FINDINGS II
Advent
III - C - December 13, 2009
Luke 3: 7-18
(Zephaniah
3: 14-20; Canticle 9; Philippians 4: 4-7
 By Harry T. Cook
12/07/09
RUBRIC
The twin themes of Advent are audible in the three readings
for this coming Sunday -- the first from Zephaniah and Philippians the admonition
to "rejoice." In Zephaniah to "rejoice and exult" and from Paul's utterances,
"Again I will say Rejoice." The second is sounded in the gospel passage from
Luke chapter 3, which consists mostly in grim warnings put on the lips of John
the Baptist. After warnings of "the wrath to come," "the axe lying at the root,"
the fire awaiting the pruned branches and later more fire, this time
"unquenchable," Luke with a straight face or with tongue in cheek, brings the
passage to an end by saying, "So with many other exhortations, he (the Baptist)
proclaimed the good news to the people."
Good news?
The American culture does not care for "good news" such as
the Baptist is depicted as bringing. Grown-soft Americans are not interested in
the idea of giving away the other coat to one who has none, as the hair-shirt
preacher counseled. They are interested in getting what they want when they
want it. The only truly "good news" by contemporary standards is the Baptist's
admonition to the tax collectors: "Do not extort money from anyone by threats
or false accusation." In other words, "Back off, tax man, and let my people
go." Americans love to hear that. To them taxes are a latter-day plague like
unto the locusts and rivers of blood that are said to have characterized pre-exodus
Egypt.
However: "rejoice" and then do it again. But, as we are "a
brood of vipers" and know it, we might be more inclined to "flee from the wrath
to come." The better advice is to "bear fruit worthy of repentance," i.e. to
seek and accept a change of mind, this time getting it right.
WORKSHOP
Luke is by and large a poet and philosopher of optimism,
good humor and grace. But in the passage at hand in this proper, the evangelist
shows a side seldom seen elsewhere in the gospel. Having, in vv. 1-6 depicted
the Baptist inviting people to "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of
sins," Luke, having also gotten the audience's attention, puts these words of the
Baptist's lips: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to
come?"
The image is something like this: with his wind instrument
one plays a fetching melody over the hole leading to the serpents' nest. Out
they slither, beguiled by the tune, whereupon some one ignites a fire. The
vipers, panicked, writhe in retreat. Bait and switch. -- Is that what the
Baptist was doing? Did he subject those whom he summoned for penance to a
withering harangue? Did he scorn his Jewish hearers' credentials as "sons of
Abraham?" Was he saying (rather, did Luke intend for him to say) that no prior
identity could avail in defense of "the wrath to come," save "fruits worthy of
repentance?" Was Luke making the Baptist say in his way what James (he of the
pseudonymous epistle) said in his? "What good is it, my brothers and sisters,
if you say you have faith but do not have works?"(James 2:14)
Luke depicts the fearful crowds pleading with John, saying,
"What then shall we do?" The answer might not have been what a crowd of
religiously inclined people would expect: "Whoever has two coats must share with
anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." (This admonition,
by the by, speaks volumes about the economic demographic of nascent
Christianity.) It is not for nothing that Luke, in the matchless infancy
fiction of the gospel's second chapter, features shepherds amongst the first
visitors to the Child of Bethlehem -- they of the lowest economic and social
stratum.
More "fruits worthy (or, properly, resultant) of repentance"
include instructions to "tax collectors," i.e. those contracted by the
occupation government to collect miscellaneous customs and usage fees, not to
demand more than was actually due -- that being bad enough as it was. Do not
abuse the legal process, however onerous, to the neighbor's disadvantage. To
the "soldiers" (most likely freelance mercenaries) Luke's John is made to say,
"Do not extort money by threats or false accusations."
Where we read in English "false accusations," the Greek
reads "sukophantaysatye." That is the root of our word "sycophant," which means
one who curries favor with authority by informing on others. The word comes
from two Greek words: "suk," which means "fig," and "phantadzoh," meaning "to show." The smuggling of figs -- delicacies in
some parts of the ancient Mideast -- past the customs agents (see above) was a
punishable offense. In order to curry favor with his boss, a mercenary might
attempt to "show the figs" being smuggled in by a poor man trying to make
enough money to feed his family.
