John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore, bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
John 3:7-18
And the crowds asked him, “What, then, should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”
As the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 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.”
So with many other exhortations he proclaimed the good news to the people.
My sermon from Third Sunday of Advent (December 12, 2021) on Luke 3:7-18.
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A few days after Thanksgiving, a strange knocking was heard throughout Allen Dale Elementary School in Oregon. It didn’t sound like the normal kind of knocking; rather, it was more like a peck. There’d be a peck at the door of one classroom and then, a moment later, a peck at the window of another. At first, no one knew what was going on but then someone saw what was making the noise. There was a crow going from classroom to classroom, knocking and pecking and peering through the windows. Now if you’ve ever been an elementary school student or a teacher, you know a crow knocking on the window is going to disrupt your entire day. There’s something very Edgar Allen Poe-ish about a crow systematically checking out each classroom. I’m pretty sure the school didn’t have a plan on how to deal with a crow knocking on the window so they called the state police and a wildlife officer came out. They noticed the crow wasn’t being very aggressive and it was being kind to the kids. It gently landed on their heads and, since crows can learn words like a parrot can, it asked them “what’s up?” The crow also knew a lot of swear words which made it even more endearing to the children. The whole experience was very fun, very weird and very disruptive. And no one ever in that school expected to find themselves in a kinder version of Poe’s poem The Raven. Yet the weirdness made them feel as if the the bird was searching for something. And that energy – including the breaking of expectations and the longing for something different – is, I think, present in our reading centered on John the Baptist. He, like the crow, was a bit wild but he wasn’t, I think, the unexpected part of the story. Instead, what’s really strange is why certain kinds of people with certain kinds of power were asking him: “what should we do?”
Now during this season when our wider community is busy counting down to Christmas, the church is busy living into Christmas’ future. Today’s reading from the gospel according to Luke takes place roughly 30 years after Jesus’ birth when a man named John was preaching in the wilderness. Unlike our popular imagination today, the Bible doesn’t treat the wilderness as a pristine place meant to be some kind of national park. The wilderness, instead, is a place full of unexpected things we can’t control. And that’s where John decided to make his home. To us, that might seem odd because we usually don’t plant roots in a place full of the unexpected. But 2000 years ago, the wilderness was exactly the place where prophets were expected to live. A prophet was a person who had encountered the divine and was given a message to share. Sometimes a prophet was a royal official, serving as an advisor to the king. Yet most of the words of prophets recorded in our Bible come from folks the authorities didn’t like. These prophets lived on the margins and told those in power that they had failed to take care of the most vulnerable among them. These prophets felt compelled to afflict those who were comfortable and bring comfort to the afflicted. That’s why so many prophets ended up in prison. By the time of Jesus, people had certain expectations for what a prophet looked like and what they did. And when they heard that John was out in an untamed place with untamed hair eating bugs and saying things King Herod didn’t like – that fit into everyone one of their preconceived notions about what a messenger from God was all about. People expected John the Baptist to be exactly who he was. He fit into every culturally defined bucket of a prophet that they had. And so when he started name calling, people knew that was just part of his job. Yet what I find to be most surprising about this whole story is that the tax collectors and soldiers listened to his words. Both those groups were expected to live their lives in certain ways. Tax collectors made their living by taking more money than the government requested. The government used contractors to collect the money and those contractors were allowed to charge more than the government wanted. Soldiers were empowered by the state to use violence and the threat of violence to keep their employers in charge. Soldiers often weren’t paid well on purpose. When they took money from the people near their base, the local populace disliked them and that made them even more loyal to whoever employed them. Both groups lived within a system that encouraged folks to take advantage of the other. And in the world they called home, that was seen as the only way to live.
Now we never actually learn why the tax collectors listened to John nor do we see the soldiers following his commands. All we hear is the word of God meant for them. And instead of telling them to worship God in a certain place or to say the right kind of prayers or to look at all the excess their extortion had earned them and give a bit of it away – John invited them to step into a new kind of life that would be willing to give half of everything they had so that others could thrive. That’s a very wacky thing for John to say especially to those empowered to take things from others. If the tax collector or the soldier changed how they lived, they would no longer fit into their world’s expectations. That would make them dangerous to the system that required them to operate in a certain way. And once they chose to no longer make their home in that kind of system, they would invite everyone to examine how they’ve been empowered culturally or politically or financially to impose their wills on others. That kind of work requires us to see the world as it truly is while also using our imagination to see what the world could actually be. To do that well, we need to rethink, reevaluate, and revisit the expectations at the heart of who we are. That sounds pretty daunting but Jesus knows we can do that. You, through your baptism and your faith, are already rooted in the One who came to give life to our world. Jesus’ very presence gives us a series of new expectations for what life can be. And instead of asking others to do our will, we get to unpack what it means that Jesus’s first bed on earth was a manger and that he was killed via the method the Romans reserved for those who challenged the status quo. It takes a bit of time and effort and lots of prayer to unpack a tiny bit of what that might mean. Yet when we do that, we begin to create a new home in this world that believes God’s kingdom has come near.
Now the crow I talked about at the beginning of this sermon was different because they had been rescued when they were very young and raised by a person. It’s presence among the human community changed how it lived in the world. But not everyone was thrilled with a foul-mouthed crow hanging around the neighborhood. So, over thanksgiving, someone took the bird and donated it to an animal sanctuary. The sanctuary took it in but the crow knew that wasn’t their home. It got out as soon as it could and flew around the neighborhood. As luck would have it, it recognized a kid their human knew. The crow followed them to school and started pecking on doors to get their attention. The crow was looking for it’s home – that place where it was loved. And maybe that’s what John’s words were all about. He invited those with power to create a new home outside of the expectations of the world. They didn’t need to use violence to gain their sense of security. They could reexamine everything and live in such a way that love, rather than fear, would carry them through. John’s invitation to those tax collectors is also an invitation to us. You are already loved and valued and because of Christ, you’re already home. You get to see the world differently and not be limited by the expectations the world places on you. Instead, you get to proclaim that the expectation of living in, with, and sharing God’s love can be everything that this world needs.
Amen.