The Word Lived
Advent 3
Fr. Tim Nunez
December 15, 2024
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
“You brood of vipers!” That’s a bit rude to say to people who have taken time out of their lives to come and hear what you have to say! Maybe it helps us to think of this like a tent revival. Who comes to a tent revival? People who know things are very wrong, people who are prepared or predisposed to owning their sin and wanting to make things better.
A “brood of vipers” convicts everyone as a group and individually. Vipers remind us of that snake in the garden. Sin is like poison. Vipers carry poison inside them and spread it when they bite – just like we all carry sin and it is poisonous when we bite.
They are God’s “chosen people,” but they cannot rely on their heritage. The Covenant has always required Israel to demonstrate their love of God in the way they live. And God has repeatedly put the ax to the root of the trees in the past. Israel has endured the consequences of their faithlessness again and again.
What are they to do, then?
John exhorts them to bear fruits of righteousness. They are to be exceedingly generous with each other. Tax collectors must stop extorting extra money out of people as they collect taxes for the hated Romans. Roman soldiers must not abuse their authority, either.
All of this sounds good and right and true. It fits with all of those old stories of repentance and restoration that formed Israel and their witness to the One true God.
And it reminds them of another time, the last time, when Israel got right with God and overthrew an occupying empire. About 200 years before this scene, the remnant of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian Empire put a statue of Zeus in the Temple at Jerusalem, a pagan idol stabbed in the very heart of Israel and a total affront to God.
A group of rebels called the Maccabees got fired up! They led a revolt which successfully ejected the Greeks and reestablished Israel as an independent, whole nation for the first time since the Assyrians conquered them 550 years before that.
That newly reestablished Israel lasted for about a hundred years, until things went wrong again. In-fighting among rivals opened an opportunity for Rome to step in, and they’d been there ever since.
Let’s recap: From 750 years before John the Baptist and Jesus began to preach, Israel was united and free for about 100 years. And those 100 years were the only time until Israel was reestablished in 1948. That’s a long time. They have long memories. They remembered it then and they remember it now, 2,000 years later. (Hanukkah celebrates when the Maccabees rededicated the Temple and a day’s worth of lamp oil miraculously lasted for 8 days.)
It was so very natural for them to seek and expect that victory again, if they could get right with God again. It was so very faithful for them to seek it through repentance, personal repentance. It was so very obvious for them to see John as the sort of charismatic leader that God would use to win against impossible odds. That was and had always been their story, after all, as the people chosen to demonstrate the might of the One true God to the world.
But, no. When they start murmuring about John being the Messiah, he redirects their thinking. That’s not God’s plan this time. The old cycle of failure, repentance and restoration is over.
This was a radical this shift was for them. They expected good behavior to bring blessing and bad behavior to bring curse. And how hard will it be for the world to grasp this Good News? The rest of the world has predicated everything on finding favor with various gods and goddesses, who were just as wayward and moody as people. The Gentiles that had come to hear John were attracted to the true God who set the true standard.
Now John says repentance and amendment of life is just a prelude to a new revelation from God and an entirely new relationship with him that is the fulfillment of all that He had promised them for thousands of years, that will take root within them. It’s a shift moving from how well a person behaves to receiving internal transformation from God and empowerment by his Holy Spirit.
It's kind of like this. I like cream in my coffee. A few times I’ve had coffee in a clear glass cup. When you pour cream into black coffee, the cream drops to the bottom and for a few moments it looks like an explosion, or a roiling storm or smoke from a fire. It’s fascinating to watch the clouds of cream billow. It rises and falls side to side. As it does so, it starts to mix with the coffee. You can see infinite shades from white to the darkest black coffee, and they are ever-changing as more cream naturally mixes with more coffee in varying stages.
Eventually you stir it and it becomes one shade of brown. The coffee is still coffee, but it has been transformed. Its bitterness is eased and it has grown smoother and sweeter. (I use a sweetened creamer. This analogy only goes so far because once you add ice and 10 shots of flavored syrup and whipped cream it has become something else, in the same way that coffee ice cream is not coffee.)
When we receive Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, parts of us transform immediately. The cream is God’s love dumped to the very core of our being. We are painfully aware of the parts that have not transformed, and the billowing clouds on the edge of transformation. But we are being transformed, day by day. You’re still you, but you’re smoother, sweeter over time.
Eventually, He will give us that final stir. “Stir up your power” we prayed at the start of this service. Stir it up!
We still “try harder” to “do better,” but remember that is preparation for receiving Jesus and his ongoing transformative work in you. And through you, through your love and witness, he will share this blessing with others. He’s coming. He’s always coming.
AMEN