Sunday LinkUp – December 15, 2024 – Luke 3:7-18

• Today is the Third Sunday of Advent, traditionally known as Gaudete Sunday (Latin for “rejoice”).
• As the word “rejoice” suggests, the focus today is on the Advent themes of joy and repentance (in contrast with hope and expectation on the First Sunday of Advent and peace and preparation on the Second Sunday of Advent).
• Given that our focus today is on JOY and REPENTANCE, it should not surprise us that the theme for this week is Rejoice! The One who comes is our salvation.
• If we were to consider this week’s readings, we’d notice that love flourishes with a change of mind.  Our perspective is broadened, and we’re able to rejoice that God’s dream for us is much bigger and better than we ever imagined.
• The sermon text, for today’s message, comes from Luke 3:7-18, and it’s a truth-telling sermon by John the Baptist that pulls no punches.
  • • John names our shortcomings and our self-interests go against God’s dream for creation, which is peace on earth.
    • But he doesn’t leave us with just bad news.
    • He gives us practical actions we can take and assures us that our salvation comes through Jesus.

Advent Reflection: “I’ve been thinking about … the idea that Jesus is making us whole through our longings, our longings for a world of goodness and peace, and also, our longings for things to be put right in our own lives.  Advent is the time we wait for our longings to be fulfilled.  And, at the same time, Christmas is a ritual in which we reenact the story of longings being made true and real in the life of the world.” — Micha Boyett

When Bad News Becomes Good News  Luke 3:7-18 NRSVUE

I have a few good news/bad news jokes for you:

Good news: You baptized seven people today in the river.
Bad News: You lost two of them in the swift current.

Good news: Your women’s softball team finally won a game.
Bad News: They beat your men’s softball team.

Good news: Church attendance rose dramatically the last three weeks.
Bad News: You were on vacation.

Notice that these jokes began with the good news, but when someone tells you, “I’ve got good news and bad news,” most of us will say, “Give me the bad news first.” A 2014 study showed that as many as 78 percent of people want to hear the bad news first so that they get it out of the way and end up with something hopeful to work toward a solution.

Our sermon text today starts off with some tough talk from John the Baptist (the bad news), but it ends with good news, including ideas for our participation in God’s kingdom on earth, the promise of Jesus, and the loving purification of our minds by the Holy Spirit.

Let’s read Luke 3:7-18.

⁷ Then he said to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him,  “Brood^[a] of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  ⁸ Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’  For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.  ⁹ And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees.  Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”  

¹⁰ So the people asked him, saying, “What shall we do then?”  

¹¹ He answered and said to them, “He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise.”

¹² Then tax collectors also came to be baptized, and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?”

¹³ And he said to them, “Collect no more than what is appointed for you.”

¹⁴ Likewise the soldiers asked him, saying, “And what shall we do?”

So he said to them, “Do not ^[b]intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages.”

¹⁵ Now as the people were in expectation, and all reasoned in their hearts about John, whether he was the Christ or not, ¹⁶ John answered, saying to all, “I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  ¹⁷ His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.”  

¹⁸ And with many other exhortations he preached to the people.

More background about Luke’s Gospel

Throughout his Gospel, Luke emphasizes women, marginalized (or powerless) people, and the work of the Holy Spirit. For example, Luke includes stories about women not found in any other Gospel, such as Jesus raising from the dead the widow’s only son at Nain (Luke 7:11-16), the woman caught in adultery whose sins were forgiven (7:36-50), sisters Mary and Martha (10:38-42), and the parables of the woman with the lost coin (15:8-10), and the persistent widow (18:1-8). Luke also emphasizes the responsibility of the rich to take care of the poor more than any of the other Gospels (Luke 3:11, 6:20, 6:24, 12:16-21, and 14:13). As for Luke’s focus on the Holy Spirit, this follows through to the book of Acts, which represents a sequel to his Gospel. Luke emphasizes that Jesus’ ministry is guided by the Holy Spirit, which was evident at Jesus’ baptism, and in the book of Acts at Pentecost.

Another important contextual element of Luke’s Gospel is the underlying tension of Roman imperial power with Judaism and later, Christianity. Authors Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan write that this tension came to the surface as the kingdom of Rome clashed against the kingdom of God, not as a territorial conflict or ethnic identity as much as it was a clash over “a mode of economic distribution, a type of human organization, and a style of world order, social justice, and global peace.” For Rome, peace was attained through victory and the often violent subjugation of enemies; in God’s vision for the world, peace came through justice and nonviolence. Jesus modeled this peaceful, nonviolent resistance to empire, and he was executed.

