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Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent – December 15, 2024
Luke 3:7-18
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
When people come to church, I usually say something like, “Welcome!” or “Good morning!” or “Good to see you!” I am genuinely happy to see people come through the doors for worship, no matter who they are. I’ll bet you’re the same way. In fact, our Stephen Ministers have recently been serving as greeters, and I’ve never seen anything but a smile on their faces and I’ve never heard anything but sincere joy when they see people coming in to worship.
And if somebody shows up at Oak Harbor Lutheran to be baptized? Well, I am thrilled! I am ecstatic. I even get a little giddy.
John the Baptist? Not so much, it seems. As we heard in our gospel reading for today, entire crowds of people came out to be baptized by him. And how did he respond? He said, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
So maybe we don’t want John the Baptist serving as a greeter here at OHLC. But as blunt and rude as John sounds here, he is really just doing his job. His job was to prepare the way of the Lord. His job was to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. And part of his work in preparing the way involved reminding people of why they need this Messiah, why they need to be saved, why they need to be rescued and redeemed.
And so John calls the crowd “a brood of vipers.” He doesn’t single out any one group or behavior – everyone gets tagged with this unsettling name. A brood of vipers is a nest of young snakes. A brood of vipers is a mass of slithering baby serpents. I’m not making this better for John, am I? To be sure, the language is unsettling, even insulting, but – it is theologically accurate! John calls those in the crowd the offspring of the serpent. He is inferring that they are the descendants of those in the Garden of Eden who followed the serpent into sin. We say the same thing in our baptism liturgy, only with more polite language: “We are born children of a fallen humanity.”
The crowds don’t argue with John. They don’t deny that they are in league with the serpent. Instead, they ask what they should do. And John tells them. If you have two coats and you see someone who has zero coats, share one of yours! Do the same with food! Don’t be greedy! If you’re a tax collector, don’t cheat. If you’re a soldier, don’t extort people and don’t be a bully.
This is not advanced ethics. All of this is already laid out in the Law. The Ten Commandments already taught all of this! None of what John teaches here is new information. None of it is complicated or extraordinary or heroic behavior. This is “Being a Decent Human Being 101.” But the fact that they need to be told to do the most basic ethical thing is revealing.
In preschool chapel recently I was teaching a lesson about the Ten Commandments and I introduced the topic by asking the kids what some of the rules are at preschool. And one of the kids said that one of the rules at preschool is “No kicking people in the head.” You would think this would go without saying, but apparently this little guy needed to be told. The rule itself, then, is revealing, isn’t it! Well, what John is saying here is just the grown-up version of that! That the crowd needed to be told the most basic things about how to conduct themselves just further reveals that they are indeed descendants of the fallen, that they are children of the serpent who deceived humanity into sin.
What John might lack in tact, he makes up for with truth. He tells the truth about the crowds, and the truth about us. John is accurate and honest about our condition, our situation. We may not be extorting people or kicking them in the head, but we too are born children of a fallen humanity – and we shouldn’t need to scratch too deeply beneath the surface of our lives to see that this is true.
In this way John is like a doctor who tells you not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. John may not have the best bedside manner, but as a diagnostician he is accurate and he is honest. He announces a diagnosis. He bluntly points out the venom in our veins, and he prescribes some behavioral changes, some lifestyle changes.
But, like a good doctor does, he also goes a step further. Seeing that our condition will not ultimately be remedied by lifestyle changes – as important as those lifestyle changes are – he refers us out. Knowing that his prescription will only manage our symptoms, at best, he refers us to another. He refers us to a specialist.
As soon as people started wondering whether John himself might be the Messiah, John admitted that he wasn’t. He admitted that they were going to need help from someone else. He told them that someone who was more powerful than him was coming. He would be the expert in curing the snake sickness we have inherited. He would be the specialist in this area. John isn’t worthy even to untie the thong of his sandals. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire,” John said.
On the surface, this sounds like more of the same from John. On the surface, John’s words about what the Messiah will do continue to sound ominous. Fire is a symbol of judgement. John says the Messiah will come with a winnowing fork in his hand – and whatever that is, it doesn’t sound like something you want to be on the wrong end of. John says that the Messiah will separate the wheat from the chaff, with the chaff being destroyed in an unquenchable fire.
Is this a specialist with whom you want an appointment? On the surface, maybe not. But thankfully, we can interpret this language from the perspective of what the Messiah did when he came. We can interpret this language from the perspective of who the Messiah ended up being. We can interpret it through the lens of Jesus Christ.
When Jesus came, he removed the chaff from people through the fire of his love. He showed mercy towards sinners, announcing that they were forgiven. This removed the chaff, that sheath of sin surrounding and obscuring the valuable wheat within. Jesus gathered in the precious grains of wheat, restoring them to the granary of God by the fire of his grace.
When Jesus came, he took the fire of judgement upon himself on the cross. He endured the winnowing fork with his own body, taking our sin upon himself so that we would be free.
When Jesus came, he not only died for our sin, he rose again – breaking the curse of the serpent, conquering sin and death forever, raising us to new life with him.
When Jesus came, he brought with him a new baptism, just as John said. Jesus told his disciples to go to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul teaches us that this baptism joins us to Jesus’ death and resurrection, for it takes the salvation he won for us on the cross and gives it to us personally. St. Peter teaches us that this baptism “now saves you.”
This is indeed a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire.
It is a baptism of the Holy Spirit because God comes to us in it. God is present and at work in it. Through it, God gives us his Spirit, that he might continue to guide us and teach us and repent us and renew us and comfort us throughout our lives. And by the power of this Spirit, truly good works begin to come out of us.
It is a baptism of fire because through it, God gives us his name – just as he did for Moses through the burning bush. It is a baptism of fire because through it, God leads us out of bondage – just as God led Israel by the pillar of fire. It is a baptism of fire because it puts good news in our hearts and on our lips, just as it did as tongues of fire fell upon the disciples. It is a baptism of fire because through it, God destroys everything that separates us from him.
John the Baptist is a good diagnostician. Jesus calls him the greatest of all the prophets. But John’s most important job is to refer us to the specialist, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Once the specialist goes to work on you, things are different. As the one who is more powerful than John, Jesus doesn’t just diagnose, he cures. His message isn’t just, “Do better!” It is “Your sins are forgiven.”
With the baptism he brings, we are no longer a brood of vipers. We are no longer children of the serpent. With the baptism he brings, we have been reborn as children of God and warmly welcomed into life with him, today and forever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church