Knowing What to Do: The Journey of Faithfulness
It comes as some surprise that the gospel reading for the third week of Advent – the week of joy – begins with a verbal attack by John the Baptist against the crowds that have come to be baptized by him. “You brood of vipers!” he screams. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
It is not a very good way to begin a sermon. Most preachers are trained to use the initial moments of the preaching event to win their congregations over. That is why they typically begin with silly jokes, nice stories, or pithy aphorisms. The last thing any preacher wants to do is to alienate the audience sitting in the pews. They almost never resort to insults and name-calling. They understand that portraying the congregation as a “brood of vipers” is bad form; it generally leads to dissatisfaction, resentment and hurt feelings. John would have done better, therefore, to follow the theme laid out for the third week of Advent; a good sermon on joy would have had the crowds eating out of his hands. But then, he probably did not have an Advent calendar to work from. So, he went from his gut and chose wrath instead.
“You brood of vipers…” the words are harsh and unforgiving. They evoke images of pits writhing with the undulating bodies of poisonous snakes. Such images fill most people with innate dread. We instinctively recoil with horror. Though snakes serve an essential function in maintaining the balance of nature, they inspire revulsion and fear. And what is true of snakes in general is especially true for venomous vipers. That is why asps, cobras, rattlesnakes, water moccasins, adders, and the like enter our imaginations as terrifying representations of evil. The viper is even one of the most popular forms used for mythological portrayals of the devil.
We are shocked, therefore, when John calls his hearers a “brood of vipers.” We intuitively make a metaphorical connection between vipers and evil. And so, it sounds to us as if he is telling the ordinary people who come to him for baptism that they are the spawn of Satan – that they have passed so completely into the realm of the demonic that there is little hope of their ever being redeemed. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” On its surface, the question seems laden with spitefulness. And that is how it has traditionally been read. The vast majority of sermons preached on this passage of scripture assume that the people listening to John are hypocrites who use outward forms of piety to disguise the wickedness that festers at the core of their beings. John seems to be telling them that flight from God’s wrath is futile. They are so rotten at heart that there is nothing they can do escape the judgment that is relentlessly coming upon them.
I suspect that a great many of us squirm in our seats when we listen to John’s words. We should! These words are not just aimed at first century Palestinian sinners. Through the good auspices of the gospel writer who has recorded them for posterity, they are also aimed at us. Luke wants us to know that we are the vipers’ brood. We are the ones seeking sanctuary from the wrath to come. We are the ones at whom John’s finger accusingly points. So, how do we feel knowing that our cover has been blown? How do we react to the public accusation that we use religion and spirituality to mask the truly evil intent of our hearts? What is it like to be called the spawn of Satan? If you are like me, you probably react with shock and indignation. The malevolence and wickedness we imaginatively attribute to broods of vipers does not fit with what we know of ourselves. We have our faults, but those faults hardly rise to the level of being satanic. We are, for the most part, good people trying as best we can to make our through a perilous world. So, how dare John – how dare anyone – refer to us as a brood of vipers?
Our indignation may prove to be the clue that helps us unlock what John is actually saying, so I invite us to hold onto it for a little while longer. Those who gathered by the river to receive John’s baptism were, for the most part, common folk from the farms and villages of rural Judea. There may have been a few Pharisees, a few wealthy landowners, some Roman officials, and a priest or two who wanted to know what all the fuss was about, but most of the crowd consisted of impoverished peasants wanting reassurance that God had not forgotten them. Had they interpreted John’s words as most people do in modern western Christianity, they would most likely have quickly returned to their farms filled with both outrage and disappointment. Any prophet who began by denouncing the poor and the oppressed for being the cause of their own problems could hardly have been of much use to them. The fact that they stayed to listen rather than stomping indignantly away – that they remained to ask questions rather than closing their ears in disgust suggests that they heard John’s words very differently than we do. Their lack of indignation may indicate that the offensiveness we encounter in John’s words is actually something we read into them. So, what else might John be saying when he calls the crowd a brood of vipers?
Those who live in urban areas have few opportunities to observe snakes in the wild. What we know of snakes, we learn from watching movies and television shows, reading books, hearing stories, or visiting the zoo. We occasionally hear about the giant python that escapes from its cage and kills a tiny baby in her crib. Or, we read about the hiker who accidentally steps on a rattlesnake and receives a near-fatal bite. Or we watch a movie like Snakes on a Plane in which poisonous reptiles escape from the cargo hold to terrorize passengers in the main cabin. None of these sources gives us an accurate picture of how snakes behave in their natural habitats. What the rural peasants of ancient Judea would have understood that we do not is that snakes are more afraid of people than people are of them. Given half a chance, snakes flee. They only attack humans when they are cornered or startled. Country-dwellers know, therefore, to make noise as they pass through snake-infested areas. They know to step loudly on top of a log rather than stepping blindly over it. They know that, given ample warning, a nesting brood of vipers will slither quickly away in every direction rather than face the dangers posed by an encounter with humans.
