Advent III
Luke 3:7-18
+ In the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
This summer saw the release of a movie called Snakes on a Plane. Snakes on a Plane is perhaps one of the best bad movies of all time, a true tour de force of mediocre story telling, abominable dialog, and ridiculous situations. That being said, the star of the film, Samuel L. Jackson, delivers one of the summer's signature, if unmentionable lines: “I have had it with these blankety-blank snakes on this blankety-blank plane!” Upon hearing that line, we can safely assume that Samuel L. Jackson has, in fact, had it with the snakes. I can't help thinking that John the Baptist felt the same way about the snakes that surrounded him on all sides. “O generation of vipers,” he calls them. John the Baptist may well have been tired of those snakelike people, but he was at least kind enough to tell them what was coming. “Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” The Baptist knew what and Who was coming, knew that Kingdom of God was upon them, and he knew what the snakes must do to avoid the wrath, avoid the wrath and embrace the Kingdom. “Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance,” he tells them, “fruits worthy of repentance.”
John the Baptist was an interesting fellow. We know his story, know how he was set apart even before his conception to be the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, the one to prepare the way for the Lord. We can picture his mother Elizabeth being greeted by her cousin Mary, both of them pregnant under strange circumstances, both carrying very special children, John leaping for joy in Elizabeth's womb. We can picture the Baptist in the wilderness, clothed in camel's hair, a strap of leather around his waist, eating not bread and wine but locusts and wild honey. We can picture him wading in the Jordan River, lowering the contrite, one by one, below the surface of the shallow water, and we can picture him baptizing the One whose sandals he was not worthy to untie, the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire. This very One, Jesus of Nazareth, declared John to be the greatest among those born of a woman, but not unlike the prophets before him, the Baptist suffered and died for the message he proclaimed. Yes, we can picture the head of John the Baptist on a platter, the victim of the whims of dancing girl and her scheming mother Herodias.
John's story is romantic in its way, and we fall victim to the romance of the one crying out in the wilderness, and we silence him just as Herodias did. We find it easier to paint portraits of John as a harmless, misunderstood hermit who liked to dunk people in a river, certainly I do. The more difficult path, for those of his day and we here now, is to understand John, to see him for who he was, as a man not misunderstood but dangerously understood. John was not terribly adept at holding his tongue, and he said things that made him unacceptable in polite company, as if the loincloth and locusts thing wasn't bad enough. Like Elijah before him, here was John the Baptist speaking with the voice of God, calling to the people yet again, with yet another message the people did not wish to here. A baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. A baptism of repentance for deliverance from the wrath to come. A baptism of repentance that frees the baptized to bear fruits worthy of that same repentance.
Saint Luke understood John the Baptist. The portrait painted for us this morning is an image of sharp contrasts, John standing as the last of God's prophets, the brood of vipers standing opposed, opposed but listening. Yes, John is judging the vipers, but not simply to judge. He loves even the vipers, and he cries out for them to change, cries out for them to make ready for the One who is coming, the One who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. There is no romance here, no misunderstandings, no harmless hermits, just John exposing the people for what they were, a generation of vipers, stuck in a pit, a pit they have grown comfortable inhabiting. I'm reminded of a Bullwinkle episode in which Bullwinkle finds out that he is the sole heir to a fabulous family estate, but there's a catch. Rocky the Squirrel tells him, “Bullwinkle, it says here that for you to inherit the fortune, you have to spend the weekend in the ancestral home; Abominable Manor.” Unfazed, Bullwinkle tells Rocky “That's no problem. I've been living in an abominable manner all my life.” I realize that I now have moose, squirrels, and snakes in the same sermon, but I promise this is going somewhere. The snakelike people to whom John The Baptist is speaking have been living in an abominable manner, whether they have meant to or not, and John offers them the chance to climb out of the pit they have been living in, the chance to make ready for the coming of the Messiah.
John the Baptist offers us the same chance, and the prescription is the same. Repent, and bear fruits worthy of repentance. Get ready for the coming of the Kingdom. Look at what is wrong in life, acknowledge that we are as scaly as the vipers standing in front of John, and open ourselves up to the possibility that things can be better, life can be better. John was the herald of the time when the scales that envelop us, the hard skin that covers our hearts, can be shed, the time when we can be changed, even transformed. That time has come, and in the words of John himself we do indeed “behold the Lamb of God,” we behold this Jesus who washes off our scales and frees us from the pit.
“What then shall we do,” the crowds asked John, and we do well to echo that crowd, “What then shall we do?” John's answer to the crowd is his answer to us even today, “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise. John says this to our shame, at least to mine. I have two coats, in fact I have four, none of which are keeping anyone warm but me, and I can feel the scales beginning to itch just a little bit. “What then shall we do?” Well, in many ways we already do it. The people of the this parish bear fruits all over the city and beyond, at N Street Village, and Christ House...blood drive, etc..., and new ways to show the fruits of our repentance are upon us. A few blocks away the Church of the Epiphany runs what they call the Welcome Table, where on Sundays, when most other services are closed, the hungry and homeless can go for worship, food, and counseling. The program almost always has enough food to feed the 200 hungry men, women, and children who gather there, but not surprisingly, they often come up short on the less than glamorous items, things like bus tokens, metro cards, gift certificates to Payless Shoe Store, things we don't think twice about but can make the difference to a man who needs boots so he can stay at work, or a women who needs the bus to get to a job interview. We can help fill those gaps. No, bus tokens and shoe store gift certificates are not glamorous, but they can make the difference to a person on the brink, the difference between a warm bed and another night on cold granite steps. For us they can be the difference between a life of scaliness and a life transformed, between a life of isolation from God and our neighbor and a life focused outward, the difference between beholding only ourselves and beholding the Lamb of God. What then shall we do? Bear fruits worthy of repentance.
+ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen
© 2006 J. Matthew Tucker
