“Who Invited Him?”

Scripture – Luke 3:7-18

Sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Gregory Knox Jones

Sunday, December 15, 2024

The first few words of a sermon can make it or break it. Undoubtedly, you realize that some Sundays I immediately launch into a story. We naturally gravitate to stories. Our minds are curious and we hang on to hear where the anecdote is leading. Other Sundays I begin with an illustration that most of us can relate to – a familiar situation we connect with – and then I bridge this contemporary state of affairs with the words of Scripture. Other times, I use my opening words to pose a question. Questions tease our brain and immediately prompt us to scan for answers. People will usually keep listening to hear how the speaker answers the query.

I cannot recall ever beginning a sermon by calling you nasty names or chastising you or belittling you. Can you? I might reach that point in a sermon eventually, but I would begin that way. Right? Or you might send me packing.

It strikes me that John the Baptist never attended a preaching seminar or studied communications theory. Throngs flock to the countryside to hear what this man has to say, but as the first words usher from his mouth, we quickly conclude that he climbed out on the wrong side of the bed and has not yet had his grande cappuccino.

On the first Sunday of Advent, we lit the candle of hope. Last Sunday we lit the candle of peace. Today, we lit the pink candle and it is not as some have suggested, because Mary was really wishing for a baby girl! She might have been, but we just don’t know that. The pink candle on the Advent wreath represents what? JOY! So, why did John the Baptist show up?

You may know that many churches follow the Revised Common Lectionary. This is a collection of scripture readings which suggest four different passages for each Sunday of the year. Most Sundays there are two readings from the Old Testament and two from the New Testament, at least one comes from a gospel.

Aware that the third Sunday in Advent is the Sunday of “Joy” those who composed the lectionary chose readings from two prophets: Isaiah and Zephaniah. The reading from Isaiah includes: “Shout aloud and sing for joy!” The passage from Zephaniah declares: “Rejoice and exult with all your heart.” The New Testament reading other than the gospel is from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, where he counsels: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, Rejoice!”

Then, we flip the page to the Gospel of Luke to read the words of John the Baptist: “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Joy?

This afternoon, many of you will drive to retirement communities to sing Christmas carols. Bless you, choir members who will support this effort. Imagine how your visit will go if instead of singing “Joy to the World!” you start with “You brood of vipers!” Promise me you will not do that!

John the Baptist doesn’t begin with an interesting story or try to warm up the crowd with a few jokes about what a dim wit Caesar is. He immediately launches an antagonistic assault that in our day would propel people to dash for the exits.

This is the Sunday of Joy, but I cannot imagine anyone using that word to describe John the Baptist. We would use words such as angry, irritable, and threatening. I picture him as massive, gruff, and aggressive; the kind of guy NFL coaches drool over.

Camilla and I have decorated a Christmas tree, put up a wreath, set out several nativity scenes, and strung tons of lights. I suspect most of us are preparing to indulge in holiday cheer. However, just nine days before Christmas Eve, John the Baptist stomps onto the scene to focus our attention on a sharp-bladed axe and a terrifying fire. Wouldn’t we rather be inspired by a positive vision than threatened with punishment?

When our children were young and did not behave as they should, we modified their behavior with positive incentives. “Eat your vegetables and you get ice cream for dessert!” “Clean up your floor and you can play your game.”

Unfortunately, positive behavioral modification did not always work. When it failed to achieve the desired results, we resorted to threats. “If you keep acting like this, you are grounded!” I am quite sure that no one here has ever used this one: “If you do not go to sleep, Santa will not come!” No one likes being threatened. But sometimes a warning of a dark future awakens us to how we should be living in the present.

I suspect that is what John the Baptist was up to. He was commissioned to prepare people for the coming of Christ and he is afraid that they will not be ready, so he resorts to menacing metaphors. The axe is in position to chop down any tree not bearing good fruit. The winnowing fork is on standby to separate the wheat from the chaff.

In his recent book, a friend writes: “If a wealthy person were asked, ‘What is your most prized possession, the Rembrandt that hangs on the wall of your drawing room or the rubber raft out in your pool house? The obvious answer is the Rembrandt. But actually the true answer would depend on whether or not the dam on the reservoir up the hill from the house has broken. When the dam breaks and one is about to be swept away, the art can go. It’s the life raft that one urgently needs.”¹ John the Baptist is announcing to everyone who will hear: “The dam has broken. It is time to discern what really counts.”

The crowd who flocked to John the Baptist must have realized that, because they ask John, “What should we do?”

Knowing how fiery and demanding and uncompromising John sounded, his reply is remarkable. It is both practical and achievable. He says, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Simply share.

Tax collectors ask John, “What should we do?” John does not say, “Stop collecting money from your brothers and sisters and handing it over to the Romans. Get a new job.” He says, “Collect no more that the amount prescribed for you.” In other words, don’t shake down people. Be fair.

Soldiers come to John and ask “What about us?” I would expect John to say, “Ditch your weapons, leave the army, and pick up a new profession.” Instead, John says, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.” In other words, do not use your power to abuse people. Treat people as you want to be treated.