In our sermon text from Luke, John the Baptist is preaching to the crowds of regular people, not the Pharisees and Sadducees that appear in a similar passage in Matthew. The reading begins with John calling the crowd “a brood of vipers,” reminding them that repentance means more than relying on their genetic connection to Abraham, and then challenging them to bear good fruit. To their credit, the crowd asks, “How do we do that?” John’s response is not anything new. He talks about sharing even if you don’t feel you have much. John also calls out those in power, the tax collectors and soldiers, and admonishes them to stop extorting money, which created poverty for many. Instead, he encourages them to live in contentment with what they have. John ends his sermon by reminding his listeners that he was only the messenger, baptizing them with water, but the One who followed him would baptize them with the Holy Spirit and fire. Interestingly, verses 16 and 17 speak of purification by fire (i.e., “burn with an unquenchable fire”), which is not hellfire but rather God’s love that will cleanse us of anything that is less than what we were created to be. This was John’s proclamation of good news.

Let’s consider four ideas from this passage:

1.  It’s easy to become complacent in your religious activity.

While church attendance and participation in other outreach activities are important and can be an expression of our faith, John points out that membership in a religious club (or heritage) isn’t enough. Episcopal vicar Judith Jones writes, “Although it certainly does fit with Luke’s interest in redefining the people of God, John’s message needs to be heard by baptized Christians as well. It’s as shocking as if a preacher in a liturgical church today were to say, “Don’t presume to say, ‘We’re baptized!’ Show your faith by your actions.”

2.  The good news demands a biblical view of justice.

Barclay’s Commentary writes that John’s message “began by demanding that men should share with one another. It was a social Gospel which laid it down that God will never absolve the man who is content to have too much while others have too little.” John’s comments reveal a viewpoint that sees poverty as a failure of human beings to care for each other more than any fault of those who are poor. The way we earn money and use it shows our values.

John’s suggestions to the crowd were not new, “more like the stuff of kindergarten than the apocalypse,” according to Lutheran senior pastor David Lose. He writes the following:

Fidelity does not have to be heroic. There are opportunities to do God’s will, to be God’s people, all around us. These opportunities are shaped by our context: the roles in which we find ourselves and the needs of the neighbor with which we are confronted. But make no mistake, opportunities abound. John may have come from the wilderness, but the crowds — and we — live in the towns, villages, and marketplace, and these, too, can be places of testing and the arenas in which we offer our fidelity to God through service to neighbor.

For John and for us, repentance, or the changing of our minds, requires us to take action. Lutheran Senior Pastor Karl Jacobson writes that “Repentance here is not just (or perhaps even primarily) about the dialectic of faith and sin; rather, it is about how we are living out the love of our neighbor.”

I share these quotes to emphasize these are not just my suggestions; there is a consensus from different pastors and ministry leaders across the body of believers.

3.  The Messiah will cleanse us by the loving presence of the Holy Spirit.

Being baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire (v.16) sounds a bit ominous. However, God’s work of mercy in our transformation means we are cleansed of that which keeps us small and feeling separate from the Father’s love and from each other.  Remember, fire is a symbol of divine presence, such as the burning bush before Moses (Exodus 3:2) and the pillar of fire leading the Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 13:21).  For clarity, let’s read Luke 3:16-18 in The Message:

But John intervened: “I’m baptizing you here in the river.  The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out.  He’s going to clean house — make a clean sweep of your lives.  He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.” (Luke 3:16-18, MSG)

Being scrubbed clean and forced to let go of unhelpful or wrong beliefs about our value and lovability in God’s sight can be painful. Repentance requires us to die to preconceived notions about God’s expectations and then let ourselves be loved. With that as our baseline, we can properly love others.

4.  Proclaiming the good news includes political considerations.

The passage ends with v.18 saying, “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news [euaggelizo] to the people.”   The Greek word euaggelizo was not a Christian word, and in the cultural context of the Roman Empire, it could include good news that also had a political aspect to it.  (By political we mean, the actions/policies of government and the complex way people living in a society together relate.)

While Christians adopted this term to refer to the good news of Christ, the term itself has social and political connotations both in the past and for us today.  In conjunction with repentance, being cleansed by the Holy Spirit of our religious complacency and our tendency to neglect social justice, Christ followers need to consider how these values are reflected in our communities — and how we can be messengers of the good news in the communities around our congregational venues.  We can prayerfully consider how our local leaders reflect the nonviolent care of those groups who are marginalized, following the emphasis Luke portrayed in his Gospel account and the responsibility we have for the other as preached by John the Baptist in this passage.

As we continue our journey through the Advent season, we rejoice that Christmas is not only about Jesus’ birth and our sentimental rituals.  The stories and scriptures surrounding the birth of Christ are personal and political, and they provoke the transformation of our minds and hearts as we deepen the understanding of our role as citizens of God’s kingdom — God’s dream of peace on earth in its fullest reality.   Because of that, we can rejoice in the One who comes as our salvation.

Call to Action: As you move through your world during this third week of Advent, consider the opportunities you have to do good to someone else, and as you watch the news, evaluate government leaders’ words and actions through the lens of the way Jesus cared for those who were powerless.  It will lead you to praying for our leaders as we should.