I preached a sermon about this same story two years ago, in Advent, at Trinity. Then it was Advent 2 and not 3. Then it was Matthew 3 and not Luke 3, although it's the same story almost word for word. Do you remember it? If you do, I'll just sit back down. LOL. Amen!
In that sermon, I raised the idea -- still very true, still very uncomfortable -- that John the Baptist was not a nice or pleasant person. If he came into this church wearing his camel's hair shirt with a popcorn bucket full of locusts, we would not know what to do with him, we surely would not elect him to the vestry or submit him for nomination to the calendar of saints. His tactics are a little too brazen for Episcopal Church propriety, John is more the knuckle breaker than a diplomat. Suffice it say, I would probably not give him the pulpit, given the opportunity, nor do I think the Episcopal church would ordain him.
And yet, for those of us with an ounce of comedic sensibility in mind, "you brood of vipers" resonates as one of the great insults of the Gospels, on par with some Jesus's best:
"Get behind me satan,"
"Go tell that fox,"
"This wicked and adulterous generation,"
"You hypocrites" "You fools"
and my favorite, "Here comes my betrayer!"
I say all this not to say that politeness does not matter, because my word have we lost our sense of it as a society, but rather to note that it is in voices of frustration, disappointment, and anger that the good news of the Kingdom of God is proclaimed, by both John and Jesus, at times.
And it's not simply that they spoke the value of the Gospel with the wrong tones in their voices, it's that they spoke against the evil works of the powers that be. You see this passage from Luke goes to verse 18, well, in verse 19 and 20 it says this: But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had done, 20 Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.
What an example for us to follow! It feels like kryptonite for us Episcopalians, ever the diplomats, to be told that crankiness, bluntness, and rudeness are not off the table for the messiah or the man who bodes his arrival.
But beneath it all, there is not just a directionless nastiness, or a decompensating crankiness (the latter of which I am well familiar)-- there is a genuine anger at injustice in the world, there is an anger that the world is so full of pain, poverty, and violence, and that it does not have to be that way! John has come to make straight the path for Jesus who will turn the upside down world rightside up, and that comes with a message that is hard to mince.
The crowds ask John, what should we do then?
"Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."
The tax collectors ask John, what should we do then?
"Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you."
The soldiers ask John, what should we do then?
"Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
Jesus himself share all kinds of tremendous ideas that cut society against the grain- how you treat the least among us is how you treat me, you have to do good to your enemies as you would those who love you, you cannot serve both God and money, you must sell all your belongings and give the money to the poor, you will know the hearts of false prophets by the fruits they bear!
Again, I have this like roots-deep desire in my body to mince my words, to not create tension, to do whatever I can to neutralize anxiety, to annul conflict, and then there goes John and Jesus telling the greedy their greed is bad, telling the violent that their violence has consequences, and questioning the sincerity of those that flock to them, even if it lands them in jail or up on a cross.
It's as if to say that
Kindness that runs interference for injustice is not really kindness,
Decorum that eschews conflict isn't really decorum,
Politeness in the face of greed or violence is really maybe neither here nor there to the work of the Gospel if the greed and the violence go unchallenged.
Sometimes, I think, I, maybe you too, mistake the work of the Gospel for the eschewal of conflict -- as if to say, like, nobody move!! if we can all just get along here then we can get somewhere, we will live to see another day. It is, in my mind, really quite inexpensive to keep the piece. It is much more costly to tell the truth (even if it raises the temperature in the room), and John and Jesus both teach us that it is costly work to follow the Gospel.
You may be thinking, Fr. Ethan, we all put on pink today just to have you tell us that we have to be meaner, what GIVES! By no means, I promise I will not call you a brood of vipers so long as you all agree not to call me a fox or a fool! But just a week and a half out from the Nativity of Jesus, I am reminded that the one who comes into the world to tell us the truth of the world, to remind us of the truth of God's design for us, and it may be our work in the anticipation and preparation of Advent to prepare ourselves for truth telling, and to scrounge up the courage for the conflict and the tension that the Gospel -- that the Nativity -- creates.
But a world within which there is a still a voice crying out in the wilderness, calling out the falsity of injustice and announcing the truth of justice, proclaiming justice's urgency-- that is a world in which I can be contented, that is a world in which I can still find hope, that is a world in which I can believe that joy isn't finished with us yet.
Comments