Sermon for Third Sunday of Advent – Luke 3:7-18

Have you ever heard the phrase, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”? Apparently John the Baptizer didn’t get that memo. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Not very uplifting, is it? Though, John’s a prophet. This is what prophets do. When things go to pot, God raises prophets to knock some sense into folks. But it also reminds me of one of my Old Testament professors who used to say, “You know, you might be a prophet…. or you might just be a jerk.” I mean, I’m pretty tightly-wound. I’m already good at beating myself up. I don’t need help. Maybe you know what that feels like?

But here’s the thing. Fire and brimstone works. Folks panic. They ask “what should we do?” But then he just gives this short to-do list. Share your extra coats and food. Stop extorting money from folks. All done. That’s weird! When everything’s in flames, isn’t that when you’re supposed to overhaul everything and make major life changes because you’re about to drive off a cliff? But he doesn’t tell them to quit being tax collectors and soldiers. He doesn’t tell them to put on sackcloth and ashes. He doesn’t ask for much. And you don’t have to be Christian to know this. Who doesn’t learn this in elementary school? Share your stuff. Don’t cheat. We don’t need a prophet to tell us this. Besides, this doesn’t scream repentance. It could just be a page out of “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” So what’s really going on here?

Well, it matters who John’s preaching to. This isn’t just a random crowd of people. First, we’ve got folks who like to show off their “child of Abraham” card. Like saying “We’re God’s chosen people and you’re not.” Now, this comes up a lot when the Pharisees fight with Jesus, and they always sound so smug when they discriminate against the unwashed masses. The folks that Jesus likes to call friends. And clearly discrimination is sin. But we need to be very careful here. This is the Roman Empire, and Rome really doesn’t like Jewish folks. So they build pagan temples. They squeeze Jews with taxes that drive them into poverty. They make Jews swear allegiance to the emperor. It’s this program of oppression and it’s on purpose, just to remind who’s in charge. So how do you bear all that? You start wearing your faith on your sleeve. You turn your persecution into a badge of honor because otherwise nothing matters. You lean into suffering because if there’s even a shred of justice in this broken world, then God better darn well reward you for surviving. But you know what that does to you? It makes you hard. It makes you cling to what you’ve got, because you don’t know what they’re going to take away next. It’s hard to show charity when you feel surrounded by enemies.

Then we’ve got tax collectors. The Jews who collect taxes from the community for their pagan Roman overlords. Which is like sleeping with the enemy. Because now you’re a tool of the empire. A traitor to the Jewish people. So you know they won’t pay willingly. You learn to accuse and intimidate to get the job done. You can’t trust them. But you do it because you keep telling yourself that it gets you a little more leniency from the Romans, even though you know in your heart that you’ll never be anything more than just another Jew to them. So maybe you demand a little extra from folks. A little insurance, just in case, because you don’t have any friends to count on. You burned all your bridges, so what difference does it make?

And last but not least, we’ve got soldiers. The Roman occupiers. Now, being a Roman soldier isn’t a great job. Not just because it could kill you, but because Rome doesn’t like to pay salaries. Depending on who’s emperor, they keep messing around with budgets and shorting the soldiers who keep them in power. And there’s inflation. What you’re getting may not go far. So every once in a while there’s mutiny. The fight for living wages has been around for ages. So for a lot of soldiers, you can’t really trust the hand that feeds you. You feel like you need a little more insurance than that. So, maybe you start abusing your power a little bit. And here’s the easy way. You make false accusations against Jewish folks. Because who are the authorities going to trust? An honorable soldier or some anonymous Jew? Do the math. But it won’t even get to that point because the first thing your victim’s going to do is ask you for your price. It’s a great way to pad your wallet for the next time Rome gets stingy.

So I know this is probably information overload, but here’s the point. Children of Abraham, tax collectors, and Roman soldiers. What do these all have in common? They don’t trust anyone. It’s too dangerous. So they abuse others because they think that’s the only way they can survive. What John’s really asking them to do is hard. Cast off everything. Be vulnerable. Because everything depends upon God. And I think we feel John speaking to us too. Maybe we’re not extorting that I know of, but look at what Covid has revealed in the last couple years? False accusation. Hoarding. Prioritizing ourselves above everyone else. 2000 years later and nothing has changed. Except if we can’t trust others, then how can we trust God? We can’t. So we don’t really bear good fruit. We just try to hedge and bargain our way out of disaster. And we fear what might happen when God lets the other shoe drop. So John tells us the ugly truth. “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree that doesn’t bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

But the good news is that John says something else. “One more powerful than me is coming. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Of course, he’s talking about Jesus our Emmanuel. “God with us.” The one who made himself vulnerable in ways we can’t even imagine. He experienced all the suffering and death that we fear more than anything else, and yet he was raised in the glory of resurrection. Our hope even when all our hope seems lost. Because he comes to us in our regret and fear. He pierces our defenses and false fronts because he will have exactly what he wants, and nothing in heaven or earth will ever separate us from his love. And once he gets us, he holds us fast and will not let go. There is no bargaining with Jesus.

This is why John prophesies, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Because John’s telling the truth about our life of faith. Jesus’ kind of love humbles us so that we could know the joy of showing compassion to our neighbors in their own suffering. Because we know what that feels like and we what them to have better than that. His kind of love loosens our grip on pride and possessions so that we could know the joy of generosity and sharing. Because we know what a gift feels like, and what we want more than anything is for others to feel that too.

Because of Jesus’ love, we can know that everything utterly depends upon God and be unafraid of what our good and gracious Father has in store for all of us. But let’s be honest. Sometimes it can sure feel like wrath. Disasters still happen. Ask our neighbors in Kentucky and Illinois and other states in the aftermath of savage tornadoes this weekend. We don’t flee wrath. We’re drawn to it because that’s where our neighbors need us to abide with then. Because we don’t want them to feel alone. And because we know God will send them back to abide with us in our own wreckage. This is the fruit of repentance that the Spirit has planted in our hearts. And it’s sweet.