Saint John the Baptist Preaching (1502) – Raphael
In today’s gospel, John the Baptist proclaims the good news to the people who have come out to hear him. His warnings of the coming judgement, the need for actions of repentance, his directions regarding the necessity of living fair and equitable lives, and his description of the Messiah about to arrive with a winnowing fork in his hand, a Messiah who will clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into the granary, and will burn the chaff not just with fire, but with unquenchable fire—all good news!
John the Baptist called the people who came out to hear him a brood of vipers. If I had been there that day, listening to this man, I probably would have taken offence, and headed back to Jerusalem, full of anger. After all, I’m a good person, bearing good fruits, assuring myself that I have little need to repent.
How dare John the Baptist tell me any differently?
As we all prepare for Christmas, I doubt any of us want to hear about repentance. We want light and joy in this darkest time of the year.
Of course we won’t avoid repentance, but we Episcopalians like to save that repentance conversation up for the season of Lent, several months down the road. And even then, we tend to soft pedal the idea.
So, there, John the Baptist, you and your message are a downright inconvenience! We’d like to leave your muddy riverbank and your biting words and get back to, our Christmas decorations, carols and cards, cooking and celebrating, our rejoicing in the Lord, as the Apostle Paul suggests we do.
I’d rather preach about rejoicing than about repentance.
But there you are, John the Baptist, calling us vipers and demanding our attention, calling us to repent as we prepare for the coming of our beloved Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the one with a winnowing fork in his hand.
So John, we are going to give thanks for you today and give you a few minutes of our time. We’ll try to figure out what you would say to us if we found you preaching on the banks of the Rappahannock. What would you tell us before we called Scott Moser or Tony Lippa to report a crazy person loose in Port Royal?
Maybe we can muster up the grace to respond to you, John the Baptist, as the crowds did that day and to ask what we should do to prepare for the coming of the Lord, rather than simply to dismiss or to ignore your offensive delivery, as we are so tempted to do.
The people who listened to John on the banks of the Jordan that day told themselves that they were descendants of Abraham, which meant that they were God’s chosen people, so what more did they need to do? But John says to them, “Nope, don’t even go there—God can raise up anyone to bear good fruit.”
If John were preaching to us, he’d encourage us to get busy and to clean out our own ancestral attics and basements. I’m sure many of us can relate to the fact that we’ve stored things in the attics or basements of our houses that seemed useful to save at the time, but now we have a mess on our hands, a pile of chaff that needs to blow away. Atrophy sets in. We just let that stuff sit because we don’t have time to deal with it now, or it would be inconvenient to deal with it now, or we don’t want to think about dealing with it now.
John reminds us that what we have held onto that seemed useful in the past may become the very things that turn out to be stumbling blocks to our bearing good fruit now. Repent of the past, John would tell us, and turn toward the future into which the Messiah will stride with that winnowing fork.
Part of the work that we Christians today are being called on to do in this country is to take a fuller and closer look at the history of our nation. Some of things that we have held onto in our national attic have kept us from bearing good fruit, but we didn’t fully understand that. A local example helps to explain what I mean.
For one hundred and fourteen years, the statue of the Confederate soldier stood in front of the Caroline County courthouse in Bowling Green. In a Board of Supervisors meeting in which people could speak for or against the removal of the monument, the Rev. Duane Fields, pastor of Second Mt Zion Baptist Church in Dawn, said that the monument reminded his people of slavery and the struggles of their ancestors. As the Rev. Cynthia Golden pointed out in the meeting, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” When the Board of Supervisors understood that this statue felt so divisive to so many of the county residents, they voted unanimously to remove it from the courthouse lawn.
This action on the part of Caroline County to remove the statue from the courthouse to the Greenlawn Cemetery is an example of bearing fruits worthy of repentance, more completely freeing the people of Caroline County to work together with mutual respect to make a positive difference for all people—that is, to bear good fruit.
As a church, we have a Sacred Ground group that is learning about the parts of our history we didn’t know, and working on things we can do in light of that history to make a difference and to promote justice in our own times.
John the Baptist would encourage all of us to get into go into the attics of our minds, to examine the relics that we find there, like resting on the knowledge that we are children of Abraham, and to get rid of the things that keep us from fully engaging in the work of justice and peace making that our Messiah Jesus showed us how to do in his time with us on this earth and asks us and expects us to do in our own time.
Just as he answered the people who were listening to him that day and who asked him what they should do to bear fruit worthy of repentance, John the Baptist would also give us some ethical teachings. He encouraged the tax collectors and the soldiers to take no more from the people than their actual wages, that is, not to use the power that they had been given from Rome for their personal financial gain at the expense of their neighbors. So John the Baptist reminds us to consider the power that we have, and to be careful of how we use it, for God’s glory rather than for our personal gain.
John the Baptist would encourage us who have more than enough to share with those who don’t have enough. As a church, we try to follow these teachings of loving our neighbor. John the Baptist reminds us too that part of preparing for the coming of the Savior is to pay attention to what we have in excess, and to be intentional about how we are to share with others, for this sharing is part of loving our neighbors as ourselves.
This teaching is one of the reasons why each year our Vestry sets aside money to share with others, and then at its December meeting disperses that money. At our meeting last Thursday, the Vestry voted to share $3000 from St Peter’s with Hunters for the Hungry, a group that gets venison to food banks and social services around the area; the Healthy Harvest Food Bank, a group that works to provide food for hungry people all over this part of Virginia; the Caroline Recovery Center, a group that works with people struggling with drug addictions; Caroline Young Life, a group working with teenagers in our school system; CERV, an ecumenical group that helps people in need in Caroline County; Episcopal Migration Ministries, the branch of the Episcopal Church that works directly with settling refugees from around the world, helping them to lead successful lives in this country; St Jude’s, the hospital that cares for children with cancer, money for the continuing work of the The Victoria School in Jamaica; and money for a new scholarship being established for a Caroline County student of Black or indigenous heritage who could not otherwise afford higher education to attend community college for two years. Grace Church, Corbin will also receive some money from this distribution, as our way of helping to preserve our Anglican history in Caroline County. The fact that we have money to share and that we are sharing it is cause for rejoicing in the Lord, and for the Lord to rejoice in us.
Last of all, John would remind us that our Messiah is on the way. Although we are preparing to celebrate the birth of this Messiah, John reminds us that we also celebrate the One coming who carries a winnowing fork in his hand, the One who will judge us, gathering the wheat into the granary and burning the chaff.
We can rejoice in the fact that our Messiah baptizes us with refining fire, burning away the chaff in our lives. Our Messiah fills us with the power of the Holy Spirit working in us to do God’s work in this world.
From the seeds that we have planted with the help of our Messiah, God’s peace and justice can spring up in us and on this earth, and we will be the wheat that the Messiah gathers in.
And that’s good news.
Resource:
Caroline officials vote to remove Confederate monument from courthouse lawn