3 Advent C

3 Advent C Luke 3:7-18          14 December 2003

Rev. Roger N. Haugen

What are we to do with this John the Baptist?  Here is the third Sunday in a row filled with his antics.  Such a strange man.  “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”  Heaping abuse on the people.  And still they came to be baptized.  Wanting to know what they should do.

 

John had charisma that attracts people even if what they say is hard to listen to.  There are leaders that have come upon the world stage from time to time, forcing us to look at the world in a different way, to challenge us to live differently, to imagine a world that is different and better.

 

Pierre Elliot Trudeau was such a leader.  We didn’t always agree with him and sometimes became rather angry with him but he held up for us a Canadian identity that was more than what we were before.  He was important in placing Canada on the world scene as he fashioned his vision of a “just society”.

 

Tommy Douglas, a Baptist minister from Weyburn, Sask., took a vision of health care that all could afford and inspired the people of rural Saskatchewan to build a health system copied and envied around the world.  A system that cared for everyone, not just those who could afford it.

 

Often leaders arise in dark times and help us imagine a better time, giving hope when it seems so fleeting.  Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in the midst of racial turmoil in the United States. Speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial August 28, 1963 he spoke of a hope in the face of violent racial tension.  He said,

 

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.... I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”[1]

 

John F. Kennedy spoke in the midst of the heady, days of personal progress and accomplishment of the 1960’s.  At his inauguration he challenged the American people to:

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.[2]

 

In times of moral uncertainty leaders such as these help us imagine a more ethical – a more just way of living.

 

In today’s text we have John the Baptist calling those who came to him a “brood of vipers.” Not very pleasant but they stayed to hear more and asked, “What shall we do?”  He gave them a vision of what is possible and the courage and desire to pursue a new way of living, a new way of living in harmony with those around them — people in need, people caught in old ways of living.

 

John says to them as he says to us, “Don’t hide behind flimsy excuses!  Repent!  Don’t hide behind flimsy excuses for how things are, such excuses will not work.  “You think Abraham as an ancestor will excuse you?  Hah?  God can make ancestors of Abraham out of these rocks!  You are here looking for more.  Don’t fall into old excuses.”

 

He calls us as he called them  -- to repent.  To turn from old ways of doing things, from old securities that don’t work any more.  Turn from old ways of relating to one another that aren’t giving the life we need from our relationships.  Turn from allegiances that are flimsy and false, allegiances that betray us when the going gets tough.

 

Flimsy excuses that somehow justify ourselves as we are now.  “I’m happy enough now.”   “I live a good life, I hurt no one.”  “I’ve been a Lutheran all my life.”

 

John speaks hard words, asking for tough decisions not flimsy excuses because in reality we know the excuses to be just that — flimsy.  The people listening to John knew that.  They stayed to ask questions and to hear hard answers.  They were looking for life with meaning, life that had some snap to it, a life of joy and peace.

 

John says, “Repent, turn from the old ways.”  “It’s time to fish or cut bait?  Get at it.”

 

“What shall we do?”  Prepare the way of the Lord. Look around, see the Kingdom of God happening and join in. John gave them manageable tasks that are a part of the Kingdom.  If you have two coats share with someone who has none.  To the tax collectors — only collect that which is right.  To the soldiers — use no extortion in your relations with others.  Act ethically, honestly, make your actions beyond reproach — actions that fit in the kingdom.

 

What shall we do?  A good question for us as well.  There are lots of examples from Scripture.  People living as people of the kingdom.  “Act justly, love tenderly, walk humbly.”  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  Or as a church’s mission statement puts it, “Live God’s love, tell what you have heard and seen.”  Or as our mission statement states:

As members of the body of Christ and because of God’s unconditional love, Zion seeks to nurture all peoples through worship and community, and to walk with others in the journey through the realities of life.

 

What shall we do?  Look around at the neighbourhood in which we worship.  Find ways to “walk with other through the realities of life.”  Look around at our community which has 400 families in need of food hampers this Christmas.  What would a walk with some of them look like?

 

This is the good news that John announced, this is the good news that Jesus lived.  It is the good news that we are invited to be a part of.  The good news that gives the purpose and meaning that we need.   As we discover answers to the question, “What shall we do?” we discover the peace of which Paul spoke in Philippians, “the peace that passes all understanding”.  We will be able to “rejoice in the Lord always” because the Lord is near.  Then we will have no need of worry about anything.  As people living as children of God we will be able to “rejoice in the Lord always”.



[1] http://www.mecca.org/~crights/dream.html

[2] http://www.jfklibrary.org/j012061.htm