When I was a kid, my friends and I used to love playing with a Magic 8 ball, asking it all the important questions that we had at 10 years old, waiting for it to magically give us life advice. And, if we didn’t like the advice, it was so easy to just shake it again until we got the answer we were actually looking for. Those were the days! I wish they made one of those that worked for all the difficult choices we must make as an adult; I would totally buy into that. It would take more than the fingers on both hands to even count the times I’ve thought, “what am I supposed to do?” just in the last week. Seminary did not prepare for all of the conversations with lawyers that I’ve been having lately!
Clergy often joke that we need to make a handbook for all the new Seminarians about all the things that Seminary should have taught us but didn’t, i.e. business management skills, how to hire and work with lawyers and contractors, and alternatives to the phrase “it’s all Greek to me” when we don’t know things because we are in fact supposed to know Greek too! I know that this is such a common human question too though, when we are hit by big decisions and hard to swallow truths we receive in life. What are we supposed to do? And, honestly, it’s okay to not always know how to proceed on our own without asking for help. That’s the beautiful part about being communal people with different gifts and skills; there shouldn’t be the expectation that we must do all of these things alone one hundred percent of the time. We might be too stubborn to ask for help, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t allowed to ask for help when we need it. Yet, sometimes, the answer to the question of “what should we do?” isn’t always one that we want to hear; this is where we begin our Gospel today.
John the Baptist is off doing his thing, preaching and baptizing, coming in real strong calling the people a “brood of vipers!” (Luke 3: 7b) and reminding everyone that there is an axe waiting to cut down all the trees that don’t bear good fruit (Luke 3: 9). Someone probably should have given John a public speaking lesson because most people don’t particularly enjoy being insulted and then threatened with divine justice. Apparently, it works for him in this case though because the people all decided to ask him “What then should we do?” (Luke 3: 10). And, oh man, I don’t think they were expecting his response: share! It’s like John is talking to a class of kindergarten students, reminding them not to hoard all the toys, but that a good friend shares with others. Share your food, share your clothing, stop swindling people out of their money (Luke 3: 11-13). John doesn’t mince words about what it means to bear good fruit; it’s a call to action instead of the probably expected apologize and pray more. But that’s the thing about repentance, it can be understood as a turning around, doing a full 180, but that means that the people can’t just apologize, they will actually have to change the way that they are living.
John is preparing people for what the reign of Christ is going to be like, when God’s sense of peace and justice will prevail. When communities will care more about and for one another. Amazingly, the people didn’t begin to question John, just began thinking that he was actually the Messiah (Luke 3: 15), but John’s response is something that we are still arguing about today. From school boards to state and federal legislative sessions, so many of the things that are being argued about are access to housing, to food, to healthcare. When people wonder why young people don’t want to come to church anymore, we have to look seriously at the world they have grown up in and how they have seen Christians hear readings like this and then argue against having free lunch in schools because they don’t have kids there so why should they pay for it. This is an actual story I’ve heard.
When I was in college, I was an interfaith study minor, and one of my final projects was working with a partner to look at intersectionality and to understand how people approach this idea of “the common good.” In our studies, we found that while many people can agree on the idea of a common good, like people should have access to food and water, shelter, and safety, where it really broke down into different factions was regarding how those common good things would be achieved, i.e. paid for and run. In fact, we found that people weren’t aligned on their approach based on religious affiliation, but rather on which political party they more align with. This isn’t a judgment on any alignment but was an interesting discovery to us because we were fully expecting it to be based on religious affiliations and they teachings of their religions. I say all of this because it is complicated, and even with John’s answers, sometimes we are still left wondering, “What then should we do?” (Luke 3: 10). I’m sure the people in the reading wished they had a magic 8 ball too so that they could shake it again and get a different answer.
And, amid all that confusion about how we are supposed to proceed, we also have all these threats of righteous justice with the axe language and the threshing floor and the unquenchable fires. The thought of all that I think can paralyze us because we are so afraid of not doing the right thing, of not doing enough, or of messing up. Yet, we have a God who is full of grace and mercy. Yes, God has expectations for us, but it is also not about perfection. It is about making the choices that help us to build a more caring and compassionate community. This isn’t an all or nothing, if you don’t get it perfect, you’re out kind of situation. It is about truly paying attention to what is happening around us instead of insulating ourselves from the pain of the world. I’ll add the reminder that this doesn’t mean we have to be always engrossed in that, that it is necessary and good to care for ourselves in that process as well. But, God’s sense of justice and righteousness envisions a world where all of creation is able to thrive, which as God’s actors in the world, we need to figure out what we can do to help this mission of God. This is at the heart of what John talks about when he comes proclaiming baptisms of repentance, of seeing where our lives need to change and how we are supposed to proceed with that. He didn’t come up with vague messages about being a better neighbor and he didn’t leave the people to figure it on their own. John gave them their answer, which still applies to us today, and we must decide how we’re going to proceed with it. We don’t have a magic 8 ball that we can shake again in search of a more comfortable answer, but we can’t forget the grace too part, as that is how we are able to turn from ourselves to the world in order to love the world that God created. And, like all things God calls us to, we are never told that it’s going to be easy.
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Sunday December 8th, 2024 Worship