December 16, 2018 – Luke 3:7-18
Luke 3:7-18
What Should We Do?
Third Sunday of Advent – December 16, 2018
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
As I often say: if this is the good news, Luke, I sure don’t want to hear the bad news!
John has whipped the people into a frenzy!
The people want change!
As I said last week, the people are drowning.
Drowning in poverty, drowning in hunger, drowning in illness.
They are drowning in oppression, drowning in injustice,
and some are drowning in meaninglnessness.
What is so interesting to me is that the people who come to John are not just the poor,
the ill, and the hungry
Some of the people who come to him are the well and the well-off – part of the top 5%.
Those with more than one coat.
Tax collectors.
Soldiers.
So: Jews and non-Jews who were involved in oppressing the people.
Even they are tired of the way things are.
These, presumably, are the ones John addresses –
I think maybe with some kind of smile or smirk on his face –
as a “brood of vipers.”
His word to them? The word that comes to John and not the emperor or the governor or
their lackeys the high priests?
The word is: “repent!”
It means “turn around!”
Do an about face! Literally it mean “have a change of mind!” “Have a change of heart!”
Or, as I have said before, “change what you care about!”
That is what repentance means for John.
The people are attracted to John because they desire to see a world-change.
And today, they come to the realization that the change begins with them.
Okay, they say: what should we do?
What should we do?
There it is! The million dollar question!
I love this gospel reading today because it is just so down to earth.
This is such a basic question: okay, John, well: what should we do?
Ha!
And what does John tell them?
Does he tell them to start a revolution?
Does he tell them to make some homemade pipe bombs?
Move to the dessert and start a cult community and await the end of the world?
No! John does not tell them any of that!
He tells them to go home, share what they have with those who have less,
Share food and clothing,
and keep doing the jobs God has called them to do –
but do them with but do them with integrity and fairness.
And be satisfied with what you have. That’s it!
For these people, that is what changing what you care about looks like in their lives.
What does it look like in yours?
Repent.
Bear good fruit.
Bring something beautiful to birth in the world through your life.
What does that look like in your life?
John marks the change in these people’s lives by baptizing them.
Long ago after the exodus from Egypt, the people marked a new way of being a people,
of organizing themselves, of living together by trudging through the waters of the
Jordan River to begin this new way of living in the Promised Land.
Just so, John takes the people into the Jordan River and takes them out again to
begin living the same new way of manna sharing and mercy giving.
Baptism marks the change in their way of living.
It was so instructive last week for my friend Dale to be baptized.
Baptism is always a joy whether it is for an infant or an adult.
But with an adult it is always a little different.
Dale wants to be changed, Dale wants to bear good fruit and live a new life.
Dale wants to be part of something good and big that God is doing in the world here at
Sargent and Victor.
So this week he came to our food bank and Christmas dinner and made a difference in
over 100 people’s lives who came looking for something beautiful:
beautiful food and beautiful people, along with everything that came with that:
respect, dignity, hospitality. . . grace.
And thanks to Dale and countless others of you – they found it, right here at Sargent and Victor.
You shared your food and your gifts.
You bore good fruit.
You bore something beautiful into the world.
After dinner one fellow said to me, “You know, I’ve been to a few Christmas dinners in my time,
but this was by far the best.”
What then should we do?
Share what you have, bear good fruit, birth something beautiful into the world.
As a community this is what we are dedicated to.
For me, the Christmas meal we serve is really the highlight of Christmas.
I know! It was on December 12th! So early this year!
Oh well: for me now Christmas is complete.
Christmas is about the birth of the beautiful into the world:
the birth of love, the birth of sharing, the birth of justice, the birth of grace.
These are things Jesus embodies more fully and
completely than anything human beings have encountered.
As John says, “In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”
And when we are baptized we invite that fullness into ourselves.
At the end of the reading, John says “look out!”
When the Messiah comes the Messiah’s love will burn!
It will burn away the chaff!
Which sounds scary – but the chaff is the useless, non-nutritional part that you don’t need.
What the Messiah burns away is the stuff you don’t need.
The apathy, the lack of confidence, the voices that tell you you can’t make a difference.
The hopelessness, the worry, the depression.
The shame.
Love has an amazing way of burning these things away.
And what does the Messiah’s burning love leave behind?
All the good stuff: the wheat – the nutritious stuff you can share to feed others.
The beautiful stuff that makes amazing bread for others to taste,
in all its nutritiousness and goodness.
The stuff with which you can feed others.
The stuff with which you can make a difference.
The stuff through which God seeks to change the world.
At Christmas, we celebrate the coming of the beautiful into the world.
Yes: beauty seems to be leaving the world at an alarming rate.
But, as so often, an angel comes – in this case, and I blush to say this, me –
and announces to you, do not be alarmed.
Beauty is being birthed around us every moment of every day.
Open your eyes to see it.
In a baptism last Sunday.
In a Christmas meal on Wednesday.
In every single person in this assembly right now today.
Beauty is coming into the world.
So change what you care about.
Get into the deep waters with someone who loves you.
And that someone will burn away the chaff with the fire of love, week in and week out,
leaving beautiful wheat to share.
The change begins with you.
This is good news.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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