John says that the coming of Christ should make an impact on the way we live and how we treat one another. He does not make impossible demands. He provides practical advice of what we can do, not some time in the future when life is less chaotic, but what we can do right here; right now.

On Friday, while I was working on this sermon, I received a text from one of the young adults in our congregation. It was a photo of her stretched out on a table – arm out, needle in arm, giving blood with a huge grin on her face. She was giving a precious gift to complete strangers. We can share what we have, we can be kind and respect one another, and we can treat one another with the same love that God treats us.

Many of you recall when Professor Tom Long was our Westminster Distinguished Speaker. Tom remembers “the sitting room in his grandparents’ antebellum home in South Carolina. On the wall was a constellation of family por­traits – old photographs of his relatives. In the very middle of the cluster, in the place of honor, was the portrait of someone he did not recognize. It was a sepia-toned, Civil War-era photograph of a strik­ing young man dressed in the uniform of a Union army officer. Needless to say, this was very unusual – the portrait of a Yankee soldier in the place of honor on the wall of a proud South Carolina home. One day, when he was a child, he asked his grandmother, “Who is that man?”

She said, “I’ll tell you when you’re old enough to understand.”

“Years later, she saw Tom in the sitting room one day, gazing at that portrait. She came in, sat down beside him, and finally told the story. She said the man was a chaplain in the Union Army. In May 1862, after the smoke had cleared from the battlefield at Williamsburg, this chaplain rode out on his horse to see if there were any wounded troops who had been left behind. He came across a nineteen-year-old Confederate soldier, lying in a ditch, wounded and ter­rified.”

“The boy had taken a bullet that had practically severed his leg and he was slowly bleeding to death. Even though he was an enemy soldier, the chaplain compassionately lifted the boy out of the ditch, put him on his horse, and took him to the Union medical tent, where a surgeon amputated his leg, stopped the bleeding, bandaged him up and saved his life. But that was not all. When the boy was strong enough to travel, the chaplain came up with enough money to send the young man home to his grateful parents in South Carolina.”

“This 19-year-old Confederate soldier grew up to be a minister, a teacher, a college president, and, what is most significant to Tom, his great-grandfather.”²

None of that would have happened and Tom would not have been born if that Yankee army chaplain had not decided to treat that young man from the opposing side the way he would want to be treated.

You will not ride a horse across a battlefield, but you will have many opportunities to pull someone out of a ditch, to help heal someone whose life has been shattered, to lift someone’s spirits through an act of kindness, and to make a generous gift.

And that is where joy becomes palpable and we become ready for the coming of Christ.

NOTES

1. Thomas G. Long, Proclaiming the Parables, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2024), p. 155.
2. Thomas G. Long, Preaching from Memory to Hope, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), p.ix.

Prayers of the People

Randall T. Clayton

Mighty God, we lift our hearts to you in praise and joy…praise for your love which rescued us from bondage, love which came to earth in the birth of Jesus, love which shown forth in the cross and resurrection. With joy, we give you thanks and praise for the beauty and majesty of creation, for the people you have given us to love and people who have put into our lives who love and care and nurture us. In joy we turn to you this day, recognizing that much of the world is not joyous and lifting up to your special care all who ache, and all who are in danger.

We ask that you comfort those whose hearts are breaking, that you heal those whose bodies or souls are hurting, that you sustain those who are feeling as if they are sinking deeply into a morass of worry or fear. Be present in a palpable way with those who find the sounds and sights and activities of this holiday season to be something far less than joyous, and those whose disappointments and sense of loss are only magnified in this season.

We pray this day for those who are in emergency rooms, hospital rooms, and health care rooms. Comfort and heal them. And give wisdom, compassion, and energy to those who are providing care for them.

We lift up to you war torn parts of our globe, praying for peace, asking that you might show us how to heal long-held divides and that you give us the courage to do just that. For nations that are at war within themselves, and nations that are struggling with aggressors from outside, we pray. Wherever people are treated as expendable, wherever people are oppressed, pushed down, pushed out, we ask that you show the leaders in those places a better way.

As we move toward Christmas, we also journey toward a new Congress, a new president, a new era in our common life. We pray for those who were recently elected to serve in elected office – we pray for their safety and protection; we pray that you will give them wisdom and that the decisions they make will create more equitable, healthy communities. And we pray that our rhetoric and debate might be civil and respectful, that in our common life we may find ways to treasure the gifts of all your children.

Remembering that Jesus and his family migrated, and that throughout scripture we are told to care for the alien, we pray for those in the boundaries of this nation who fled here seeking a better life or to protect their life. Give them health and safety.

Remembering there was no room in the inn on the night of Jesus’ birth, we pray for those who have no roof over their heads, who lack adequate heat or clothing. Provide what is needed. Remembering that Jesus broke bread to feed a multitude, we pray for the multitude of hungry people in our own community and across the world who are food insecure, and those living in food deserts. Show us how to create a world in which the root causes of poverty are addressed, and such that poverty can become a distant memory of the past.

As we soak in the beauty of the season, the decorations that twinkle our eyes and our fancies, the beloved carols that echo through our halls, in comfort and joy we pray the old familiar prayer that Jesus taught saying, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.