In the South, where I come from, we have a phrase that can mean a wide variety of things. “It can mean “Aren’t you just the sweetest thing?” It can mean, “Oh I am so sorry.” But it can also mean, “You brood of vipers!” But because we in the South often refine to the greatest factor the wonderful mix of passive aggression with radiant gentility, what we say is “Bless your heart!” I couldn’t come to the party you have been planning for more than a year because I got tied up at work.” Bless your heart! “I have not written you a thank you note for the gift you gave me six months ago because I lost your address.” Bless your heart! I can’t eat this meal you have worked for a week to prepare for me because I decided recently to become a vegetarian and forgot to tell you.” Bless your heart!
In the South, John the Baptist would probably not have addressed the people who came to him in the wilderness as “You brood of vipers.” He would have probably said, “You think you can come here and receive baptism without turning your lives around?’ Bless your hearts!” It might have meant the same thing, but it would not have the same effect as the words we hear today.
John is a man who does not mince his words. He speaks forthrightly to the people warning them that their birthright will not protect them from acknowledging their sins and turning toward God seeking forgiveness. It does not matter if they are the sons and daughters of Abraham, he tells them that if they do not repent and live their lives so that they become examples of justice and kindness, then they will be cut down, as the axe waits at the foot of the tree. He certainly gets the people’s attention. They have come out from the city to find him, but rather than turning back they ask with genuine interest, “What then should we do?”
And listen to what John tells them, if you have more than enough, rather than renting a storage shelter or cramming one more thing in your closet, give some away to those in need. When you are out buying food for yourself and your family, grab an extra can of vegetables or a jar of peanut butter or a bag of pasta and a jar of pasta sauce and take it to church or to the food pantry. When you are at work, do it to the best of your ability and don’t take advantage of people. Be fair and honest.
John doesn’t call people to give everything away and become an ascetic spending all their time away from people immersed in prayer. Nor does he call those who come to him to start a foundation that feeds the poor and reaches out to people who were marginalized in the culture of the day? While these are certainly important actions, John basically sends every person who came to him back to their regular life, regular activities, regular vocation and then tells each of them, “Do what you have been doing, but turned toward God, do it better, do it more honestly, do it in service to others. “Share what you have,” John says. “Be faithful to whatever task is yours to perform in life.” Basically he says, “Be kind. “ Paul, in exhorting the people in the church in Philippi to rejoice always because the Lord is near, tells them to “let their gentleness be known to everyone.”
Is this what is required of us as we wait for the coming of God’s Christ? Yes, it is. Christ comes to bring hope and saving grace to all of creation. We believe that there is not one inch of the universe that will go unchanged. And although this belief involves all sorts of really big things—powers and principalities, nations and kings, planets and star systems—it also includes ordinary things like listening to a child’s story, cooking supper for a hungry family, crawling through a narrow space to repair someone’s electricity, ringing a bell to attract donations for an organization that helps people in need.
Jesus was coming to change the whole world and John the Baptist knew this. His urgency was often over the top, but here at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel when people come asking what all this change meant for them in their very ordinary lives, John sends them back to those lives, but as people who have been changed. He sends them back not necessarily as ones who will change the world on their own for all time or to assume a new set of spiritual practices. John instead tells them that who they are and what they do is important in God’s economy so they are to do what they have been doing all along, they are just to do it turned towards God and to do it better. In this way each of them becomes a part of God’s renewal plan—each of them adding their own particular gift and actions to God’s good Creation.
Often we fail to see that what we do each day is important to the coming of God’s kingdom. We may fail to see that speaking with kindness to someone at the grocery store, spending extra time helping a student understand a math problem, waiting patiently while a friend sees the doctor, or holding open a door for someone whose hands are full can possibly have meaning in the great scheme of things. We may believe that the problems of the world are so enormous and so intractable that we cannot begin to contribute to bringing about peace, justice, an end to hatred and violence, or stopping the destruction of our earth. We too often fail to recognize that what we do at the office, in the classroom, around the dinner table matters and has an impact on our world and its people.
But John who was not timid about telling people what they needed to do to be ready for the coming of the kingdom, tells the people in no uncertain terms that what they do in their everyday lives– everything we are and have and give–is profoundly important. How we talk to others. How we make time to listen and care for others. How we share with others day in and day out is a part of our salvation as well as the salvation of the world.
Luke tells us, “that with many other words…John preached the good news to them.” John’s words may sound extremely harsh to us–Bless his heart!–but somehow it was Gospel. It was Good news to be told both to repent, turn away from our sins and to be a part of what repentance looks and feels like. The One coming into the world will change everything including our corner of the world where we live and work and play every day of the week.
Each one of us have a role to play in being a part of the peace of God, that passes everything we can imagine or understand. This is why in Advent it is so important for us to take stock and recognize that what we do here together is the beginning of what God wants from us. The radical nature of God’s good news is not reserved simply for changes in our spiritual lives, but about changes in our ordinary routines and encounters.
Tomorrow, December 14 is the 3rd anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Since then the constant drumbeat of gun violence continues. The faces and reasons of those who commit violence change, their victims inhabit different parts of the country and were known by the shooter in different ways, but here we stand three years later and nothing has changed.
People cry out for sane gun laws, for better restrictions on those who can obtain guns useful only for killing others—and yet those who are charged with making these restrictions, or exerting leadership in making the numbers and types of guns available to people with mental health issues, remain unchanged and unmoved. Their only response is to give guns to more people and therefore make us “safe.”
More than 82,000 people have been killed by guns since Newtown. With such figures, it is easy to believe that nothing can be done. But our church believes that each of us has a role to play and in our own way to be a part of ending the senseless gun violence that effects us all. This may mean writing a letter to our legislators or person in Congress. It may mean making sure any gun we own is safely locked away. It may mean regularly offering acts of kindness in repentance for our country’s support of the rights of gun owners to the harm of those who suffer in the resulting violence.
One thing I believe we are called to do in response is to name and repent for the suffering that has been caused by people’s use of guns. I invite you to pray for those who see guns as the answer and those who suffer as a result of the violence that guns do in their lives. It may seem like only a drop in a great sea, but each drop added from hearts that long for the coming of Christ can lead to salvation.
We stand today just two weeks from the coming of God in the form of a baby. We live in a time of fear that can change how we live and even lead us to change who we are. But today, Luke’s Gospel invites us to, instead of becoming weak with fear, rather to redouble our efforts to be kind, to be honest, to be aware of the needs of those around us, reaching out to help in anyway we can those who struggle, and in all these ways witness to our God who is near and will renew us all with his love. In doing this we become a part of God’s promise to redeem all creation
John calls us to tend the little corner of the world in which we find ourselves. There are according to John and Jesus, no small acts of love, but rather varied—and contagious—acts of random and intentional acts of gentleness that does make a difference in the world, particularly when it is done in the faith that in Jesus, God has come near to us surpassing our imaginations with the good news of grace, mercy, and redemption.