Göttinger Predigten
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3. Sunday of Advent, 12/16/2012
Sermon on Luke 3:7-18, by Samuel D. Zumwalt
7 He 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? 8 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. 9 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." 10 And the crowds asked him, "What then shall we do?" 11 And he answered them, "Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise." 12 Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, "Teacher, what shall we do?" 13 And he said to them, "Collect no more than you are authorized to do." 14 Soldiers also asked him, "And we, 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." 15 As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, 16 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 fire. 17 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." 18 So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people.
[Thanks this week to concordiatheology.org, workingpreacher.org, Reginald Fuller's Preaching the Lectionary, and Darrell Bock's NIV Application Commentary on Luke.]
THE FRUITS OF REPENTANCE
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
You can tell John the Baptist isn't a parish pastor hoping to engage and keep his audience. He doesn't begin his sermon with warm greetings, a prayer, or a joke. John doesn't try to connect with his hearers like a salesman or a motivational speaker. John doesn't even begin with a "Thank you for coming out to the riverside to hear me." John begins preparing the way of the Lord how? "You brood of vipers! (Eugene Peterson: "...slithering down to the river") Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?"
If John the Baptist were a first year seminarian taking a preaching class, his professor and classmates would say: "Whoa! You can't talk to a congregation like that!" If John the Baptist were training as a mission developer, his mentors and colleagues would say: "Man, you are going to be such a failure as an evangelist. No one will ever join your congregation if you talk to them like that!" In fact, there's a very good chance that John the Baptist would hear from his candidacy committee: "John, we're going to recommend that you take a few counseling sessions and perhaps reconsider whether God is calling you to be a pastor. Frankly, we just can't be supportive of your candidacy at this point. You have too many anger issues. We hope you will take this as constructive criticism. We're just speaking the truth in love."
John makes me think of one my favorite movie characters Ouiser Boudreaux in "Steel Magnolias" (1989) played by Shirley MacLaine. I suppose I like Ouiser because she reminds me of a few moneyed, misanthropic women I knew in the little town in northeast Texas where I was raised. Among my favorite lines from Ouiser is: "I'm not crazy, I've just been in a very bad mood 40 years!"
Living out there in the wilderness wearing rough clothes and eating locusts and wild honey (Mark's description in chapter 1), we can't say John is moneyed. Is he misanthropic? Does he dislike people? Is he crazy? Or just in a bad mood?
It helps to remember the introduction to this scene that we had last week in Luke 3:1-6 where John the Baptist was described using words from Isaiah 40: "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." We remembered that the prophetic voice had been silent for several centuries and the ears of God's people untrained to hear that voice. John is so inhabited by the Spirit of God (perhaps we should say "possessed"), like Jeremiah, he cannot keep the Word bottled up. It explodes with a passion not found in synagogues, then, or in the prescribed rites of the Jerusalem Temple. Doubtless that is why people came out to hear and see John: "You've got to see it yourself. This guy is on fire!"
John's attack on cultural religion ("we are children of Abraham") is no less relevant today when hundreds of thousands of baptized people inhabit church rolls but do not keep the Christian faith. In America, almost as many people claim "none" for their religious preference as actually worship on any given week (about 17% compared to about 20%). What does it profit a person to be listed in a membership directory?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes the same attack 1900 years later: "Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate" (from "The Cost of Discipleship").
John reminds them that God knows what is in the heart of every person. We are born in rebellion against God. We are dead in our trespasses. The old Adam or Eve in us can and does resist mightily the daily dying that God's Baptism requires. Eugene Peterson dynamically translates: "Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to deflect God's judgment? It's your life that must change, not your skin" (The Message). Our old Adam or Eve must die daily through repentance, or it's not repentance. Bearing fruit in keeping with repentance is more than building an obituary (one's terminal CV).
Now to address one insipid criticism of biblical preaching: Could John have done more by creating an event for his hearers? Might John have told a really engaging story where people were moved to be a little kinder, a little more generous, or a little more inclusive in this great cultural melting pot where we all live and move and have our being? Could John have inspired people to prop up God, Incorporated, by doing God's work with our hands? Perhaps a patient professor might have shown John how to be more gracious and less judgmental? Maybe John could be taught to say to the walking dead, "My, what lovely corpses you are! Here let me help you feel better about dying in sin!"
No, John prepares the way for the Lord by letting his hearers know exactly where they stand before God. Paul ups the ante: "Who will deliver me from this body of death?"
THE PROMISE OF JOY
One former parishioner hated any mention of the cross at Christmas as if the incarnation of God's Son were for any other purpose. He also scrupulously avoided Good Friday as if Easter were joyful for any other reason. The old Adam clings to cheap grace.
We Christians want to point to how very different the earthly Jesus is from John's apocalyptic vision when he appears at Jordan's stream for Baptism. We take great comfort from His role in Luke as "friend of sinners" even when He is dying on the cross next to two thieves. Yet, we ignore at our peril the entire book of Acts where the big extravaganza of Pentecost gives way to hardship, peril, persecution, and death for those that are baptized into the Lord's death and resurrection. The Lord will come to judge the living and the dead. The cheap grace of cultural Christianity will not save us.
The third candle on the Advent wreath was formerly always pink to signify that this was "Gaudete" (Rejoice) Sunday. The name was taken from the Philippians epistle, encouragement written by Paul while imprisoned for the sake of the Lord of the Gospel.
Thomas Merton wrote that we are created for joy, but joy is always occasional and, as C.S. Lewis wrote, surprising when it comes in this life. We cannot bear intense joy here even though we yearn for it amidst our sojourn as the walking dead. We settle for the cheap high of manufactured pleasure, but we cannot escape the cross and grave. Eugene Peterson translates: "...everything false he'll put out with the trash to be burned." Only the promise of joy, only the promise of healing, only the promise of redemption can sustain us when the cheap grace we bestow on ourselves gets mugged by reality. John warns us of this on his way to be beheaded for his faithfulness, but can we hear him now?
What do God's beloved daughters and sons, buried and raised with Christ today in Baptism, do while awaiting the fulfillment of joy? Like John's hearers, we have miles to go before we sleep. We have clothing and food to share with the needy. We have promises to keep to families, communities, and churches in whatever lands we walk. Along the way, we bear the holy cross, because it has been marked upon us in Baptism.
Jesus, the Living Bread from heaven, sustains us along our pilgrim journey with the gift of His own Body and Blood promising again that He will raise us from the dead at the last. His rescue is coming. We wait with the promise of joy...not with dread!
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.