For Luke, justice was not the letter but the spirit of the
law. Figs smuggled in by a clever and enterprising peasant may beat the system
and feed his family. Don't turn him in. It goes to the issue of a person with
two coats giving one of them away, and fee collectors collecting only the legal
amount -- all of which may frustrate the insatiable beast of capitalism, but it
is one way to bring down the mighty from their thrones while exalting the
humble and meek (see Luke 1:52).
From v. 15 to v. 18, Luke has John disabuse those who want
to embrace him as messiah: "One who is more powerful than I is coming" (3:16).
The statement came in response to the people's questions about whether or not John
himself might be the one. Interesting that the only reference to Jesus in the
passage is this oblique one -- if it is
a reference to him.
The evangelists had trouble with the reality of John the
Baptist. He was well enough known that Flavius Josephus devoted a passage of
his Antiquities
to him (Book 18, Chapter 5, verse 2). Josephus wrote of John in relation to the
destruction of Herod's army, that perhaps it "came from God . . . as a punishment of what he (Herod) did
against John that was called Baptist." Josephus said John was "a good man" who
preached virtue and that Herod feared him for his power over people's
imaginations.
If that sounds a lot like what the gospels say was the
establishment's later reaction to Jesus, consider the admittedly offbeat
possibilities that a) Jesus and John might have been the same person, or b)
that at one time John and Jesus (or someone like him) may have competed for the
same following. In any event, the early church soon made the choice, and that
choice is everywhere seen in the canonical gospels. Luke, in particular, takes pains to put the figure of the Baptist into the great messianic scheme
focused on the character or personage of Jesus. It has been suggested by some
in the New Testament scholarship community that Luke 1: 8-80 was originally an
infancy narrative not of Jesus but of John -- a narrative Luke may have adopted
whole cloth and made it a prelude to his own infancy narrative celebrating
Jesus' birth (Luke 2: 1-20). In any event, the justice ethic of Luke 3: 11-14,
there attributed to the Baptist, sounds like what Jesus is reported to have
taught later in the gospel.
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
What is "good news," anyway? That depends on who is waiting
for it and, upon learning it, will or will not think it good. It is not good
news to hear that one's lineage ("we have Abraham for our father") avails
nothing and may be, after all, a liability. It is not good news to hear that
one must change his mind about things (repent) and think in other ways, as in
making a habit of sharing half of everything with another ("Whoever has two
coats must share with anyone who has none"). It sounds as if the law of
diminishing returns is in force.
The same people who heard all that, Luke says, were "filled
with expectation" about the messiah, and perhaps wondered if it would be their
misfortune to have to welcome their recent scold as the one. "Be careful what
you wish for," is how we would put it in our idiomatic way.
It seems to be a deep-seated human predisposition to look
for deliverance and a deliverer. Yet every deliverance comes at a price, and
every deliverer with demands. Adolf Hitler vowed to deliver a bankrupted nation
but demanded blind loyalty and the death of European Jewry in return. A president vowed to deliver us from the burden of government by erasing tax
obligations. The price was a government that could do less and less of what it
was conceived in the first place to do, begetting an era of rank personal greed
that brought us uncomfortably close to a catastrophic collapse of the banking
system.
The political question the people (of "We the People") ask
is the same question Luke says the Baptist's hearers asked: "What should we
do?" The answer is not "Kiss up to the one who claims to be the deliverer." The
answer is not "Follow him anywhere because he promises everything." The answer
is not "Join the Party." The answer is: give away that other coat; give away
half your food; don't cheat others; don't be a sycophant.
How can it be that simple? But how can it be so hard? It is
simple because the messiah Luke had in mind was just and eminently human,
meaning that treating the other as one wishes to be treated is the entire manifesto.
It is hard because it requires not so much the courage, not to be something but the courage to do something. It's not who you are
("children of Abraham," for instance), it's what you do. And what you do makes
you what you are.
That's the news as good as we'll ever get it.
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