December 17, 2006

What Should We Do?
 

by Rev. Dr. Jim Carlson

Luke 3:7-18

Sermon Illustration

The story we read from this morning is about preparation, people getting ready for a big event. They weren’t sure what this big event was, but the folks who talked about this big event used the language people usually used in talking about an appearance of God on earth.

There was some kind of expectation that in some form God was going to appear and fix all the problems in the world and liberate the people of Israel from their oppressors. We’ve talked about this expectation during the past couple of weeks.

Last week we talked about the birth of John the Baptist. He was a figure in this time who claimed to be God’s messenger, announcing to the Jewish people that in fact God would appear very shortly. John went around the region preaching and telling people to get prepared so that when God does appear, they would be ready.

So how did John want them to get prepared? What does a person do in order to prepare for a visit from the almighty? John answered that question to some extent in the passage we read for today.

First, people underwent some ritual of dunking themselves in water as a way of symbolically cleansing themselves from the bad things they had been doing. It was called baptism, which means immersion.

We have some ideas of where this ritual came from. Similar kinds of rituals were practiced by other Jewish groups, but those water rituals were more like a daily wash in water that cleansed a person from sin. The baptism John talked about was once and for all.

It was a way for people to symbolize their repentance from sin. It signaled a clear change in the direction of their lives. And for John, that direction meant a more godly way of living, a conscious choice to leave certain behaviors behind, and a commitment to behave in a more honest way with others.

The Bible does not tell us all that much about the kind of things John actually taught. But we have some idea of John’s religious background. And when you compare what John says here in Luke and how he taught people to baptize themselves to what we think we know about him, the picture becomes a little clearer.

The problem is that unless we understand John’s religious background, these words of John may not make a lot of sense. Most scholars now think John had some kind of relationship with other Jewish groups before he began preaching.

One group who seems to be a good fit for John is the Essenes. The fact is, water baptisms or cleansing rituals like baptism weren’t widely practiced by Jewish groups before John the Baptist. The Essenes, however, washed themselves daily as a way of cleansing themselves of sin.

John also required a kind of baptism which was associated with the cleansing of sin. So he sounds somewhat like the Essenes in that practice. The Essenes were a group who considered themselves as separated from the rest of the world, and especially from other Jews.

They believed that Judaism as it was being practiced in Palestine was corrupt. They thought the temple was being run in an impure manner. They felt their own interpretation of Judaism was the only pure interpretation. They expected God to come and punish those who were currently in charge of the temple. And they thought this judgment was going to come very soon.

They got themselves ready for this world ending event by keeping themselves pure not only from gentiles, but also from other Jews. Some of the Essenes kept themselves pure by separating themselves from society and living in a commune. Others had practices for staying pure while still living and operating within their society.

John reflects this kind of attitude toward Judaism when he says what he says in Luke 3. He tells the people that the axe is going to be laid to the root. It’s a metaphor for saying that God would obliterate the impure forms of Judaism being practiced so that the purer forms would be able to flourish. It’s the image of a gardener pruning the unproductive branches from a fruit tree. It sounds just like the kind of thing the Essenes would say.

But Luke gives us more specifics about how John wanted people to prepare themselves for God’s arrival. As John is preaching, certain groups from society approach John and ask him how this idea of repentance should play itself out in their own situations. The interesting thing about John’s answer to each question is the common theme running through all three of them.

See if you can connect the dots here. The first question comes from John’s general audience, not a specific group within John’s audience. They ask him how to repent. And he tells them that anyone who has two coats should give one to a person who has none. And anyone who has extra food should share that food with someone who has no food.

In other words, in John’s opinion, people should prepare themselves for God’s appearance by sharing with the less fortunate. But his words go beyond putting some change into the Salvation Army bucket. There is a sense that among the people who follow John, no one should be without the basic requirements for survival, and no one should have more than they need to survive.

John talks about a flattening of the economic divide between people as a way of repentance. This idea implies that having too much is and evil thing and that those who do should repent. Other passages in Luke tend to reinforce this idea.

Make of it what you will, but that’s one way John talks about repentance here. The next group to approach John for some practical advice on repentance was on of the most hated groups in society – the tax collectors. Now we talked last month about who the tax collectors were, and how they were widely thought of as crooks and thieves.

Now that may have been true, but in Luke’s gospel they are consistently shown to be just the opposite. For instance, if they were so bad, why were they out listening to John preach and being baptized and asking him how to repent? Again, other passages in Luke reinforce this idea that the tax collectors were very open to Jesus’ message and among the first people to repent once they encountered him.

