The Third Sunday in Advent, 12/16/2018

Sermon on Luke 3:7-18, by Hubert Beck

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? 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, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” 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.”

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.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version,

A BREATH OF EXPECTATION

It simply was in the air that these people of Judea breathed . . . a sensing that something big was about to happen. Luke described it in the simple phrase that leaps out at us from the text under consideration on this day: “As the people were in expectation. . . .”

Exactly what were they expecting? we might ask – and it is difficult to define this expectation precisely. Luke tells us that “all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ,” so that gives us a hint as to what they were expecting. It is rather apparent that they were expecting someone (John being a top candidate of the moment) or something – (a thing that only God could cause to happen) who / that would free them from a captivity under which they were sorely chafing. Since Rome was the force holding Israel captive, the people were probably hoping for / expecting some champion to lead the way out from Roman occupation that all the Israelites longed for. At least that puts the who and the what of their expectations together. How they longed for a day like that!

They are such poignant words, though, these words telling of “a people who were in expectation” – words that somehow ring true in the atmosphere we breathe today. Who does not long for – even expect! – the time when this chaotic world might regain some political stability? Who does not pray for a peace in which conflict ceases, a time when tensions and strains that keep the whole world on edge day after day might come to an end? We, too, could be described as “a people in expectation.” At least we are distant cousins to the people spoken of in the text.

So we resonate with the text quite strongly, looking for / hoping for / even expecting an Advent – a “coming to us” of something / someone who can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

A HOPE WAITING TO BE FULFILLED

It was at a time like that when a man – a strange man, to be sure – appeared on the scene with words of hope that the expectation of a nation waiting for a freeing agent would soon have their hopes and expectations satisfied. “The word of God came to John the son of Zechariah” in the wilderness, we are told. It was to him who was capturing the hopes and dreams of the nation that the people ventured out into that wasteland to hear what he had to say – then tying themselves to those hopes and dreams through a baptism he offered near the Jordan River.

That baptism of hope was not offered without a cautionary word, however. Luke gives us the nucleus of that warning, sometimes in such harsh terms that one would think it would have driven people away from him rather than drawing them near to him in order to hear what he had to say about these hopes they harbored in their hearts. What he said was a mixture of admonitions, hopes, warnings, wonderings, expectations, and other such “advance notices,” all of which are gathered together in this single text that makes up the Gospel for the day!

FIRST OF ALL A WARNING

What would have stood out for you if you had been there before John the Baptizer as he spoke the words we hear from his lips today? He didn’t hesitate to speak his warnings clearly: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

You may have thought that he was speaking to some of the religious authorities who had a reputation for their failures to measure up to or carry out the responsibilities they carried with their positions if you had heard him speaking of this “wrath to come.”

But there is no sign in the text that there were any religious authorities in those crowds gathered before John. Most of those in the “crowds that came out to be baptized by him” would very likely have questioned (as would we, to be sure) whether they were truly “a brood of vipers” upon whom the wrath of God was about to be visited.

The text is pretty clear that he was preaching to “the people,” to Mr. and Mrs. Everyone and Anyone mixed together in a variety of ways making up “crowds of people.” That is how those before John are described in the text. Those who were called a “brood of vipers” were just ordinary everyday kinds of people so far as the text is concerned!

What kind of “wrath to come” was in store for Mr. and Mrs. Everybody, then? They knew that neither they nor Israel as a whole had measured up very well to what God expected, but was this “wrath to come” a punishment for that which was so common among them all? Would that have created a horribly great fear in those whose everyday lives were no better – nor any worse – than generations before them – a great enough fear, in fact, that they could ward off this “wrath to come” by some unidentified change of living? Would John’s words have generated any more fear in the lives of those gathered before him than someone on the street corner of today would raise in any of us in our time if we should encounter a modern-day John on that street corner tomorrow?

That is the kind of question this text raises for us as we read and hear it today. So we must ask what these words must have meant for those who heard them “with expectation” for the very first time.

ANOTHER QUESTION

But John wasn’t through “mystifying” his hearers, for when he warned them against that “wrath to come” he urged them to “bear fruits in keeping with repentance.” One wonders just what kind of “fruits” John had in mind, for he made it clear that they could not simply fall back on some kind of empty insistence that they were already special by virtue of an inheritance of some sort. Their “inheritance from Abraham” was fine, but they could not – dared not – “begin to say to themselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’” Human heritage did not give them, nor does it give us, a favored place before God, for he could raise his own generations any time he pleased with the mere expression of his word.

John wanted “fruits in keeping with repentance” from the generation in front of him. Without such “fruits” God was ready to cut down the tree of their heritage, casting it away into a fire of judgment in favor of a more respectful and dutiful people.

