BEAR FRUITS WORTHY OF REPENTANCE
Advent 3c 2024; December 15
Luke 3:7-18; Jack Hardaway
FALLING IN LOVE
I’ll let you in on a big secret that isn’t really a secret.
The true way to read scripture is not as a recipe to follow to get to heaven.
That is the common mistake.
The true way to read scripture is to look for God in the lives and stories of those who have been handed down to us. Sacred stories where God is revealed. People whose lives were messed up living in world that was messed up, finding God and a radiant love in their stories.
Scripture isn’t about how to get God to like me enough so that I have a pleasant afterlife.
Scripture is rather about finding God and falling in love.
The true way to read scripture is also the true way to read our own lives.
John the Baptist was a character, unfiltered holiness, demanding, intimidating and alluring.
He was a character who revealed God.
I think it is safe to say he never took that class on how to make friends and influence people.
Dale Carnegie was not on his book shelf.
Salvation was at stake. Time was short. The message burned in his bones and had to be spoken, the revealing word. He didn’t have time to play word games.
Brood of vipers!
Who warned you to flee the wrath to come!
And that is how we first meet this crusty, salty, feral saint who reveals God.
A nice polite introduction.
Though they really were a brood of vipers that sought him out.
Remember that scene in the first Star Wars movie where Obi Wan Kenobi is looking down on the city of Mos Eisley? He says to Luke Skywalker, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”
That is who John the Baptist hung out with. This was much more than Garth Brookes and his friends in low places.
These people did horrible things to other people to make money.
He told everyone to share with those who don’t have enough, share a lot, a whole bunch, and to not abuse their authority and power to take advantage of the vulnerable.
In the case of the tax collectors and soldiers he was speaking to, in that place and time, they were government contract workers who made their living by extortion.
They were truly vile and despicable people, who were truly and deeply despised by everyone, and rightfully so. They had a habit of disappearing or suddenly dying.
People who hated what they had become in order to survive.
John’s people.
So on one level we see an outline of ethical behavior.
To share and not take advantage of the vulnerable, to not use our power and authority to harm others.
But if we keep looking we see more. We see God.
We see the God whose power and glory bring about human flourishing, building people up.
We see the God who shares deeply.
The God who is full of anticipation to become human.
We feel God’s anticipation to be in our lives.
We witness God’s excitement to share what makes life really alive.
We see the baptism of Spirit and fire.
God’s heart is a Trinitarian sharing of Father to Son to Spirit to Father to Son to Spirit, and from that dance of God’s sharing creation comes together and is held in life, and we are being challenged to share in that sharing, that power that builds up rather than tears down.
Communion.
A vision of God that is communion and anticipation.
That is what we see in John the Baptist, in his life and words, and in his friends, the sinners of Mos Eisley.
That is how to read scripture. That is how to fall into love and communion with the Holy One.
And that is how to read our own lives.
Each of our lives is like another book of scripture revealing God.
The mess of every day is another book to meet God.
Our failures and sins and abuse and selfishness and anger, our scum and villainy, are where God is found and revealed.
It isn’t that God is hard to find.
It’s that God’s presence is overabundant, more than we can behold for very long.
So we keep things on the surface, we make faith to be about following the right rules so that nice things happen to us eventually.
But falling in love with the one who is life itself?
That is the Baptism of Spirit and fire.
That is the big secret that isn’t really a secret.
To truly read scripture, to truly read our lives, to read God in the lives of those around us, is to fall in love with the Holy One.
Spirit and fire.
The Spirit of life. The fire of love.
What a character.