Is 12 & Lk 3:7-18
13 December 2009
3rd Sunday of Advent
“What are We to Do?”
Every time I read today’s gospel text about John the Baptist, I’m reminded of a certain movie. It’s The Year of Living Dangerously; it received the Academy Award in 1983 for Best Supporting Actress. It was Linda Hunt’s standout performance as the dwarfish young man, Billy Kwan, that got the award. Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, who had starring roles, weren’t so bad either!
In the movie, Billy Kwan is a photographer, born of Australian and Chinese parents, who introduces Guy Hamilton, played by Gibson, to the Indonesia of 1965. Guy is an Australian journalist on his first foreign assignment. The political setting involves the president, Sukarno, who’s struggling to stay in control, while both the military on the right and rebels on the left make a push for power.
Early in the movie, Billy is walking with Guy in one of Jakarta’s many slums. Billy suddenly says, half to himself and half to Guy, “The people asked him then, ‘What shall we do?’ What then must we do?” Guy responds, “What’s that?” It’s then that Billy Kwan tells him that he’s speaking of John the Baptist in Luke 3.
He goes on and tells how the Russian novelist Tolstoy got so upset over the fate of the poor in Moscow that one night he went into the poorest section and gave away all his money. “You could do that now,” Billy says to Guy. “Five American dollars would be a fortune to these people.” Guy responds, “Wouldn't do any good, just be a drop in the ocean.” Billy acknowledges that he may be naïve, but this is his outlook: “You just don’t think about the major issues. You do whatever you can about the misery in front of you. Add your light to the sum of light.”
Later in the movie, after visiting the mother of a very sick child, he writes in his journal, “In another country, she would be a decent woman. Here she begs, and perhaps sells herself. Her tragedy is repeated a million times in this city. What then must we do? We must give with love to whomever God has placed in our path.”
Billy Kwan is haunted by the question the crowds ask John the Baptist after he issues his warning—his warning that just going through the motion of baptism is meaningless. What are we to do? “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise” (v. 11).
When tax collectors ask the question, they’re told to watch their greed—collect no more than necessary. Soldiers ask the question, and they’re warned about some age-old temptations for men with weapons—no bullying, no extortion.
People have presented themselves to John for baptism. There’s been a lot of debate about the meaning of John’s baptism. There tends to be general agreement that the ministry of John the Baptist is unique. He’s a prophet, but one with a special purpose. As we see later in the scripture reading, John tells the crowds that he isn’t the Messiah; he’s the one preparing the way for him. More than any other figure in scripture, John’s role is about the advent of Jesus Christ.
Prophets rarely make good diplomats. John’s reference to the people as a bunch of “snakes,” a “brood of vipers,” is a case in point (v. 7). In his somewhat less than cordial way, John lets them know that merely being a descendant of Abraham doesn’t amount to much.
Or, as I suggested
already, simply letting the Baptizer do his thing won’t cut it. They must “bear fruits worthy of repentance,”
as verse 8 puts it. In the Good News Bible, it reads, “Do those things that will show that you have turned
from your sins.”
In his version called The Message, Eugene Peterson picks up on that serpentine image when he has John say, “What do you think you’re doing slithering down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to deflect God’s judgment? It’s your life that must change, not your skin.”
Blunt he may be, John gives them a valuable reminder about their faith. Both Judaism, and Christianity which developed from it, are ethical faiths. That is, ethics matters in being a Jew or a Christian. In fact, all the major world religions have evolved in that way. Right belief needs to have right practice, right action. There has to be more than just attending the ceremony or participating in worship.
And the warning of John the Baptist applies to us. We might ask, “What then must we do?” Do we take the advice of Billy Kwan? Do we add our light to the sum of light? Do we give with love to whomever God has placed in our path?
All of us are pressured to let these words go in one ear and out the other: to forget or ignore the transformation that comes with the advent of the Messiah. There can be a temptation to dismiss all of this as some lovely language, but something that doesn’t mean squat!
Our scripture in
Isaiah 12 is actually today’s psalm reading.
(The Old Testament reading comes from Zephaniah 3.) It also
could be treated as some of that inward-looking piety that ignores the world
outside. Here’s verse 2: “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and
will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become
my salvation.” Or again, from the Good News
Bible: “God
is my savior; I will trust him and not be afraid. The Lord gives me power and strength; he is
my savior.”
Twice in this short chapter we hear, “in that day,” or “a day is coming.” It’s a reference to something we see in chapter 11. It’s a day when, for example, “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (v. 6). It’s a picture of the peaceable kingdom. Again, it looks like something that has nothing to do with our experience of reality!
Still, we shouldn’t take Isaiah’s words out of context. In the chapters right before this, we see a very “real world” problem. Howard Wallace notes that Ahaz, king of Judah, has “a difficult political decision to be made.”[1] In the mid-eighth century B.C., the Assyrians are the big boys in the neighborhood.
Ahaz is weighing his options. The Assyrian Empire has already conquered the northern kingdom of Israel. It looks like Judah, the southern kingdom, is next on the list. Ahaz is getting nervous. Should he go ahead and cut a deal with the Assyrians, or should he throw in his lot with the smaller kingdoms who plan to take on the superpower?
Isaiah suggests a third option to the king. Slow down; don’t do something stupid. As the prophet says in 7:9, “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all.” This only underlines the point: “The option of trust in God is not an empty pious response to the hard issues in the world. Rather it is our only hope and only real joy according to the book of Isaiah. In a world where faith is often questioned or considered ineffectual in the face of injustice, violence, or self-satisfaction, Advent calls us to reevaluate where our trust lies.”[2]
That’s a challenge issued to us every year during the season of Advent. Where is our trust? Where is our security? Of course, that message is easily drowned out amid the noise of Gap Kids singing, “I love my comfy sweater! I love my comfy sweater! How cute are these boots? How cute are these boots?” Or maybe we’re listening to our good old friend, G. Gordon Liddy, intoning how he puts his security in gold.
Reflecting on the questions posed to John the Baptist, Paul Nancarrow asks some questions of his own. “In what respects do we continue the tasks to which John the Baptist set his hearers, moving from coercion and exploitation toward mutuality and generosity?” “What society-transforming relationships can be seen emerging in our congregations, in our mission and outreach, in the ways Christians work in the world?”[3]
What society-transforming relationships are emerging? Wow. That sounds huge! Transforming society? Still, at root, what is society? Is it not the way we humans live together—and the patterns that emerge as a result?
It becomes more complicated than that, but it involves “forms of relationship [that] we explore.” As Christians, do we explore “forms of relationship that may seem insignificant in the ‘physical world, as we at present know it’”? Do we know what aspirations God would give us? “And how do we then rejoice in the new relationships God inspires to emerge among us?”[4]
Those are some good questions. Do we sense when God wants to do something new among us? Are we aware of the advent of something emerging? But aside from being aware of it, is it something we welcome? That can be a tough one. Do we actually rejoice in these new relationships, in these new ways of being?
In Colossians 1, the apostle Paul, speaking about Jesus Christ, says that “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (v. 19). That’s a good scripture for Christmas, by the way! He doesn’t merely say that God dwelled in Jesus, but that God was pleased to dwell in him. There’s a sense of energy, of liveliness. This isn’t something that is compelled, but something chosen—and chosen joyfully.
So, what are we to do? What then must we do?
It’s something to ask ourselves. Do we add our light to the sum of light? Do we give with love to whomever God has placed in our path?