But around the middle of the week something strange happened. She asked me some question about Mary and the Angel Gabriel, I don not remember exactly what, but I happened to ask, why do you ask? She said, because it’s the Gospel for this Sunday.
Now I thought I had been thinking about the Gospel for this Sunday, and I did not remember the Annunciation being in it at all. I said are you sure you have the right Sunday? Oh yes, the Third Sunday in Advent, right? With the rose colors?
We who preach regularly have anxiety dreams about getting the Gospel wrong. So I checked my lectionary, and there it was, Luke 3, John the Baptist.
So we checked the “Leader’s Guide.” “Today’s lectionary tells another story about John the Baptist. Because children heard his story in Session 2, in today’s session, we focus instead on Mary, the mother of Jesus.” That was as it were in fine print, however. It really did look as though this week’s Gospel were going to be about Mary. And in fact next week’s lesson will also be about Mary. So the curriculum decided, in effect, that two weeks of Mary would be better for little children than two weeks of John the Baptist. There’s an Adults Only quality to John. Why?
Well, let us see. The first words out of John’s mouth today are, You Brood of Vipers! I can see why the Living the Good News curriculum might want to steer clear. And John keeps going in that mode. For little children, this might seem Bad News indeed: “Vipers are very nasty, dangerous snakes. John says you are like them. Can you guess what he might mean by this?”
John is abrasive. First he calls his listeners snakes; then he says the axe is going to cut them down at the roots if they do not produce worthy fruits–which by the way may be the Bible’s most eloquent affirmation of our parish motto fides opera–if your faith is sola and produces no opera, you get chopped up and incinerated; then he warns them that one who is coming will baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit–in other words, what is called hte a fortiori ploy, or, in colloquial terms, if you think I’m bad, just wait till you see who is coming next.
But then Luke adds, and he proclaimed this Good News to the people with many other exhortations too. And Fr. Platt confirmed that when he chanted the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. FR. Platt and St. Luke must be trustworthy. So where in all this is the Good News? John the Baptist is a vivid prophet, but again :
- even now the axe is being laid to the root of the trees, and any tree that fails to produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
That sounds like a dreadful warning. It does not sound like Good News to me.
Perhaps the best way to approach this is as a kind of riddle. How is being addressed as a viper, compared with a tree that may be chopped down, and promised more of the same and worse Good News? That makes sense to me because I find Holy Scripture offers problems and challenges far more often than it hands us answers. I find the Bible to be what we now call interactive. Try looking up and answer, and you find it asking you a question. Makes for a far more dynamic and compelling experience.
So, how do we solve this? Where is the Good News in today’s Gospel?
Well, for one thing, first of all, the actual content of John’s moral directions turns out to be rather mild. What should we do? The shocked people ask, and he says, “anyone who has two tunics must share with the one who has none, and anyone with something to eat must do the same.” That is lovely counsel, but hardly startling. I am trying to do this literally this season, aren’t you? It surely is easier than, say, sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow me, as the one who did follow after John said. Share and share alike: anybody can live with that.
Some tax collectors asked him what to do and he says exact no more than the appointed rate. To some soldiers he says no intimidating! No extortion!
Nothing wrong with that. And not unreasonable at all: just imagine how well things would be if our police and our politicians in New York were to follow that simple directive–no bullying and no corruption. Tax no more than the appointed rate–compare that with make yourself a eunuch for the kingdom of God. Do not bully–compare that with if your right eye offends you pluck it out.
To be blunt, John is easier to follow than Jesus. He is a lot less demanding. His moral message is good and it is light and it is practicable, or do-able as too many people say. That sounds like Good News.
And then there is the simple fact that progress in the life of the spirit almost always begins with purgation. With getting rid of things, straightening things up, cleaning house. I have been reading, along with some students in one of my classes, the writings of the great mystics this term, the explorers of the spiritual life who have had a direct unmediated experience of God. They are a wild and diverse crowd, from Francis of Assisi to Teresa of Avila, and they have experienced God in all kinds of ways–as painful wounds, as sweet dreams, as bodily heat, as heavenly visions, as terrifying darkness. But we discovered that they have one thing in common–they all begin with the challenge of repentance. Every last one.
That means, if we want to get anywhere with our own faith other than wherever we happen to be, we have to get rid of things: bad habits, unexamined assumptions, false values, weak relationships. We might start with John’s challenge: any tree that fails to produce good fruit will get the axe. How productive am I spiritually? What concrete good have I done lately? How can I become more intentional about this? Is there anything or anyone in my way?
Abba Poemen of the Desert was visited by a young disciple who wished for enlightenment. The Abbot simply poured him a cup of tea. But he kept on pouring till it overflowed–why, what are you doing asked the young person. That is what you are like, said Poemen, you are too full, you must first empty yourself before I can give you anything. And that is why the cleansing repentance must precede everything else.
You see most of us can use a catalyst such as John the Baptist when we form an inventory such as this. He makes it easier to do Advent.
This is why Luke finds John in Isaiah’s words, about making the paths of the Lord straight: let every valley be filled in and every mountain levelled and winding ways straightened and rough roads made smooth.
That has to mean us. Twisted, swollen, depressed, missing paving stones, flooded, faint. Before the Son of Man can make his way we have repair work to do. Examples: silly Cheristian thinking: for example, that good people go to heaven and turen into angels. That is utter nonsense. Or sloppy moral thinking: this won’t matter because everybody does it. Frivolous habits: waste time on gossip. Missing practices: do you consciously and deliberately set aside time each day for prayer? If you already do that, does it need more focus?
John arrives with his hard words in the middle of Advent each year to help us with these things. That is Good News.
But the best News about John the Baptist is simply this. This year he is helping us open the Gospel According to Luke. We will be reading through it till next Advent. This is a treat for most people because the Third Gospel has everyone’s favorite stories: the Good Samaritan. The Prodigal Son. The Nativity stories. The Repentant Thief. The forgive them for they know not what they do.
Those stories all have something in common. It is the theme of the Third Gospel. A thesis. You will hear the thesis statement next Sunday, as a matter of fact.
In every one of those stories, God is on the side of the marginal person. The outsider. The foreigner, the woman, the criminal. For we are opening the story where the hero is a despised foreigner, where a wretched prodigal son is forgiven unconditionally, where shepherds are the first witnesses to the Christ, where God chooses an impoverished and obscure girl as the matrix of salvation and where a guilty thief is the first person welcomed into Paradise. That is very Good News indeed, because that love is bound to include us. As long as those mountains are leveled and those valleys filled in.
John the Baptist prepares us for that. When he says do not claim Abraham for your father, for God can raise children for Abraham from these stones.
We light the Third Candle today, and that third candle is rose colored. That practice began to honor the old Introit, which began with the word “Gaudete,” which is that command to rejoice which we heard last week. Gaudete Sunday stands for a kind of lessening of the tension of Advent, an acknowledgment of the nearness of the Good News: truly, his salvation is very near to those who fear him.
The vivid stark figure of John the Baptist is there to enhance that, not to destroy it. For John’s message: bear fruit worthy of repentance, make straight the pathway for the Lord, is Good News.