John, then, may not have been calling his hearers names. He may not have been accusing them of being particularly evil. He may simply have been telling them that they were like startled snakes slithering every which way through the grass. That, after all, was exactly what these people were doing. The Roman occupation had become so heinous that the peasants were desperate to find a way out. They chased after every self-proclaimed messiah who preached a sermon, hoping that each one would be the one who would finally set them free. Every new act of brutality, every new tax levied on land or goods, every new affront against traditional values and customs enflamed their passions and sent them scurrying into the wilderness looking for the next potential savior. Oh yes! They believed in the wrath of God. They hoped for the day when it would be poured out on their enemies. But, they wanted to ensure their own safety when that day came. So, they fled to the wilderness because the wilderness was the direction from which God’s avenging armies would come. They preferred rallying to the side of God’s Messiah and taking part in the destruction of God’s enemies over remaining behind and taking the chance of becoming collateral damage when the day of wrath came. Who warned them to flee from the wrath to come? Who else but the occupying armies of Rome , whose atrocities sent them hurrying – like startled snakes – after each new prophet or Messiah who came along.
John’s response to these people is surprising – maybe even shocking. He tells them to bear fruits worthy of repentance. Their Jewish heritage will not help them. It does not matter whether they can trace their genealogical line to Abraham and Sarah or not. Presumably, it does not even matter whether they believe the right things and worship in the right ways. What does matter is how they live. Do they live in a way that demonstrates the validity of their commitment to God? Is their repentance a matter of words alone, or are they willing to live their lives as though the kin-dom of God were real? If they have two coats, will they share one with the child of God who has nothing? If they have food to eat, will they share what they have with those who are hungry? For John, the true test of faithfulness is not a person’s willingness to flee into the desert in search of a savior. The true test of faithfulness is a person’s commitment to live generously, trusting God to provide abundantly.
Though tax-collectors and soldiers were among the most hated individuals in Judea, though their jobs forced them to collaborate with the enemy and to engage in activities that made them ritually unclean, John did not advise them to change occupations. What he asked them to do instead was to change the way they did their jobs. He advised them not to use their power for purposes of extortion – not to make threats or false accusations – not to grow wealthy by taking more from people than what they owed. They should, he told them, be content with their wages. This meant making a conscious choice not to be wealthy. It meant abandoning their dreams of upward mobility so that they could live faithfully in community with the neighbors whom God had given them.
For John, faithfulness was never merely a matter of belief. It was not about ancestry, culture, or even religion. It was not about pious pilgrimages to the wilderness in search of a messiah. It was not about words, rituals or holy books. Faithfulness was about living in a way that created community rather than destroying it. It was about making sure that everyone had enough. It was about trusting God sufficiently to do the right thing, no matter how much it cost. To be faithful was to do the opposite of what the startled brood of vipers did. Rather than slithering away as fast as possible from the wrath to come, the faithful stood firm, lived generously, did what was right, and trusted God.
We have seen such faith in martyrs like St. Stephen, St. Lucy, William Tyndale, Martin Luther King and Oscar Romero. We have seen it reformers like Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Cady Stanton, Dorothy Day, and Desmond Tutu. We have seen it in those who protest injustice and work for peace – in the Berrigan brothers, Rachel Corrie, Cindy Sheehan, Ehren Watada, and Jimmy Carter. We see it in the women and men of this congregation who work everyday to make differences both big and small in our society and in our world.
Though John pointed beyond himself to the one whose sandal he was not worthy to untie, he had a profound understanding of the nature of the gospel. The kin-dom of God proclaimed by John was the same kin-dom that would later be proclaimed by Jesus. It was a kin-dom in which faithfulness to God was measured in generosity and justice, in compassion and love. It is the same kin-dom we seek today. So, let us no longer be a brood of vipers fleeing from the wrath to come. Let us do more than anticipate the arrival of a savior. Let us live faithfully in the conviction that God is already in our midst, the Messiah is already here, and the Spirit is already leading us forward. This Advent, let us not just wait in anticipation for the coming of Christmas, but let us go into the new year with joy, living our lives in the pursuit of justice, the making of peace, and the building of faithful community. Amen.
The Rev. Frank D. Wulf
United University Church
Los Angeles, California
December 24, 2006
© United University Church
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