Luke 3:7-18
Getting Ready
James Sledge December
12, 2021, Advent 3
JESUS MAFA. John the Baptist Preaching in the Desert,
We’re nearly to the middle of December, so
I suspect that most of you are well into your preparations for Christmas.
Perhaps you’re completely done by now. So what does getting ready for Christmas
look like at your house?
a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library
We’ve had our tree up for a couple of weeks now, and it even has a few presents under it. We also put lights on the shrubbery in front of our house. That’s a lot of work, and so they’ve only been up for a week or so. At our house, Shawn has to do a certain amount of baking in preparation for Christmas. It just isn’t the holidays without fudge and other goodies.
There are lots of different ways to get ready for Christmas. For some, a daily Advent devotional helps mark the time on the way to Christmas. For others, it just isn’t the season if there isn’t Christmas music playing. And then there are those for whom the season doesn’t truly begin until they see the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life or watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
I know there are people for whom Christmas is just another day, but for many, Christmas is one of the most special times of the year, and that requires a certain amount of preparation. Without it, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas. I know that many of us felt like something was missing last year when we couldn’t gather for our traditional Christmas Eve services.
Our scripture reading this morning is about getting ready, about preparing. John is the one who has come to prepare the way of the Lord, and this preparation is connected to repentance. John offers a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and lots of people come out into the wilderness to see him.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why. He’s not helping to get ready for Christmas, or for anything else anyone had ever heard of. But somehow his message resonated with folks, people who were hoping for a fresh start, people who were longing for something new.
Getting ready for this new thing doesn’t involve decorating or baking or special music. It involves a baptism of repentance along with bearing fruit from that repentance. John doesn’t pull any punches on that. He’s way more blunt and forceful than most preachers could ever get away with. Imagine if I had walked into the Fellowship Hall this morning and called you all a brood of vipers and demanded to know what you were even doing here. It hardly seems an effective way to win over an audience.
But the story doesn’t say anything about anyone leaving. Quite the contrary. They ask John, “What then should we do?” They are ready to make changes. They are ready to do whatever they need to do to be prepared for a new day.
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Have you ever wanted to do something completely new? It could be something big like changing careers, or it could be something smaller such as learning to sew or paint or to play a musical instrument. Generally speaking, there is some significant preparation and effort needed to do any of these. When I felt called to become a pastor in my mid-30s, I had to quit my job and enroll in seminary in order to prepare for that new career.
And if you want to learn to play the guitar, you’ll need to buy or rent one, and you’ll need to take some lessons and learn some new skills. You’ll have to toughen up your fingertips and teach those fingers to move in ways they’ve never done before. Only then will you actually have some hope of being a guitarist.
John the Baptist says something similar to those who come out to see him. They must make preparations. They must begin to practice new ways of living if they want to be a part of the new thing that is about to happen. They must repent and bear fruits worthy of repentance.
The word “repent” has developed something of bad reputation over the years. Its use as a harangue hurled at an audience by revivalists and fire and brimstone preachers has given it an almost completely negative connotation. But at its most basic, repentance is about change, about a change of heart, about letting go of something and picking up something else.
The new thing John wants people to change for, to get ready for, is the coming of Jesus and the new day, the kingdom, he proclaims. The ways of that new day are different from the ways of the world. And so when people ask John what they need to do, how they need to change and get ready, he gives them specifics.
“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise. That’s not the way of the world, not John’s or ours. We may share what we have, but not in the radical way John suggests. If we have five or six coats, and there’s one we rarely use anymore, we might share that one. And we might share a few items from our pantries, but we wouldn’t dream of giving half of what we have to the hungry.
John’s suggestions to tax collectors and soldiers are also radical, although we’re unfamiliar with how these occupations worked, so we may miss the message. Tax collectors made their money by collecting more than the amount that the Romans prescribed and keeping the excess. It was how the position worked.
So too soldiers received meager wages and provisions, and it was generally expected that they would supplement their income by a bit of shakedown. They may have even charged the tax collectors for protection. It was how the system worked. But John bucks the system.
In essence, John radicalizes the command to love your neighbor by insisting that no one use their position to gain an advantage over others. What could be more counter-cultural?
According to John, if we are going to get ready for a day when there is peace on earth, when the poor are lifted up and the oppressed go free, then we cannot live by the ways that have created conflict and war, that have ensured that some will be poor so others can be rich, that have oppressed and exploited people and nature itself for the profit of some.
John calls us to get ready, but if you’re like me, you probably have one foot planted firmly in the ways of this world, a world filled with conflict, violence, pain, suffering, exploitation, deep divisions, and hatred. We’re saddened by the state of our world, but it is the world we were born into, the world that has shaped and formed us.
But we also belong to a community of faith that says the light has come into the world, a light stronger than the greatest darkness, and we are called to be those who reflect that light into our world’s darkness. And so we must begin to learn the ways of a different world, the new day that Jesus called the kingdom of God.
We are drawing close to the day when we sing for joy that Christ is born, that hope has come into the world, that a new day has dawned. And so let us start to get ready for that day. Let us help each other let go of old ways and learn new ones. Let us practice and get better at the ways of Jesus. Let’s do our part to help the world align itself just a tiny bit more with the ways of hope and peace and life.
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