Fire and Brimstone
Year C Third Sunday of Advent – Luke 3:7-18 (See full text below)
Yesterday, I read in the New York Times that thousands of students will have their student loans forgiven by the government – a plan put in place to protect students whose colleges closed before the students were done with their degrees. This Obama-era program has been in existence for a while, but it is only now being enforced after a lengthy court battle to prevent it from coming to fruition. The total forgiveness that will happen in this first wave is $150 million. Amazing! But I also read in the New York Times yesterday that Ellen DeGeneres makes $87.5 million dollars a year. Our government will be forgiving what is, in essence, two years of Ms. DeGeneres’s salary and will fundamentally change the lives of thousands of people. Stories like this one make it easier to see why John’s rhetoric inspired.
I grew up in a church that preached fire and brimstone. We were sinners (vipers); we would be spending eternity in Hell if we didn’t mind our p’s and q’s (we would be winnowed and burned). This is not exactly what I would now call “good news.” But perhaps the “miss” is that the message I grew up with did not include ALL of John’s rhetoric in Luke. I was not told to share one of my two coats so all could be warm. I was not told to daily share my food with those who were hungry. And living as a white, Christian, middle class woman, I certainly was not reared to believe that my due was only my fair share and my obligation was to take no more.
If you read the early accounts of the church, even with most of them written long after Jesus’s death, you find that there are rarely people of social and political power drawn to Jesus’s message unless there is a fundamental break in their lives. The people coming to John were likely similar – either they were themselves living on the margins in terms of social/economic/political power, or they were people with power who found themselves with a great need (I think of Cornelius here and the impending death of his daughter – Acts 10). These folks heard a message of inclusion of the neediest as the path to righteousness. The good people moved by John the Baptist were told that there was no way to God that did not include care for fellow humanity. If we bear no “good fruit,” we risk being cut down, and John is very clear that the “good fruit” is repentance by virtue of building a just and equitable world for all people. And so on this third Sunday of Advent, and in a spirit of joy, I stand with my spiritual ancestors and cry, “Repent!”
Luke 3:7-18 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
10 And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” 11 In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” 13 He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” 14 Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”
15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,[a] 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with[b] the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.