Second Sunday of Advent (December 4, 2022)
We have to listen extra hard for grace when John the Baptist is screaming things like “brood of vipers,” “wrath to come,” and “burn with unquenchable fire.” To hear John tell it, we can bet that the sweet baby Jesus we’ll all be adoring in a few weeks will grow up to be one fearsome butt kicker, and it’s our butts he’ll be aiming for.
One way to shield ourselves from all this vitriol, of course, is to assume it is directed at others, specifically long-dead people whom we judge to have been more depraved than we are, who had so much more to repent of than we do and, by extension, had so much more judgment to face. Isn’t it true, after all, that John holds back on all the scary stuff until the Pharisees and Sadducees show up? We are invited, it seems, to gather behind John and join him in flinging insults and condemnation at these obvious, ancient villains.
But in Luke’s account of the presumably same event (See Chapter 3), John directs his “brood of vipers” insult, and all that follows, at the crowd in general, not just at the delegation of religious elites. In Luke’s version, we’re all vipers, and John’s unquenchable fire is a universal hazard.
An odd thing happens in Luke’s account, though. In Luke, John gets specific about what this repentance he is prescribing entails. So what, exactly, does it take to avoid having one’s snaky hide burned to a crisp? Share your excess food and clothing with the needy, John says. If you’re a tax collector, don’t enrich yourself by overcharging people. If you’re a soldier, don’t use trumped-up charges and extortion to supplement your government-issued paycheck.
That’s all? I mean, I donate my extra stuff and give to charity, and I don’t think I routinely swindle or extort anyone, either in my professional or personal life. Most people I know are about the same as I am. Like me, they no doubt could be more generous, and they probably cut a few ethical corners now and then, as do I. But all in all, I and they are decent, upright people. Were the ordinary people of John’s time really that much more terrible?
It’s possible that they were, I suppose. Living under enemy occupation in first-century Palestine probably put most folks a lot closer to the edge than most folks today. When everyone is fearful and struggling to survive, selfishness and even barbarity can multiply. And this was a culture rife with slavery, warfare, injustice, oppression, prejudice, economic exploitation, and all sorts of other ills.
An honest listing of our culture’s ills would be no shorter, however. It would differ mainly in content. Our wealth today doesn’t depend, as theirs did then, on forced labor by enslaved people. But it does depend on industrialization at a level capable of rendering the planet unlivable. And while slavery may have disappeared worldwide, it hasn’t been gone for all that long, its effects still feed economic disparities today, and we – especially those of us in the U.S. – still have ways of forcing people to do intolerable, even dangerous jobs for pay so low they can’t afford basic necessities.
It seems, then, that this fiery sermon John preached more than 2,000 years ago remains hot enough for us to burn our fingers on today. And maybe a lot more. It could be that, even today, our occasional moral lapses have consequences far more serious than we surmise. And maybe John’s condemnation encompasses not only us as individuals but our whole culture, even our whole world.
In fact, that’s the only way to understand why John characterizes what’s coming as a “kingdom.” In John’s time as well as today, something as comprehensive as a kingdom doesn’t tolerate rivals, alternatives, or divided loyalties. A coming kingdom, by its nature, poses an existential threat to the existing kingdom. If the new is coming – and John assures us that it is – every bit of the old is doomed. Seen in that context, all of these terrifying metaphors John uses, like axes felling unfruitful trees and fire consuming deadwood and chaff, can’t be dismissed as mere hyperbole from a half-crazy wild man irritated by his scratchy camel hair clothing and utterly disgusting diet. These images really do portray what the new kingdom’s displacement of the old one will be like.
So, where’s the grace? It’s right there in the first word out of John’s mouth: Repent. This coming kingdom will destroy all that stands in its way. But there is a way to not stand in its way. Repent. It’s not even that hard. Just start doing what you already know to be right. You can begin, or begin again, right here and now, in the muddy waters of the Jordan, or wherever else you might be. Prepare the way. Make the paths straight. Pick your side. The new and coming king will handle the rest. He’ll chop away your deadwood, blow away your chaff, and burn it all out of existence, leaving the only version of you that can be real in the new reality he brings.
This baby in the manger will, indeed, grow up. But he will not become your tyrant. He will become your liberator.