So if the “wrath to come” was to be avoided, John said, they must turn from sinful and separating ways in order to seek and pursue the way of the Lord – which was “the bearing of good fruit.”

That seemed to be a reasonable instruction of some sort, but still the crowds wanted a more precise delineation concerning what those “fruits” might be – what they would look like. It was just like us when we want a commandment like “Do not bear false witness against your neighbor” to be sketched out in more detail to make it fully understandable. So they also wanted a clearer statement of what those fruits might be. I.e., put meat on those bones! So they asked for such. We can understand that need and that question, can we not?

THE FRUITS

Since John was so fervent in insisting that these “fruits” must come forth from this tree of Israel, they very likely expected John’s explication of those “fruits” to be works of an extraordinary sort – works such as leading the rebellion that many of those gathered before him expected; or works involving great bravery in behalf of God in the face of harshly dangerous situations; or the complete disposition of all their earthly goods; or giving themselves over to a totally ascetic life of the kind John was following.

That may have been (and may even be among some supposedly “godly” people in our own day) what they expected to hear. Some of them may even have been ready to give themselves over to such extraordinarily extreme works designed to please God in some special way.

But how would that or anything like that have met the “expectations” of those who “were questioning in their hearts” concerning the more mundane response given by the man standing before them – a man named John?

For instead of any such extreme measures he urged them to faithfully carry out the role and work to which they were being called – places like tax collectors being called to honesty in their dealings; soldiers carrying out their tasks in a civil fashion; – and even, in some cases, people blessed with means beyond their needs, being highly charitable toward people who were in considerable need, “sharing with him who has none,” – and doing the same with other needs.

What a surprise! It undoubtedly came in the face of a society and culture in which few of those kinds of everyday responsibilities were being seriously carried out in any conscientious fashion. But we must wonder if we, too, do not live in a society caught up (perhaps unintentionally but nevertheless very really) into a culture of “me-ism” and “it’s mine” and “leave me alone-ism”; a culture satisfied with giving only token assistance to those whose lives have been burdened by birth or misfortune in such a way that they must call on others to give them a helping hand. We must ask if we need to hear John’s admonitions and instructions in our own day with a more serious ear, heart, and intention than we think we do.

THE EXPECTATION THEY AND WE WERE / ARE ALL WAITING FOR

“As the people were in expectation . . . John answered them all” by denying his role in these expectations as nothing more than an advance messenger of him for whom they – and all the restless, agitated, edgy world of then and now – were waiting for with expectation. “He who is mightier than I is coming. . . . He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” He would come with fire burning away the misery of sin, washing the cleansed person with the waters of baptism through which the new life of the Holy Spirit would be given birth. John promised that in the name of the God who had given him that word – and God acted in accord with his word!

He who was coming would – and did when he came! -- fulfill all the hopes and expectations of people of all time and places with new prospects in the midst of despair, with comfort in the midst of hopelessness, and with joy in the place of sadness. He who was to come after John’s message of good news in the midst of all the bad news that was permeating the air and atmosphere of the world of his day (as well as our own day!) would refresh the air; stimulate and invigorate lives that were lamenting the musty decay of the world in which they were living; and revitalizing the lives of all who were feeling the closing in of sin and death in the atmosphere prevailing in Israel – and the world around them – and our own world! – before him who was to come had arrived.

We, too, feel often and frequently the deadening effect of a noxious atmosphere in the world that tends to stifle our fondest hopes, deadening the bliss of the presence of a loving, saving and tender-hearted God. It cannot be denied that we, like the people of John’s time, feel these overpowering odors of a world where death closes in all around us.

It is, therefore, essential that we breathe deeply of the word of life, feed on the body and blood of him concerning whom John gave witness, and rejoice in the hope that has come with his arrival.

WAITING WITH EXPECTATION

These words of John’s hope, anticipation and expectation roused the people around him to a new expectancy in such a way that their waiting was renewed with confidence.

May the one who followed John, whose life, suffering, death, resurrection and session at the right hand of the Father, has become the hope of a world burdened with sin and death, be for us, also, the certainty that sin and death are not the last word in spite of all their “signs” of conquest by means of ambulances, funeral homes, and hearses with which we are so well acquainted.

For us, as for them, we say, in the words Luke provides for us, “good news is being preached to the people with many other exhortations.” We, like those to whom John preached this good news, live with a constant breath of expectation, waiting, waiting, waiting, yet always sure of who is coming because the Father sent him and has promised to send him still again!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Ordained but retired Lutheran pastor Hubert Beck
Austin, Texas, USA
E-Mail: hbeck@austin.rr.com

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