John said 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? 8Bear fruits worthy of repentance. 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. 9Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” 10And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” 11In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” 12Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” 13He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” 14Soldiers 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.”
15As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16John 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 thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17His 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.” 18So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.
You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve decided against another reprint of my John the Baptist Christmas Greeting card this year.
You know the one:
- “Season’s Greetings in the words of John the Baptist” on the front
- Smiling picture of John baptising someone
- “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Merry Christmas” on the inside of the card.
I’ve been here twenty-five years now, and some of you may have all 25 of those cards (or almost that many). It’s been twenty-five years of the same card accompanied by the same sermon! But the problem for me as a preacher is that every year it’s the same John the Baptist!
John doesn’t change! He prances on to the New Testament stage at the beginning of the Yuletide Season every year with his own very special brand of Christmas cheer and his message and his mood are always exactly the same, and he is (let’s be honest) a dour character!
The contrast with the plush red elf who starts appearing in shopping centres at around the same time each year could not be greater! Rather than spreading lighthearted gaiety with a merry ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’, John offers us a sobering dip in the Jordan river as an alternative to burning in hell!
“Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:7-8) says John, without a hint of holiday merriment in his voice, after which he unleashes a withering attack on those who have grown comfortable and apathetic in their good religious pedigree:
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 axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Luke 3:8-9)
I must say that what I find most intriguing about this passage is how the Gospel-writer (Luke) concludes this section of his narrative:
“And so, with many other exhortations, [John] proclaimed the good news to the people.” (Luke 3:18)
It takes imagination, doesn’t it, to refer to John’s preaching as ‘Good News’! ‘Sobering news’ would seem to be a more obvious choice of words, or even ‘chilling news’, because the reality is that most of John’s message just reads like plain old bad news! How do we make sense of that?
That’s the question I want to focus on today – ‘in what sense is the message of John the Baptist good news?’ – for it’s not immediately obvious, is it? Was Luke, the Gospel-writer, being tongue-in-cheek when he referred to John’s preaching in this way or was he just tired and not concentrating?
I reckon I’ve worked out the answer to that this year, and I did it through unpacking the other aspect of Luke’s portrayal of the Baptist that I find really disconcerting – namely, the Baptist’s complete lack of social conscience!
Don’t get me wrong here – I’m not saying that John didn’t call his society to account. He did. It’s just that, at least in so far as his preaching is recorded in Luke’s Gospel, John had nothing to say about the big social issues of his day but seemed to be completely preoccupied with telling people not to smoke, drink or chew or go with girls who do!
The appeal we get from the Baptist (at least as recorded in today’s Gospel reading) focuses entirely on what we generally refer to as ‘personal morality’ rather than on social justice.
I appreciate that it’s not always easy to distinguish the two but I think you know what I’m getting at. John seems to focus on the type of moral issues that churches have always focused on – eg. lying, stealing and fornicating. What he doesn’t rale against, on the other hand, are exploitative power systems, unjust laws, and corruption in high places!
The older I get the more I become convinced that the real problems we face in this world have very little to do with any individual’s personal moral failings. The longer in the tooth I get, the more I become convinced that our real struggle “is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, authorities, … and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12)
Not everybody will agree with me on this, but I truly believe that the real enemies we face in this world are not human. They are inhuman principalities and powers that generally take the form of corporations in our experience. These inhuman bodies are supported and served by another large and inhuman monster (the government) which itself is protected and promoted by the power of a third monstrous corporation – namely, the army!
Of course all these inhuman principalities and powers have human faces through which they interface with humanity. Even so, these faces are not in control of the principalities and powers but are controlled by them. For the primary goal of Google Inc. is and always will be to make a profit (and a short-term profit, in fact) and if any CEO ever got it into his head that profit should be less important to the company than, say, the betterment of humanity, that CEO would very quickly find himself out of a job!
The principalities and powers operate according to their own rules and values, and when we look around the world at all the suffering – the wars, the hunger, and all the death and violence – very little of it, in my view, is simply the result of some individual experiencing a moment (or moments) of moral weakness. No. It’s generally the principalities and power doing their work, supported by governments and their armies, and an enormous amount of rhetoric!
John the Baptist says nothing about any of this in today’s Gospel reading, and that’s not because the people of his day were unconcerned about the broad social forces they saw at work in their world. On the contrary, if there was one single issue that animated every one of John the Baptist’s contemporaries it was the Roman Occupation of Palestine – a brutal and seemingly never-ending system of oppression that first century Jews experienced as the ongoing rape of their country and culture!
If you had asked any first century Jew what was the biggest problem they were facing, they would say “the Roman Occupation”. They would not say ‘people don’t share enough’ or ‘people are too greedy’, and yet these are exactly the issues that John focuses on to the exclusion of all else.
