Luke here gives us a rare, one-off taste of a John
the Baptist sermon. Droves of people flocked
to him out in the wilderness of the Jordan River Valley, a barren place
well-known to be dangerous for travellers.
These crowds came to him looking for a way to make themselves ready for
the coming Messiah and his kingdom, a way to let their God know who’s side they
were on. They wanted to cry out to the
God who heard the cries of his people and saved them out of slavery in Egypt
from under Pharaoh by a mighty hand.
They wanted God to act and send his promised Anointed king, the Messiah,
and deliver them from the Romans who had come and occupied their land.
Ancient Israel had an interesting relationship with
God. Being his special people whom he
gave a land and made to be a nation as he promised to their forefather Abraham,
God expected them to live according to the Law he gave to Moses, a way of life
that would distinguish them as a just and good nation among the nations – a
nation that acted like their just and good God.
Yet, history shows that the Israelites had a habit
of following the gods of their neighbouring nations and living like their neighbours. When they did this, they inevitably fell into
the greedy practice of oppressing and enslaving one another. Instead of a fair and good nation where
everyone had land and had enough, they became an unjust nation of a few very
rich citizens who conscripted thugs to exploit and enslave the poor.
Not willing to abandon his people nor renege on his
promise to be their God, God always acted to restore his people to
faithfulness. God would send foreign
powers to dominate them until they had a change of heart and returned to Yahweh
as their only God. At one point they got
so bad in their living like the nations they not only abused the poor in their
midst to their own advantage, but their kings did evil. These kings sought power from foreign gods by
sacrificing their own children, and God’s people danced in celebration. That’s when God sent the Babylonians and they
destroyed Jerusalem, levelled that beautiful Temple that Solomon built, and
carried away anybody who was anybody back to Babylon to live in exile.
Roughly 400 years later and back on the land, we
find John the Baptist out in the wilderness with the masses of people coming to
him turning back to God in faithfulness.
They were under Roman oppression, something the Romans did well. Their own royalty were appointed by the
Romans and were well steeped in the hedonism of the “Greek” lifestyle. Their religious leaders were also Roman
puppets who enjoyed the power and prestige and mostly the money the “big
business” of the Jerusalem Temple provided them. The people as a whole were faced with having
to like Romans if they wanted to have a life at all.
For the everyday Israelite, times were tough; Roman
taxes, temple taxes, extortion, corruption, soldiers everywhere, living on pins
and needles – there was just no peace.
So, the people flocked to John, the one true prophet who called them
back to their God and had them symbolically declare their faithfulness by
washing in the waters of the Jordan River, the river the people of God crossed
when they first entered this Promised Land centuries before – a new beginning.
John preached an interesting sermon to those people
crying out in the wilderness. He
proclaimed the Gospel to them. Verse 18 says that. His Gospel was prepare the way for the Coming
One who would baptize them with the Holy Spirit and the fire of refining. Now listen up here! The way John told them to prepare had to do
with practising economic justice not believing the right things. He didn’t say “Just have faith and believe
the Coming One is coming and you’ll be ready”. That’s like what people today say,
“All you got to do is believe Jesus died for your sins and you’ll go to heaven
when you die.” That’s cheap grace; the
kind of Gospel that keeps empires in power rather than confronts them and frees
us from tyranny.
John’s Gospel was that the Coming One is coming,
therefore do this – If you have two coats and plenty of food, share with those
who have not; if you have a job that affords you power and position, don’t
bully and extort others out of their stuff to make yourself rich. Be satisfied with what you have.” The way that God’s people are to prepare
themselves for the Coming Messiah and life in the Kingdom of God is to
immediately start practising economic justice – live fair and share. The way of the Roman Empire (that persists
today) was to get whatever you could for yourself no matter the means. Yet, if the people of God wanted to be free
of the Roman Empire then they themselves had to stop living according to the
Roman way. The Gospel according to John the Baptist is that God will
put the world to rights, therefore you, we, the people of God right now must start
living fair and share.
If John the
Baptist were alive today what would his sermon be? Well, first, we would probably have to
journey into the wilderness of Facebook to find him. In the wilderness of Facebook one will find
people calling us adamantly to a lifestyle of economic justice and one will see
these modern day John the Baptists getting trolled and bullied for sounding too
Liberal if I may. I came across one the
other day. Someone I know shared a quote
from somebody who shared it from someone else and so on and so on. You know how Facebook works. The quote came from Barbara Ehrenreich who
wrote Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting
by in America. The book was about
what its like to be a woman in the States who has to try to make ends meet on a
minimum wage job and I suspect its not too different here in Canada. She writes: “Shame at our own dependence on
the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can
live on--when she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and
conveniently--then she has made a great sacrifice for you. The working poor are
the major philanthropists of our society."
I have to admit I
feel that shame and I am a hypocrite and a coward. I’m one of the brood of vipers scrolling
through the wilderness of Facebook. I
live in a house full of stuff that underpaid workers made. I’ve got a belly carefully crafted by eating
food raised and processed by underpaid workers employed by corporate
extortionists. The lifestyle that I,
that we live, here in this society in which there is no way to control the cost
of living, our lifestyle results in people having to stay poor due to working
jobs that don’t pay enough because we undervalue human labour so that we can
have the stuff we want cheap and conveniently on demand. We aren’t satisfied with what we have. There’s the endless stream of newer and
better stuff produced by underpaid workers perpetually marketed to us as the
means happiness which we readily consume by means of going into debt. If Ehrenreich is right, and I believe she is,
there are masses of underpaid workers making a huge sacrifice for me/us to have
the privilege of scrolling through the wilderness of Facebook…and to think we
celebrate the birth of Jesus -- born a child and yet a king, born his people to
deliver, born to set his people free – with a well-meaning, gift-giving retail
feeding frenzy that requires a huge sacrifice by the underpaid. Friends, it’s time we woke up. Amen.
