Brooding Vipers

© Robert J. Elder, Pastor

First Presbyterian Church, Salem, Oregon

Luke 3:7-18

3rd Sunday in Advent, December 17, 2000

Each year it's the same story. We spend time and money decorating our houses and churches and yards and trees with the beautiful window-dressing of Christmas; and then, just when everything looks perfectly beautiful, we invite John the Baptist to come to church and spoil the party. And he comes, straight out of the desert, smelling just like the camel that provided his coat, with the faint aroma of locusts on his breath. In he comes, dust erupting in little clouds around his feet as he stomps about the place, scoffing at our pretense, leaving spots on our freshly shampooed carpet. And he's not too taken with all our Advent preparations. He never is.

Instead of saying all the proper things about our beautiful decorations and our lovely Christmas trees, he simply says that it is time for us to repent. We can keep all our twinkling lights and our chrome-colored ornaments, and our "ho ho ho's", he says, because God can make these things from rocks if he wants to. Why do we keep inviting such a disagreeable character back? Every year at this time the lectionary calls for sermons from passages in Matthew or John or Luke on the subject of the preaching of John the Baptist. And every year we have to put up with the same embarrassment to our refined tastes. Maybe we ask him back each year because just when we are at our loveliest, we most need to be reminded of his message.

In the house in which I grew up, there was a perfectly serviceable front door. Outside the front door were nice shrubs &emdash; nothing spectacular, but nicely trimmed and cared for. The door itself was solid, and the entry way in our home was attractive. The problem was, the driveway for our home was located around the side, and that's where all the main coming and going happened. The side and back yard of our home were a sight to behold. Out of three sons, my parents had two whose idea of a good time was the piece-by-piece demolition and occasional reconstruction of old automobiles. At any given time for a period of several years, as many as 8 rusting hulks of old cars in various states of decay and disrepair could be found scattered about the yard.

Now, when people didn't know us too well and came by the house, they would drive up to the front, park in the street, and knock at the nicely trimmed front entry. But the more familiar our friends became, the more likely they were to approach our home through the mine field that served as a back yard, next to a garage that had never known the pleasure of housing a functioning automobile. That meant the jig was up. We could create a front-yard illusion for strangers and casually observant neighbors, but the ones who really knew us knew that clean façade hid a dirty lie. Naturally, my mother would have preferred that guests always use the front door, but there is something about friendship that makes back doors more inviting.

A visiting lecturer at Princeton Seminary once observed that people have different approaches to preparing for company. Some actually clean house. Others are more inclined just to hide things and hope they won't be found.1 My suspicion is that most of us prefer that latter approach as we try desperately to get everything in order for Christmas celebrations every year.

We fix our front yards, trim the bushes along the walk, perhaps repaint the front door and hang a little sprig of holly on it to spruce things up. Then, to our red faced embarrassment, in marches John the Baptist through the back yard, amid the clutter of old engine blocks and rusting brake drums, finding everything we had so hoped we had hidden away from all our visitors. Right in the middle of our preparation for Christmas and sweet baby Jesus, he says, at the top of his lungs, so that all the happy conversation at the party is brought to a deadening stop, "Merry Christmas, you brood of vipers!"

We thought our sins were carefully hidden. He knows better.

Why do we invite this disagreeable character back each year? Because he is probably right in insisting that there is no other way to prepare for the coming of a Messiah than the way he describes. He calls not for a simpering and tearful apology: that is not repentance, just empty groveling. He calls for lives with actions that match claims of changed hearts. "Repentance is appropriate to Advent as we come clean and come empty to receive &emdash; and be filled with &emdash; the gift of God."2 John the Baptist calls this "brood of vipers" to own up to the truth about that back yard full of 1953 automobile parts, to own up to the truth about their lives, to abandon all fabrications, prevarications and rationalizations that we customarily use to maintain an illusion of innocence and freedom from condemnation. "We have Abraham as our father," "I grew up in the church," "I gave to charity," "all my grandparents, aunts and uncles are Presbyterian pastors," "my Daddy makes a big pledge each year," "I wrote a 400 page commentary on Titus..." None of these nor any excuse like them can serve as a valid exemption for failure to be what we want all the neighbors to think we are.

The pilgrims that John the Baptist baptized at the Jordan were just as racially and religiously arrogant as we can be, clinging to a fallacy which declares we can offer God something no more costly to us than the obedience and faithfulness of our ancestors, our tribe, or our nation.

To all our manifold excuses John holds up his hand and repeats: "Repent." And with the people who populated Luke's gospel, we ask, "What shall we do?" To that question, we can answer with the words of the patron saint of Presbyterians, John Calvin, who wrote that repentance means "the true turning of our life to God."3 "What shall we do?" is a timeless question. It is the same question uttered by the crowds on the day of Pentecost when Peter preached his first sermon; every pastor hopes it is at least one of the questions asked by a congregation some time during the course of his or her preaching ministry. And John's answer to three different groups is vintage Old Testament stuff. What shall you do? How about this, address the injustices of your world:

[1] Sharing food and clothing with those who have none,

[2] Not seeking tax savings for the well-to-do on the backs of the poor little people, the ones most vulnerable to a decrease in a welfare check, a rent subsidy, or a food stamp.

[3] Those charged with maintaining law and order must stop threatening the helpless with racial profiling, intimidation, and blackmail. They must be satisfied with their wages. This reminds me of the old wise advice that there are only two ways to address a lack of what we want: either to earn more, or need less. Those who are on the desperate brink and cannot afford to need less are the focus of this gospel's good news. It is up to us to make sure they have enough.

All John's answers sound almost eerily modern to our ears as he drives them home to the folks down at the riverside. What shall we do? It's not a new message. It's as old as a justice-loving God who saved enslaved people from the rapacious Egyptians and created Israel in the bargain, as old as the words of Old Testament prophets like Hosea and Amos who, breathing fire, challenged the people to live as though they believed the words they said about God's love for the poor and downtrodden were really true. The vision of a society where everyone has enough runs directly into our modern idea of the run up to Christmas as a time when the well-healed prepare for a frenzy of overabundance. What shall we do? they wondered. The big answer, then as now, is that a religion void of moral and ethical earnestness &emdash; simply put, void of a commitment to doing what is right &emdash; is just that: void.

These actions and all actions of justice which are like them are not the road to repentance. They are its fruit. We all know Christ is coming. What we do about it is the way by which we may judge for ourselves whether we are truly repentant or whether we just want to appear that way for the sake of the neighborhood. What shall we do? Behave as though we believe the promises of God to be true! Sounds easy. But it takes a lifetime to sort through all the implications of living as though this faith we proclaim were true.

John closed his little sermon by talking about a winnowing fork and chaff and grain and fire. We need to remember that the primary purpose of winnowing is not fire for the chaff, but saving for the grain. There is a story of a little child who went to his first Christmas service, who, when asked what it was like, said, "I want some of that umphant." Some of that what? they wanted to know. "You know," he said, "what everyone was singing at the end of the service: "O come all ye faithful, joyful and try 'umphant.' I'd like to try some of that umphant." In this sense, in this Advent, listeners and preachers alike hear these words of that disquieting desert prophet and are bold enough to call his message and our response "good news." In justice and mercy, God is triumphant, and so, joyfully, are we.

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1. William D. Howden, "Good News: Repent!", in The Christian Ministry, November, 1985.

2. Fred Craddock, Preaching the New Common Lectionary: Year C Advent, Abingdon Press, p. 37.

3. Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.3.5.

http://www.open.org/fpcsalem/s001217.htm

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