This lack of social conscience (as I’ve termed it) is made especially obvious in today’s passage by virtue of the two groups that are singled out for specific treatment by the Gospel-writer – namely, the tax-collectors and the soldiers!
This is really astounding when you think about it as there would have been nobody who more formally represented the principalities and powers in the context of first century Judea than tax-collectors and soldiers! Along with the Roman Emperor himself and his underlings, it was these people – the tax-collectors and the military – who were the face of the Palestinian occupation! These people represented the theft and brutality (respectively) of the principalities and powers. They embodied everything these people hated!
What does John have to say to these people? He says, “you tax-collectors must stop working for our hated overlords, and you soldiers must put away your swords because you’re fighting for the wrong side!” No. “Tax-collectors, don’t be too greedy and soldiers, don’t abuse your position of power”!
Indeed, when you strip away all the bluster and aggressive language from John’s presentation, his basic message seems remarkably insipid! John screams “Be nice to one another! Share your food and your clothing, and don’t be too greedy”!
That’s it! There’s no social critique here. There’s no vindictive directed at the rich and powerful. There’s certainly no call to revolution!
It could be, of course, that Luke, the Gospel-writer, has simply left out the more politically inflammatory aspects of John’s preaching. That is possible, and that would make sense. In the climate Luke was writing in, with Christians still being fed to lions, we could understand why Luke would not want to portray the Baptist and his followers as social revolutionaries. Even so, I think there may be a better and more obvious explanation, and it’s in the other half of John’s message.
For John had two messages, and we run the risk of misunderstanding John if we treat the two separately. His first message was indeed about repentance, but his other message was about the one who was coming after him – ‘the thong of whose sandal he was not worthy to untie!’ (Luke 3:16)
“I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Luke 3:16)
In truth, John the Baptist did believe in ending the Palestinian Occupation. He wanted to see the Romans gone and peace restored. He yearned for justice just like everybody else. He just didn’t think he was the guy who was going to take the lead in that process of social change!
John was very clear about his own identity and about his own part in the Messianic drama. He was “the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”’ (Luke 3:4)
John saw it as his role to prepare people for the coming of the commander. Justice would come, change would come, but it was the Messiah who would be in charge in that process. John’s job was simply to get the troops ready, like a drill-sergeant training volunteers and preparing them for combat!
There’s a vital message in here for all us social-justice types – not to neglect our personal moral inventory! Yes, we want to deal with the macro issues – to see peace in Syria, to end the degrading treatment of asylum seekers in this country, to combat bigotry and racism, and even to end the exploitation of the poor by the rich. We want to make a contribution in all of those areas and yet we’ll never accomplish much if we can’t get our own house in order first!
As insipid as it might sound, we are never going to be the ones to bring an end to global poverty if we can’t learn to share what we have with those around us first! And we are never going to be able to address issues of international exploitation and injustice while we still get high on abusing the little positions of power that we have ourselves!
So does that mean John’s message really was ‘don’t smoke, drink or chew or go with girls who do’? In a sense, yes, and certainly in the same sense in which I had to give up smoking.
I’ve been Parish Priest at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill for twenty-five years now and there are not many left in the parish who would still remember me being the first to light up a smoke at the conclusion of the service.
It was a long time ago and I know it was the cause of some distress with a couple of parishioners who were concerned about my health as I had been smoking for about 15 years by that stage. Personally though, concern for my own health was never sufficient motivation for me to give smoking away.
What did prove decisive for me was my need to fight and to compete. I knew my opponent was not smoking, and since I didn’t start in the sport till I was in my 30’s I knew I couldn’t afford to give away any more advantages. So one day I stopped, and every time I felt like a smoke I went for a run, and twenty-three years later I still haven’t stopped running (or boxing), though I’ve kept my favourite pipe, ready for the day when I hang up the gloves (and the running shoes).
The point is that I made the necessary effort to improve my personal health and fitness so that I would be better equipped to fight. I’m sure I needn’t bother unpacking that metaphor too much further. We need to give due attention to our moral inventory so as to be ready to fight!
That’s was John the Baptist’s angle – I’m sure of it. He didn’t rale away simply because he was obsessed with seeing people develop greater moral purity and personal holiness. He was an angry drill-sergeant, preparing us for the good fight, and his message to the people of first century Judea is the same as the one I give to all the young guys and girls who turn up to my Fight Club – “if you want to fight you need to put in the hard work and prepare yourself!”
Perhaps in all this there’s a basis for a different sort of John the Baptist Christmas Greeting card? If so, it will have to wait till next year! For the moment, hear the good news: Justice is coming! Start training!
First preached by Father Dave Smith at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill, on Sunday the 13th of December, 2015.
Rev. David B. Smith
Parish priest, community worker, martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of four. www.FatherDave.org
