How Do We Get Ready?

Luke 3:7-18

December 13, 2015

We were at a party last week and a few of us

were sharing stories of restaurants

where the waitress and waiters insult you.

Apparently there is a market for this kind of thing

since there was more than one of these places.

John the Baptist could have worked

at one of these restaurants.

Because people seemed to like being

insulted by John the Baptist.

The restaurants do it in the name of fun and a good time.
But John is very serious. He asks them:

“Why did you come out here?”

“What are you looking at me for?”

Then he calls them a “Brood of vipers”

Children of snakes in other words.

He isn’t nice and doesn’t coddle them

or nurture them or make them feel good.

And yet they come to him.

They seem fascinated by him.

They still want to be baptized by him.

Maybe John seems like

the answer they’ve been waiting for.

The new life they had imagined.

The change that they had hoped for a long time.

was coming to the world.

He told them to repent,

not to rest on their laurels.

Not to simply rely on their heritage and birth-right

but to conduct their lives in a different and better way.
He told them to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

Don’t just say that you love God’s ways,

have your life show that you love God’s ways.

So they asked him “What exactly do we do?”

How do we do that,

what kind of things are you talking about?

John the Baptist's Breakfast Cereal

Now, I’m not sure what

they were expecting from John the Baptist,

but he was living like a wild man,

staying alone in the wilderness, eating bugs and

just whatever he could find on the ground.

Bob and I have a friend who is an entomologist,

a bug-man and he’s a big advocate for eating bugs

and when we ask him to come over and bring something

we know that we’re going to get cricket brittle

grub worm cookies and things like that.

It’s just what he does.

So when you ask John the Baptist what to do,

we might think that he would tell everyone

to drop out of normal life,

to wear a camel’s hair coat and

and eat locusts and twigs with him

in the wilderness.

But no. John tells them:

“If you have two coats, share one with someone who has none.

If you have any extra food, share that too.”

He’s not telling them leave their lives and

go into the wilderness,

but to go back to their cities and villages

and their families and the people they know

and treat them with kindness.

For tax collectors he tells them:

“Collect no more than what you’re supposed to collect.”

Tax collectors were apparently pretty

notorious for being unethical.

It was so bad that we know that

people were upset when Jesus even ate with them –

tax collector and sinner, almost synonymous

in the new testament.

But John didn’t tell them to leave tax collecting,

he just tells them to do it morally and ethically.

And soldiers apparently used their authority

to take advantage of other people.

But John the Baptist doesn’t tell them to

get out of the business, just do it without extortion,

to be satisfied with what they were paid.

To get ready for the one who would baptize us

with the Holy Spirit and fire,

John didn’t tell everyone to drop everything

and go into the wilderness to meditate

or for everyone to join monastery and being a hermit.

or to quit their job and go to seminary.

To prepare people for the one that is to come,

John doesn’t suggest leaving our world

in order to bear the fruits worthy of repentance.

He sends them back in the world,

to do what they’re doing, but to do it in a different way.

To change the world from the inside.

This is what Christians do.

Getting Ready for Jesus in the future means

acting like we know Jesus did in the past.

Like Jesus, we don’t retreat from the world

we are a part of it.

And like Jesus do what we do with a care

for all people, especially the least among us.

And like Jesus, we act this way consistently

no matter what the world throws at us.

Even when others are extorting and stealing

we respond with honesty and integrity.

Even when the world is filled with terror and fear,

we respond with welcome and peace.

Even when everyone is keeping everything for themselves

and watching out for number one,

we act with compassion and share what we have.

These aren’t passive things.

These actions can be radical.

They interrupt the way things are.

They effect other people.

It can even make them mad.

This is how we live out our baptism

We change the world from the inside,

starting with our inside, our minds and our hearts.

This is how John and Jesus will change the world.

He tells us to go back to our hum-drum lives and

let those lives reflect God’s grace

to the rest of the world.

This is how

“all flesh will see the salvation of God.”