We know what to do
Advent 3C  |  Luke 3:7-18

This is an important story to engage with. A story that reveals just how fertile the ground is for Jesus’s ministry. How dissatisfied people were with the status quo—their lives, their communities, their tradition. And it is probably anachronistic to put it this way, but it seems almost as if they are living in a time in which the systems of the world which are supposed to protect them don’t seem up to the task. The king is supposed to be devoutly religious and a good leader and he is neither. Religious leaders aren’t able to provide for the spiritual or material needs of the people. And signs of Roman occupation are everywhere.

People were so fed up by this, they sought freedom from it. I suspect many of us can relate to that.

And the image of the moment unspools a more vivid example as people left the safety of cities, where walls and proximity protect them from wildlife, to seek out a prophet preaching in the wilderness.

Many Americans are used to associating freedom with the wilderness, but they associated the wild world with death. Seeking out John in the wilderness is a risk, like fleeing greater danger by crossing a desert in hope of freedom.

This is just a taste of the background we need when talking about this moment with the prophet in the wilderness.

A Conversation

This passage is written as a dialogue between John the Baptist, preaching the good news, and the hundreds of people flocking to him. And it is told in three parts: the warning, the action, and the outcome.

John’s preaching is, we might say, fiery. Which doesn’t inspire every modern reader, but let’s dig into it a little and get a sense of what the prophet seems to be doing because it is world-changing when we see it.

1. The Warning

John begins with an expression of surprise. These people have come out to see him for a reason, but he seems to chastise them for their motivation which may be less about seeking freedom than it is responding out of fear. 

He warns them about popular expectations: that they expect that God will save them because they were born Jewish. An understanding that is built into the common experience. But something else is happening here. John says that God takes behavior into account. We must be up to the task in which we are entrusted. As we have seen, God has shown a willingness to go outside of the family to find partners willing to share God’s grace.

This is the warning: that we make our lives worthy of this generosity.

2. The Action

So then people ask John what that looks like. What are they supposed to do? This question mirrors the one Peter asks about following Jesus’s Way of Love later on. Which is to say that the people asking the question already know the answer. They know what to do. The question isn’t a literal expression of an interior confusion. It’s an attempt to break up that confusion through the certainty of an outside authority.

If I were to say to you, what must a Christian do, you would give me several solid responses. But if tragedy struck suddenly, most would look at me at the front of the room and ask “what should we do?” Which is, again, to say that this is a more honest expression of our confusion and fear than it is an accurate reflection of a lack of knowledge. We would know what to do. We usually hope someone else will do it.

So these people coming out to see John in the wilderness know what to do. But they are also scared to do it wrong, are part of a system with structured authority, and are under pressure to live with different values. Therefore they ask John 

“What then should we do?”

And he says that if you have an extra coat, give it to someone who doesn’t have one. If you have extra food, give it to someone who needs food. This is stuff that every one of them knows, learning it consistently since childhood. And yet it doesn’t match the values of the empire occupying their land, nor does it match their own sense of the moment as they are being impoverished by that empire. They worry about sharing because Rome keeps taking. So John isn’t telling them anything they don’t already know but life has them thinking in a different direction.

Notice that this is the teaching for the masses. But there are some present who can’t embody those values because of their occupations. In the first century, tax collectors and soldiers both were put into a situation to exploit other people for their own livelihoods. There are deep socio-political reasons, but know that Rome did this on purpose. They made it so tax collectors and soldiers would enrich themselves off of their neighbors as part of their coercive power over the region.

Also, side note: those soldiers were probably Greeks rather than Hebrews.

What John says to these two groups is essentially cut it out.

A present example

Here’s where it’s useful to remember The Warning sets up a binary of people behaving like they are actually familiar with the grace of God and people running around trusting the family line will save them. John reminds them what grace looks like—ensuring people don’t die—and what it doesn’t—exploiting people, impoverishing them. As Jesus will describe later about the Temple, that its leaders devour widow’s houses. An act of exploitation (which is sin) that will ensure their poverty and lead to their death.

And this is why I hope CEOs and members of Congress are in lectionary churches this weekend so that they can hear this difference. To hear John the Baptist tell us not to profit off other people and to be satisfied with what we might call a living wage. Which means, perhaps insurance, bank, healthcare and drug executives ought to live on nurse and teacher wages and be happy about it because presently the cost associated with healthcare and the denials of pay and service are killing people.

Murder is always sin. But indirect killing by denial of service is the same sin.

So if we’re thinking about behaving like we’re familiar with the grace of God then we don’t do this stuff. And most of us aren’t the ones denying claims. But we mustn’t be pulled away from the values of The Way of Love and toward the exploitative norms of empire which steal and destroy. We give and build up.

Finally,

3. The Outcome

The people start wondering if this prophet is actually the messiah, which means he at least looks and sounds the part to them. But it also means that they are working out where this fits with tradition and faith and the moment. 

John says that he isn’t the messiah—he’s setting that guy up for success. He is baptizing with water and the messiah will baptize with fire. Which sounds terrifying! And I know there are people who use that vision and language to describe a terrifying future for us all, but it is also imagery of purification and new life and reflects the kind of reckoning with who we have been rather than what family we were born into that is consistent with tradition and imagination.

John reminds us that what separates us from messianic judgment is entirely in our control. And it revolves around what we do and what we don’t. That we do share our coat and we don’t steal someone’s coat. We do give them food and we don’t steal their food. Extrapolate that further on down and we find ourselves loving people, not killing them.

Empire is clever.

The fact that so many of us continue to struggle with this, shows how clever empire is. How easily we can be seduced to make it make sense. Of course a person should charge as much as they can! we think. Until we consider what it does to people. Then suddenly we’ve got something we need to fix.

It is just as clever to pretend it isn’t our fault if someone dies from a decision we’ve made—or one we’ve asked someone else to make on behalf of our organization. This is at the heart of the famous philosophical contrivance: the trolley problem. That’s the one that invites a person to decide whether it is more moral to choose the death of one or, by not choosing, to allow five to die. The contrivance, of course, is it sets everyone up to be a murderer—with a complimentary ethical scale of how much death you can be responsible for.

This is what the kingdoms of earth value: swindling and exploiting. Stealing from widows and pretending they aren’t responsible for what happens to them. Erecting systems that protect landowners more than tenets, business owners more than workers, politicians more than the public, the wealthy more than the masses. 

The Kin-dom of God is not about greater or lesser evils, but is defined by grace, generosity, and love. It invites us to see the humanity and need of all of the people around us and to offer what we can when we can. And to seek a more just, humane, peace-filled world that ensures the dignity of every human being.

The gospel helps us see that we know this already. That we’ve heard this good news before, hear it every week, and proclaim it in our own lives, becoming children of God’s grace. 

We know this. We just need a little reminding sometimes. Reminding to love people, share the grace we’ve been given, and that we are free now and always to make God’s dream for creation real.