To this group John says, “Only collect what you’re supposed to collect.” He didn’t say, “Stop doing your job, you’re a traitor to the Romans.” He told them to keep on collecting the fees they were supposed to collect. But they were also supposed to be honest in their dealings. They should pass up the juicy opportunity to make more money by overcharging people on the tolls and tariffs they collected.

The third group who addressed John were soldiers. Now we have to be specific about who these people were. They were not Roman soldiers. There were no Roman army soldiers in Judea at this time. There were guards and security folks, but unless there was a revolt, there were no Roman soldiers.

These folks were soldiers employed by the Jewish king, Herod Antipas. Herod’s soldiers kept order and protected Herod’s interest in the areas where Herod had jurisdiction. Herod ruled Galilee and Perea, and his soldiers had jurisdiction over that region.

Part of the problem John was addressing with these soldiers was the common practice they had of shaking down civilians for money. If soldiers were unhappy with what Herod was paying them, sometimes they would threaten civilians with arrest or some other punishment unless that person paid them an unspecified amount.

You can imagine that society began to loathe this practice. And you can also infer that the most vulnerable of society were at greater risk of being shaken down than the wealthier and better connected people were.

John tells them that repentance in their situation involves being content with what they make and not using their position in society as a tool for taking advantage of other people. Like the tax collectors, they were to avoid taking the juicy opportunity to supplement their pay by stealing from people.

As we look at these three questions and John’s answers, I asked you to think about a common theme. Do you see what it is? It’s money. In each of the specific sets of instructions John gives his audience, economic justice is at the core of his idea of repentance.

I want you to think about John’s idea of repentance as opposed to the way we usually hear the idea of repentance being presented. Usually when you hear that word repentance, there are a specific group of bad things people do which we tend to associate with that word.

For whatever reason, the things people most often repent from are from some kind of immorality they’re engaging in. If it’s not that, then it’s some kind of substance abuse like alcoholism or drugs. On rare occasions you hear about going to church regularly as a kind of repentance. Apparently you’re repenting of the sin of sleeping in on Sunday morning when you go to church.

When preachers talk about repentance, they often identify these kinds of things for their audience, and challenge the listeners to repent of that grouping of sins. Apparently those are the worst offenders.

But I want to ask you to widen your horizons this morning and consider other kinds of life habits which need to be repented of as one prepares for Christmas. Let’s take John’s idea seriously, for instance. Imagine a preacher who stands up and talks about what an evil sinner you are. We’ve probably all heard this kind of sermon before.

You think you know where this is going, but then you are surprised to hear that the preacher is asking you to take the extra clothes you have in your closet, the coats, the shirts, the pants, the shoes, and donate them to an organization which distributes clothes to the needy.

This is odd, you think to yourself. Then he tells you to take the extra food in your cupboard or refrigerator and bring it down to the food pantry. There are people in your community who are hungry, and it is downright sinful for the food to sit in your home and rot while others starve.

Now this guy is starting to get on your nerves. He tells you not to take advantage of certain situations in life where you could save yourself a certain amount of money or make a little extra amount of money. Those situations, as you well know, involve dishonesty on your part. There is no place for this kind of thing in the kingdom, he tells you.

Just before he gets bum rushed off the stage, he says something about your life bearing fruit. You think he’s crazy, and the people in the room with you escort him from the building, calling him a psycho or a communist.

That’s what it was like to hear John’s preaching, according to Luke. John was popular with the poor people, but a pariah among the wealthy. No big surprise there.

Are we ready to talk about repentance in those terms? Sure, we can blame the poor for their own demise and talk about how it doesn’t help them when we give them clothes and food and support. But that approach isn’t anything like what we see in the New Testament.

We live in a time when people openly pervert the idea of repentance as John preached it. You would be surprised at how many people say, “God wants me to prosper. God would be more than please to see me build up treasures on earth and treasures in heaven.”

You think I’m kidding? In September, Time magazine featured an article which surveyed Christians. A full 17% of people who claimed to be Christians considered themselves to be part of what we call the “health and wealth” movement within the church. 61% said God wants Christians to be prosperous. And 31% said they believed that if you gave money to God, then God would bless you with more money.

In my opinion this is a real distortion of the gospel as John preached and as Luke wrote it. I’m not saying rich people are bad. I’m saying people who ignore the plight of the poor in their own community while storing up treasures on earth, even though Jesus says not to store up treasures on earth, have a very different idea of repentance from the one John preached.

The bad news is that we have poor people here in Waukesha. We have poor people all around the world who need our help. The good news is that many of us can spare a coat or some food or some other kind of assistance for those in need.

I’m not saying I’m going to part with my Bears coat. Not even the poor in this area would want it. But my closet is so full of coats that I can’t fit another one in there. Maybe it’s time to give a coat to someone who doesn’t have one. It’s about time I started really thinking about repentance.