they worked for him. Herod was a puppet king of the Romans. So they had little real respect and affection among their own people. They enforced the Roman occupying power. They had the power to blackmail, report their fellow citizens to Roman authorities. They could extort money and they could be brutal. Again it was a position which probably did not have much respect or honor attached to it. These soldiers who go after John in the wilderness are themselves searching for something better. What should they do? “Well,” says John, “be changed, and different. No blackmailing, bullying, or extortion. Be satisfied with your wages. Be ready for the kingdom, and be ready for the coming of the Annointed Messiah. And everything that is false will get thrown into the trash and burned.”
John’s baptism is about being cleansed and ready for something grand. Luke and the early church is making it clear that John the Baptist is not the Messiah, but the forerunner, the one who is preparing the way and calling people to a genuine preparedness for change. Those who are ready will receive renewing life giving Holy Spirit that will lead them on to God’s Kingdom.
Notewell what is going on here. John’s message is not to the elite, the rich and the powerful, and those of great honor. John’s message is to the poor, the dislike, the disenfranchised, dispossessed, the powerless. Yet at the same time he is making them aware that indeed to be changed to realize that being good to one another, caring for one another, sharing with one another, working together in community, not cheating or beating up on one another, they will gain begin to receive a power and a new hope that comes from God. Therein is the goodnews, the joy and the hope. They have to stop seeing themselves as victims. They have to stop saying, “Ain’t the world awful because of all those nasty Romans.” The power to change, the Spirit of God is ready to be within them. When the Christ comes, the Anointed One, they will be ready to follow him and be led to the Kingdom of God. John is very pro-active. He calls the down trodden to be ready to realize their power that is within, and that will come and lead them, deliver them to a whole new way of life.
I hope we get the point in our time. I hope this passage speaks to us as well. There are times in all honesty that we recognize our need for the mercy, grace, and help of God. While we might not like to dwell on it, people can be a brood of snakes. We may not be terribly comfortable with that kind of talk in our time. It may be okay for the 1st century but for the 21st century it seems a bit harsh. Fact of the matter is there is a lot of cruelty and pitiful behavior going on in our world in which we participate. We can be extraordinarily cruel in our thinking toward the poor, toward people of other religions, people of other races, and to one another in our own families as we allow old feuds and hatreds to persist from generation to generation. Honest people know they are in the need of God’s redeeming grace and that we are under God’s awesome judgement.
What then shall we do? Maybe when we have more than we need would could share some of it around in a meaningful way.
Men could start spending more time with their children. Men could love their childrens’ mother in a deeper more appreciative way. Men could control their wandering eyes and build a stronger more loving nest at home.
I’m not a woman, so I won’t presume to venture what women per se should do. My guess is that each of you who are in families know what would build stronger family life.
All of us need to question just how much individual self expression is necessary and consider concentrating on what we need to do for the common good of our families, of our church, of the other important areas of our lives.
In our church we could get a grip on caring more and establishing relationships with the shut-ins, so that they don’t become merely lost and ignored from our community. We need to talk to new people and share ourselves with them and what this church has meant to yourselves and what it may come to mean to others. We must stop being so infatuated with the fact that we are a small church and isn’t that wonderful. The underlying message is we are concerned for this generation only and our own complacent selves and the message to baptize all people in the Name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit and teach them can go to hell. We rely on Episcopalians to come from other churches and join our parish. Somehow or another we see that as church growth. It’s not. It simply robs Peter to pay Paul. The Christian vacumn in our cities is a potential for doom. We could all work to make the church financially stronger so it can do its work in the world.
We could and must be more regular in our worship and study of the story of our great faith so that it will impact our lives and encourage us in our ministries in our lives.
All of us need to look for opportunities and people who are different from us. We need to search for opportunities to create friendships with people of different races and religions. Without understanding and appreciation and love of things different from ourselves we shall be come isolated and suspicions and misunderstandings and all that they can lead to abound.
There are needs around us everywhere, particularly the environmental concerns. Without some pro-active participation, the world is threatened.
For the sake of good health and a witness to our children some of us need to put out our cigarettes once and for all and to watch carefully the amount of booze we are consuming. These are destructive habits and they effect our children and future generations. It is not merely a matter of it being good for me; it is good for the future.
The list of how and what the snakes in the nest need to do could go on and on. At the same time we might be overwhelmed by it all, and see the future as hopeless. Not so with John. He saw people, common ordinary people for who they were. He dared them not to be whiners and to condemn the powers that be in Rome. He dared them to accept the power within themselves and do what they could to be changed. And what they alone could not do, God would come to them and baptize and empower the community to redeem, strenghten and renew it in all that by itself it could not do.
Christ came and died for the sins of the world. Christ rose. And now Christ comes again. Indeed we are under the judgement, but at the same time those who will turn and dare to change will see him come again with Glory and with power to renew and buy back the world.