Good News?

Isaiah 12:2-6, Luke 3:7-18

December 17, 2006

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

“You brood of vipers! God has an ax lying at the root of you fruitless trees and you’re about to be cut down and thrown into the fire! This water baptism is nothing because one is coming to bring down fire, to sort out the waste among you and burn it in unquenchable fire!”

“So, with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people.”

So what do you think; is this the first joke in the New Testament? Just a chapter earlier, those angels we’re about to hear sing on Christmas proclaimed to the people that God would bring “good news of great joy [wait for bells]” What does that kind of good news look like? Being called snakes? Being warned that we’re about to be axed and thrown into unquenchable fire if we don’t straighten up and fly right? That’s not what we expect at this time of year! That’s why it is very tempting for clergy everywhere to absolutely ignore this reading and go on to something more “Christmassy,” especially as it falls on Gaudete Sunday (yeah, that’s Latin for joy so you can ring the bells).

But I do not think this is one of Luke’s jokes. And I do think that John very much felt that the news he was bringing was good news. The question is, good news for whom?

Well, first of all it is good news for all of us who are not direct descendants of Abraham by blood, not Jews. Isaiah and the other prophets had hinted over and over again at the fact that God’s love was not only for the chosen people, but also for all. Our Isaiah reading from today calls upon those who have been rescued from exile to make God’s deeds known to all nations, to sing praise for God’s works so that all the earth can hear. John gets even clearer about expanding the family of God beyond the bloodlines of Israel. That’s good news for most of us in this room, and it is news we need to take to heart whenever we think we are especially privileged with God because of any accident of our birth, our race, our nationality, our social class, our religion, our church membership. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., God is less interested in the color of our skin or other social or ethnic markers and more interested in the content of our character.

So the first good news today is that God reaches out to all people with the gift of grace. The second piece of good news comes in John’s words to those who asked him, “What then should we do?” John counsels those who have more than they need to share it (in John’s context, anyone with more than one coat had more money than the vast majority of the populace). He counsels those who work with money to be honest in their business. He counsels those who exercise power over people, like soldiers, not to exercise that power in a greedy or corrupt or cruel way, or seek to be enriched by that power.

So the good news here is to those who will be most impacted if these folk actually do what he says. Imagine a world where people shared with each other enough to make sure that everyone had what they needed. This is the good news for the poor Jesus said he came to bring. Imagine a world where anyone who had control over the economic life of people exercised that control honestly. Where there was no graft, no extortion, and no businesses that preyed on the poor by charging exorbitant amounts to cash their checks. Where corporate officers didn’t steal the pension funds of the workers. This would be good news for all of us at the middle and lower ends of the economy. Imagine a world where soldiers did not abuse prisoners or rape women and children, where the powerful did not use their positions for personal gain, where the powerful actually thought about how their actions impacted the lives of the most vulnerable in their societies. This would be good news of great joy [bells] for millions of people all over the world.

But there’s more. This would also be good news for those who have more than they need, for those who control money, for soldiers and others with power. You see, in John’s time, the tax collectors and soldiers were considered persona non grata at the Temple or synagogue or in Jewish society in general; they were seen as collaborators with the Roman oppressors. John didn’t send them away; he welcomed them. He said, in effect, “God loves you as you are, and God loves you too much to let you stay that way.” This kind of refining, of pruning, of threshing, to use John’s imagery, would free us from our own worst enemy, ourselves. Our baptismal rite for adults has this question in it: “Do you renounce the powers of evil and desire the freedom of new life in Christ?” Freedom. That’s the good news John brings. Freedom from our own worst instincts that lead us into doing what does not bring us joy [bells] and gets in the way of our experiencing that abundance of life that God longs to bring us. It relieves us of the feeling that we can never have enough to be secure: enough stuff, enough money, enough power, enough control. John is not saying that Jesus will come to burn us up in the fires, but that Jesus will take that stuff that is getting in our way (the dead branches, the chaff that covers the wheat) and burn it up to free us to bear fruit for God. In the words of a wonderful Hanukah song by Peter Yarrow, this flame is for “the strength that we need to never become our own foes.” I don’t know about you, but this is a strength I need on a daily basis!

And it is not a strength I possess on my own. But, John says, someone’s coming who can give us this strength, although it is not without a cost. Now it’s not that “you better watch out, you better not cry, you’d better not shout, I’m telling you why, Jesus Christ is coming to town.” That implies we have to make ourselves perfect to be received by Jesus. That is not John’s message, and that would be very bad news indeed. Jesus does call us to do some hard work in pruning away the parts of our lives that impede both our fruitfulness as God’s children and, therefore, our joy [bells]. But Jesus does not call us to do this alone or as a precondition for God’s love, as some have interpreted these words of John to mean. What Jesus needs from us is what those tax collectors and soldiers gave John: the willingness to imagine another way of life was possible. Jesus needs us to ask again and again, “What then should we do?” And then be open to receiving an answer to that question, an answer that could be as difficult for us to hear as John’s answer was for them to hear.

So I leave it to you to decide if this line about John having good news is a joke from Luke or the most wonderful gift we might both give ourselves and receive from God this season. What then should we do to find the good news of great joy [bells] in this season that we have been promised? Most of us here probably have more than we need. Share what you have. Some of us here have control over the economic lives of others. Be honest and generous with your money. All of us here exercise power somewhere, whether with our children, our employees or co-workers, our students, or the cashiers in the retail establishments we frequent at this time of year. Wherever you exercise power, do so with justice and compassion. The promise is that even though these things may sometimes be difficult, they will ultimately bring us more joy [bells] than any package we unwrap on Christmas morning.

Listen again to the words of Isaiah, for this is what it feels like to live into the freedom of new life in God’s grace:

You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away and you comforted me. Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might. With joy [bells] you will draw water from the wells of salvation. Shout aloud, and sing for joy [bells], for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Good news. Amen.