Lectionary Reflection — Third Sunday of Advent (Year C)
7Then John said to the crowds who came to be baptized by him, “You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon? 8Produce fruit that shows you’ve changed your hearts and lives. And don’t even think about saying to yourselves, ‘Abraham is our father.’ I tell you that God is able to raise up Abraham’s children from these stones. 9The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire.”
10The crowds asked him, “What then should we do?”
11He answered, “Whoever has two shirts must share with the one who has none, and whoever has food must do the same.”
12Even tax collectors came to be baptized. They said to him, “Teacher, what should we do?”
13He replied, “Collect no more than you’re authorized to collect.”
14Soldiers asked, “What about us? What should we do?”
He answered, “Don’t cheat or harass anyone, and be satisfied with your pay.”
15The people were filled with expectation, and everyone wondered whether John might be the Christ. 16John replied to them all, “I baptize you with water, but the one who’s more powerful than me is coming. I’m not worthy to loosen the strap of his sandals. He’ll baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17The shovel he uses to sift the wheat from the husks is in his hands. He’ll clean out his threshing area and bring the wheat into his barn. But he’ll burn the husks with a fire that can’t be put out.” 18With many other words John appealed to them, proclaiming good news to the people.
Collect
Stir up your faithful Love, O God, which is the source of your power, and with great might come among us; and, because we’re sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and rescue us; through Jesus the Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
On this Third Sunday of Advent one might see a lot of pink (rose) candles or vestments in some parishes. This color represents joy — Jesus is almost here! How odd, then, when we read today’s Gospel Lesson. I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t get a sense of “joy” when I’m reading about an “angry judgment that is coming soon.” Certainly, I could have chosen one of the other assigned Readings but there are some things here in the Gospel that I’d like to bring out. I thought I’d covered this passage in my New Testament Eschatology series but I hadn’t.2 So, let’s briefly address some things here.
A lot of people, especially where I live in the U.S., get hung up on the “end times.” The belief is that Jesus is coming back “soon” and that’s read into passages like our Lesson today. That is, some people believe John is speaking to us about our time. He is (sort of) but not really (we’ll come back to this). Let’s break down this passage.
We see from verse 7, that John was speaking to the crowds that came to him for baptism. That means, right from the jump, John is not speaking to us about our time — he’s speaking to the people of his time.
He then tells them, “Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon?” John’s addressing the crowd around him and tells them that “angry judgment” is “coming soon” upon them. Again, this points to their time and not ours.
John goes on to say to his contemporaries, “The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire” (verse 9). Here, John’s calling the people around him “trees.” The “angry judgment” that’s “coming soon” is coming sooner than people expected — “The ax [was] already at the root of the trees.” In other words, the forester was already in their midst with an ax in hand. The forester’s going around inspecting the “trees” and if they’re not producing “good fruit” they’ll be cut down and burned.
While this is clearly a metaphor on the one hand (people aren’t trees, obviously), on the other hand it’s not. We know by looking back that John’s speaking about the then soon coming war with Rome when the city of Jerusalem was destroyed, burned to the ground, and the foundation stones razed. The “angry judgment” John’s talking about here took place roughly 40 years later.
But let’s look at something else. While these statements from John are directed to his contemporaries, they can still speak to us. What I mean by that is John told the crowds around him to “produce fruit” that showed they’ve “changed [their] hearts and lives.” To use an old word a lot of us are more familiar with, John’s telling the crowd to show they’ve “repented” through their actions. He then gives them some examples of what that looks like —
“Whoever has two shirts must share with the one who has none, and whoever has food must do the same” (verse 11).
While this is directed to John’s contemporaries, it can — and should — be applied to all people who follow Jesus throughout all ages. All of us who claim to follow Jesus must do “good work” (to quote St Paul3) that show we’ve changed our “hearts and lives.” So what might that look for us today? I think the sharing of possessions and food with people who are lacking is a “must,” as John states here (verse 11). In fact, it’s been applied throughout Christian history. And not cheating or harassing people should be on our list, too. But what are other things that we could do to show that our “hearts and lives” have been changed by God’s Grace?
So how does any of this lead us to joy?
To be honest, for a lot of us, this Lesson might not lead us to joy. At first blush we could be happy that the “angry judgment” isn’t for us; that it’s an event of the past. From my own experience, when I learned that almost all of the “end time” events of the New Testament were already past, a huge relief came over me, fear I didn’t even realize I was carrying dissipated, and I was overcome by joy. Not because other people suffered but that my loved ones wouldn’t. Not in the supposed “apocalypse,” anyway. Perhaps that might be the case for some of you, too.
Further, I propose that we could be led to joy if we take our previous lessons into account too. That is, if this Advent we stop looking for Jesus to come in the future at the supposed “end of the world” and start seeing Jesus in others — especially the poor and marginalized — and start doing “good works” for them, then, yes, our joy will be overflowing.
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In the Love of the Three in One,
Br. Jack+, LC
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1. Scripture quotations marked (CEB) are taken from The Common English Bible. Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible.
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