Luke 3:7-18
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? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” “What should we do then?” the crowd asked. John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.” The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. 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 barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.
Having jumped about in Luke a bit for the past two weeks, today we pick up from where we left off. Last week we heard that John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. We noted that repentance is a change of mind and direction, and I suggested that baptism both assures the one that is baptised that they are forgiven, and urges them on to forgive others as part of their turning to focus on God. This week we learn that this baptism was just the start of what John was calling the people to. Perhaps that’s no surprise to those of you who have been baptised, perhaps you know for yourselves the ways in which it not only affirms but affects our faith.
I can’t really do a second week on John the Baptist without talking more about baptism, especially not as a Baptist minister preaching in a Baptist church. Different understandings of baptism have of course developed over the course of church history, but Baptists believe it should be chosen by and meaningful for the person being baptised, which is why we practice believers baptism rather than infant baptism. It is a way of affirming a commitment to the life of faith within a community of faith. It marks a new start, which can be particularly significant for those who have come to faith later in life, with the water symbolic of being washed or reborn. And it is an intentional opening and giving of the self to God. I was baptised as a baby, and that was hugely important for my family as it is what led my parents to worship regularly and make their own commitments, so I would never say that my first baptism was wrong. I am however glad that I also chose baptism by full immersion for myself in my twenties, as it was a powerful and transformative experience. If baptism is something you have wondered about for yourself, I wholeheartedly encourage you to consider it and I would love to talk to you about it.
But for now let’s get stuck into this week’s passage and the rest of John’s message. Perhaps the first thing to say is that John’s message is harsh. I’m not sure how you would respond if I started a sermon by calling you a brood of vipers, but I do wonder if I might see slightly fewer of you the following week. It’s clearly not intended kindly, something which only becomes clearer when we realise that it used to be thought that baby vipers would eat their way out of their mother. And not only are the crowds compared to cannibalistic snakes fleeing danger, but they are also told that it is not enough to say that they are children of Abraham. It is important to say here that the children of Abraham are not dismissed or replaced - this isn’t about throwing over the people of Israel, and it should certainly not be used as criticism or rejection of Jewish people today - but rather it is the case that more than their lineage is needed and others may also enter into that lineage. John is widening rather than shifting the goalposts. He's perhaps also engaging in some shock tactics, trying to make his listeners sit up and really pay attention, giving them the jolt we all need from time to time, but I think the main point of this rather brutal opening is that John sees the crowds as having become complacent but now running scared. They know that all is not as it should be and they are desperate to know how to save themselves.
That desperation is echoed in the fact that John’s message is urgent. He warns that “the axe is at the root of the tree” and the one who follows “will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire”. It sounds like a reckoning is coming soon, and it all sounds pretty damning, and yet the final verse of the passage we have heard this morning tells us that John “exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news”. The implication then is that somehow this is good news. It reminds me of a conversation I had with Edward recently. We have been using the Jesse tree this advent, hearing a different part of the biblical story each morning, starting right back at Genesis. After we read the story of Cain and Abel, I asked him what he thought of it and he said it was good. I asked why he thought it was good, and he told me it was because it told us not to hurt people. Bad things happen but it’s a good story because it can make us better. Destructive things are envisioned in these verses but what if they are not meant to hurt us but to make us better? What if these verses are not about people being thrown into eternal fire, as they are so often read, but about all the things that do us harm being pruned back and burned here and now? What if the trees that are going to be cut down are the structures and systems that keep people in poverty and oppression? What if the chaff that will be burned up is all of our prejudices and divisions? Hold those thoughts, because we’ll come back to them.
The third thing I want to say is that John’s message is concrete. He tells the crowds “give away your surplus, don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t lie”. These are real actions that they can go away and do immediately. He is quite serious about the need to “produce fruit in keeping with repentance”. Because John was a prophet, it can be tempting to think that this was a fresh word from God, but actually this was the law of the Hebrew scriptures, and honestly it's pretty obvious stuff. John isn't proposing some radical new generosity, but calling the people back to what they have already been taught and should already know. The fact that they feel the need to ask him what they must do suggests they’ve been trying to get off the hook or pretend it’s harder than it is. Don't we do the same thing? The truth is that most of the time we know what we should do, we just make excuses not to do it. Perhaps instead of chasing after someone like John to ask what we must do, we ought to ask ourselves what we know we should be doing but haven't, or know we shouldn't be doing but have. When have we cheated, or taken what was not really ours, or lied to further our own interest? When have we hoarded more than we needed?
The theme chosen by JPIT for this week is ‘flourishing life: a just economy’, and I don’t think it’s hard to see how that fits with this passage. John is calling for a fairer use of our money and possessions, for us to be satisfied with enough and to make sure everyone else likewise has enough, and while it is clear that this applies on an individual level, if it is right to think that the warnings of fire and destruction are aimed at structures and systems, then it applies on a societal level too. And that surely has to be the case, because there cannot be true economic justice, and the whole of life cannot flourish, without a radical overhaul of everything we know. Twenty two per cent of people in this country live in poverty, while The Sunday Times' Rich List's top ten hold nearly £150 billion between them. That is a structural failing and a societal evil, a tree that must be cut down and thrown into the fire. Lord may it be so, and may we do all we can to swing the axe.
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