What Then Shall We Do?

     Luke 3: 7-18

 

 

          We are in the third week of Advent, the season of preparation for the coming of Christ. This week the theme is Joy, joy for the coming Savior, joy for what his birth means to mankind. The passage for this week from Luke 3, telling of John the Baptist and his quest to baptize his people in repentance of their sins, may leave you wondering if John had heard about the joy.

         John the Baptist is not preaching a sermon of joy. Far from it, He is on a mission and, like so many prophets before him, there is a whole lot more warning than celebration. Last week, we heard John exhort us to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight his path. This week, John takes off the gloves and punches us bare-knuckled. We are not ready, he says, and we are out of time.

          You brood of vipers! This is the title John assigns to the crowd seeking baptism. Brood of vipers. Vipers are poisonous. They can kill a full grown human. The venom they inject with those stabbing fangs is designed to immobilize their prey. Think about it. Short term, a viper bite will stun you into inaction. Long term, it will eat your flesh from the inside out. John has a point, for sin does about the same thing in about the same way. Short term, sin paralyzes us from walking with God. Long term, it separates us and kills our ability to be saved. It eats at us from the inside out. And John called the crowd a brood, meaning that they were a family group, a species. Sin is like that too. It should offer us little comfort that we all act alike that way, for the way we act can be poisonous.

          You brood of vipers, says John. You family of sinners! What are you doing here? Who warned you? You haven’t acted in a way that would give you a ticket to this event. Why are you here? Do you think being Jewish gives you some sort of free pass? Luke says Jesus was talking to a “crowd.” Matthew tells the same story and has Jesus addressing Pharisees and Sadducees. In each case, these were people leading lives in need of adjustment.

          There is nothing theologically subtle about John’s message. Some call it John’s gospel. That’s not an accurate description. Gospel means good news and John’s message was not good news unless you had lived out the Jewish law both to the letter and the spirit. Few would have come close to that standard. John came preaching repentance or else. Although verse 18 is translated as good news, it is only good in the sense that John is announcing the coming of the Messiah. It was the news of terror that John brought, unless one had been baptized and had repented.

          One commentary I read suggests that John actually refused to baptize these people because they had not repented.  I can’t tell from the text whether that is so, but I can get Luke’s point. Repentance is the act. Baptism is only the sign of that act.  John says to the crowd or to the Pharisees and Sadducees, “Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.” In today’s language, it might be: Put your money where your mouth is. Perhaps it was only the Pharisees and Sadducees who were denied baptism. If that is the case, they heard from John that their kinship with Abraham gave them no special status for salvation. I love John’s answer to that way of thinking He said that if God were in the mood, he could just raise up stones to be sons of Abraham. In other words, God’s power and blessing extend to those who believe in him and are obedient to him, not to some birthright.

          At any rate, there is a change in John’s delivery and message starting in verse 10. The crowds ask John: “What then shall we do?” I get the impression that it is a plaintiff cry, a pleading, reaching out almost in desperation. “What then shall we do?” And John’s tone seems to change. In front of him are the crowds. There are also tax collectors, perhaps the most despised of all, and soldiers, those who enforce the collection of the tax.  All in all, John the Baptist is confronted with the most unlikely of all the people and it is they who are clamoring down to the riverbank to be baptized. Go figure. Where are the religious leaders?

          John reminds those who would be baptized that they must repent and that repentance means change. The lessons are as old as the Scripture itself. What, then, shall we do? Share. Share and don’t cheat. Do you have two coats? Give one away. Do you have extra food?  Feed someone hungry. Make room in your house and offer shelter. Give someone a ride, not just to your workplace, but to his. For the tax collectors, who were engaged in corrupt collection practices, John’s message was equally simple. Don’t take what does not belong to you. Collect only what is due and live within your means.

          Repentance is a simple concept. It means to turn away. Look at who you are and what you do that goes against God’s teachings and quit doing those things. Turn away and change your behavior. Share the wealth. We have more than we need, but there are those who don’t.

          So in this world of John the Baptist, where we are just about out of time and the Messiah is coming not with open arms but with a winnowing fork, who is paying attention?  Who is seeking baptism because they have turned away from their selfishness? It’s not who we would have first thought. It’s not the people with the answers that are being baptized. It’s the people with the questions that are getting baptized.

          That might be a pretty good place to stop with this message. For most of us, repentance just means to turn away from selfishness and greed. It means to turn from a life lived by looking out for number one to a life of sharing with others. It can be as simple as the sharing of food, clothing and shelter, but it is a life of generosity and giving rather than taking.

          What the, shall we do? Don’t despair. We’re just like those people in the crowd. Let’s all go down to the riverbank and tell John that we get it. We can give that other coat away and we can do a lot more than bring in a few extra cans. We can find the “good news” that Luke 3: 18 was talking about. John the Baptist did preach a message of fire to those who held back and relied on themselves. But for those who came forward out of repentance, they found their baptism. Maybe that’s the joy for which we are searching in this 3^rd Sunday of Advent. When you turn away from the things that separate you from God, you find him standing there waiting for you.

           What then, shall we do? Let’s take John’s advice. Let’s repent and claim our baptism! Let’s live as if our Savior is coming tomorrow, for he may very well be!