Advent Three (Revised Common Lectionary) | 12.15.24 | Luke 3.7-18 | Pr. Carl A. Voges |

The Passage

He (John) said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.  And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’  For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.  Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.  Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

And the crowds asked him, “What then shall we do?  And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.”  Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?”  And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  So with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people.

     [English Standard Version; © 2001 by Crossway Bibles]

“The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.“

    [Philippians 4.5b-6]

  In the Name of Christ + Jesus Our Lord

Hassled by the rush and crush of December’s four weeks, the Lord’s baptized people may be startled by today’s Gospel, especially with its last sentence – “with many other exhortations John preached good news to the people!”  For, as we step into the passage, it appears that its message is only adding to the rush and crush we are already experiencing.  So let’s see if that is really what is going to happen!

Much of this Gospel is hard and fierce.  We’re seriously tempted to wave it off!  It appears that this passage will only add to the hassle we are already experiencing in these December weeks.  As we plunge into it, however, we are going to see how it enables the Lord’s baptized people to get ready for the Father’s and the Spirit’s Incarnation of the Son on 25 December.

Thankfully, during Advent’s four weeks, while the world clamors for us to pay attention to its life, the Holy Trinity is pushing in on us from their Scriptures and Sacraments, enlarging our focus on the approaching Incarnation of the Son.  The world is always prompting us to change God, to fit his Life into our own.  The reality is that God changes us and he does that by calling his people to a long and deep repentance.  Everyone is free to continue doing things their way, but all people are then responsible for the consequences of such doing, a doing which stirs up the Lord’s wrath.

Today Gospel’s focuses on the reality of the Lord’s wrath and of the Son as they range behind John the Baptizer’s ministry.  As we step into the passage, we should notice two things.  First, the crowds coming to hear John were practicing Jews, much like practicing Christians today.  Second, even though Baptism marked us as the Lord’s daughters and sons, through the world’s birth we have been marked (until we die) to be continually wrapped up with ourselves.

Last Sunday we saw John the Baptizer calling on people to have their lives reconstructed

as Lord’s holy places churn into their lives.  Today we see what goes on in this reconstruction – it is a collision, one that takes our lives away and then restores them!

As the crowds surge out to John for his baptism of repentance, he wheels on them harshly, “You brood of vipers!”  Does the image of snakes reflect our native ability to sneak into and slither around the matters of our lives, and is it reflecting Genesis 3 where Satan is shown as a snake, cajoling and persuading the man and woman to let their lives be wrapped up in themselves?

John goes on, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”  This wrath is the Lord’s, it spills into our lives as his Scriptures and the Sacraments of Baptism, Forgiveness and Eucharist enter them!  John urges his listeners to carry out actions that reflect their repentance (recalling how fruit grows, from the inside out).

He reminds them to not say to themselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor!”  We love to fall back onto the traditions we have created or the families from whom we have emerged!  He goes on, “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham,” (stones mind you, not from selected men and women!)

John goes on, “Even now the axe is lying at the root of trees” (the position of the axe signals this is highly serious work!)  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire; if there is no life or growth, then the tree is done and gone!

What the Baptizer is telling us in the first paragraph is that our problem is the Lord’s attitude towards us, not our attitude toward him!  The wrath of God rolls in on us with unbelievably ferocity because he is wearied of all our self-absorbed attempts to surface some good in our lives and then have the nerve to think it pleases him or that it will change him!  Because we are so persistent about such attempts, the Lord makes our problems even worse; he, working out of his compassion and mercy, is trying to break through such stubbornness!

When that happens, we get angry with the Lord, we may even hate him, we do not want

him to be involved in these collisions with him!  So he cuts us down and throws us into a fire that never goes out.  He leaves us gasping for life, he leaves us broken down!

The second paragraph shows the crowds asking John, “What then should we do?”  John responds with three differing examples – sharing of coats and food, collecting of taxes, no uses of threat or accusation (all these examples reflect the natural drive for ourselves).  Such examples remind us that fruit grows from the inside out and that we ask the Lord to have us stop grasping for ourselves, the attitude given us by birth into this world.  Birthed by this world to be concerned only for ourselves, we will not carry the Lord’s actions out willingly or easily – his actions cut into our native self-assertions and we don’t like that!

John’s response with these examples points us to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the One who breaks the hold that self-absorption has on us.

Luke notes that the people coming to see John are filled with expectations: their country is occupied by the Roman Empire, there is a strong desire to be freed of that reality and to be self-governing again.  They also are questioning in their hearts and minds whether or not John may be the Messiah.  Their expectations are shaped by what they think needs to be done so their lives can get better.

John answers their expectations and questions by saying, “I baptize you with water; but One who is more powerful than I is coming.” John is pointing to the Lord who will be crucified and resurrected for his people.  He comments that he is “not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.”  The two men are not on the same level.

John states that the Lord “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”  In the Greek, the literal translation of the Lord’s push is withering and consuming. It is a fire that makes holy!

He goes on to describe how the Son will go about his restoring work.  John uses agricultural language to describe how wheat is harvested.  In the harvesting, it is struck, beaten or crushed to loosen the grain from its husk.  Winnowing, with a basket or a fork, throws the mixture into the air.  The wind blows the lighter chaff away, the heavier grain falls to the floor (in modern farming today this work is done by a combine).

The Son’s restoring work separates those who are trying to save themselves from those who recognize they can be saved only by him.  Those attempting to save themselves will be consumed by him!  The passage then closes with its last sentence, “with many other exhortations, John proclaimed good news to people!”

As John points to Jesus, describing his activity that saves us, it is very clear that the Lord is saving us, not just from bad behavior or from bad attitudes, but from the world’s arrogant, self-centered and destructive life.  The Father, along with the Spirit and the Son, are raging into our lives so we can be pulled away from the life given us at birth!

So the Lord baptizes us with his Spirit and fire, marking us as his own daughters and sons, saving us from the anger and wrath of the LORD God!  This is the collision, then, between the world’s life and the Life of Baptism.  It reminds us that the baptismal Life is primary – there we were actually drawn into the Life of the Holy Trinity!  This means that realities of the world’s life are secondary.  The realities of Baptism center, sustain and steady our entire lives, carrying us through the rush and crush of these December weeks.

The realities of this collision between the Lord’s Life and the world explain why we often come into the Lord’s presence weekend after weekend with so many things on our minds that we barely know who we are or where we are headed. These things include –  dispiritedness about the illness that is gripping a friend; wondering if national, state and local politics in this country can rise to higher levels; anxious about the Church’s ministry and the parishes which ignore the Lord’s guidance; worry about a friend who is dangerously self-absorbed; dismay over the people who walk away from their Baptisms; shuddering at the ignorance and vulgarity which pervade this culture’s life.

The world’s life is always insisting that it comes first, that everything is about me, myself and I.  Such an emphasis, though, is what generates the rush and crush of December’s weeks.  The Lord’s baptized people, on the other hand, get relief in these weeks by remembering that it is the realities of their Baptisms which come first.  Thus, when we see our lives colliding with the Lord’s holy places on a weekly basis, we are grateful.  We recognize it is the Lord’s way of preparing us for the full impact of the Son’s Incarnation on 25 December.  Let these Advent weeks, then, with their collisions wrap themselves fully around our lives!

Now may the peace of the LORD God, which is beyond all understanding, keep our

   hearts and minds through Christ + Jesus Our Lord

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Pr. Carl A. Voges, STS, Columbia, SC; carl.voges4@icloud.com