God's Fired-Up Farmhand

When I was 16 years old, I worked at McDonald’s. To speed service, the manager often sent someone outside to take and tally people’s orders. Back then, our inside uniforms were white shirts, dark pants, a tie, a white hat, and a butcher’s apron. When we served customers outside, we wore a blue blazer.

As I was sent outside one day, the manager remembered that the blue blazers were at the dry cleaners. He said I should wear his red manager’s blazer instead. Heading for the door I heard him shout to me, “Wait, you can’t wear that white hat. Here, put on this red manager’s hat. That way, if any corporate inspectors see you, we won’t get dunned.” No problem; off I went.

Things were going well. With me taking folks’ orders, the lunch crowd moved quickly. Then a woman asked me, “How old do you have to be to work here?” “16,” I said. She asked, “Are you hiring? My son is 16 and he needs a job.” “Well, we always take applications. Have your son come by at 2:30 and ask to see the manager.” “But, you are the manager,” she insisted. Then I realized I had on the red jacket, as well as a red hat with the word ‘manager’ blazed on both sides. Without skipping a beat I said, “Yes I am. I’ll take your son’s application any time after 2:30.”

Quick thinking avoided a corporate embarrassment. What my thinking didn’t do was change reality. Costumed as a manager, I expanded the masquerade by talking like a supervisor. But the internal reality, my identity, remained unchanged. I was, and continued to be, a line-worker.

John’s shout to the crowds in Luke 3:7-18, an extension of his preaching from last week’s text, focuses on just that, changing identity. Both John and those who take his preaching to heart are concerned with the difference between walking the walk and talking the talk.

Now I know many of our Advent scriptures sound harsh. Some even frighten us. John’s language is stark and scary. His effort is to speak clearly. He’s seeking to convince his hearers to use his confrontational style as an opportunity to take an honest stock of themselves.

If we hear John that way, the cloud of fear that shadows his preaching might thin. Then, we, too, may see and hear something new about ourselves, our God, and our relationships with others. I’m not interested in softening John’s words. I am interested in having his preaching achieve God’s intended results for our identities.

We may not enjoy John’s calling us a brood of vipers. Still, there’s no denying we know how low we can go! We also know how quickly and eagerly we can slither away from both challenges and threats to our selfish security. We even know how capable we are of shedding one kind of socially acceptable skin, to masquerade inside another, when it suits our interests. Are there any viperous somebody’s out there not getting this? Raise your hand. I can get more specific because this viperous somebody gets it good.

We can hear this bold talk because John’s speaking in the plural. Yeah, it’s personal all right. See, John’s accusation is an equal opportunity indictment. He’s not picking on us merely as individuals. He’s challenging the way we commonly define the identity we have and share as children of God. John says clearly, to provoke a confrontation intended to change us, that, as we are, at our deepest roots, we are living neither into the personhood nor up to the people-hood God has in mind for us. And John brings that judgment in the name of God.

When God invites us to turn around, i.e., repent, and reenter that personhood, that people-hood, we will, John says, “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” Now this is a good time of year to have that phrase wrap around us.

Come Christmas day most of us intend to bear some gifts. We often measure the worth of the gift we’ll bear against the worth of the relationship we have with the one to whom we’re considering bearing a gift. Maybe you’re in a work-related or casual friend secret Santa group that’s set a price limit on the gifts to be exchanged. No one really expects a gift worthy of royalty.

John doesn’t use the words “bear” and “worthy” in quite those ways. The fruit tree image reminds us trees don’t choose the fruit they bear. Pear trees can’t decide to bear apples. “Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” means the quality of the fruit you bear will equal the radius of your turn. If your turning from old ways is only half-hearted, then the fruit you bear cannot help but be half-hearted. That’s not a threat. It’s a fact. The image leads to John’s next tirade, meant to make a deeper challenge.

John says, “Don’t even think of playing the name game.” If he were a college admissions officer he’d be saying, “We don’t do legacy admissions. Your daddy graduated here, and that should mean what.” Just being black doesn’t get you into this historically black college. The question isn’t who are you related to, or who spawned you. John’s saying, rather, the way you live, your motives and actions, reveal your harmony with your heritage. If folks can’t see any relationship between your thin ways and thickness of your bloodline, it doesn’t matter. It’s simply not there.

If I must, I can say this in church language. It doesn’t matter if you claimed Christ at an early age. What matters is, by what you say and do, would Christ claim you today? It doesn’t matter when, how, where, or how often you’re baptized. What matters is whether your walk leaves wet footprints in your tracks. Doesn’t matter how long you been a church member. What matters is how your membership here makes a Christ-like difference out there.

It’s almost time to ask, with the crowds, the tax collectors and the soldiers, “What should we do.” We need to hear a few more things before we do that.

First, there’s a shift in John’s focus. He’s no longer shouting at a crowd. He’s in direct dialogue with particular people. That means, I think, the dialogue begins after these folks responded to his message. They heard it as good news, and received the baptism he offered. Second, because Greek has no word for ‘should,’ we translate the future tense of the verb “to bear,” using the word should. A more accurate translation is, “What shall we do;” as in, Now that we’ve been baptized, what’s next?” Last, the word ‘do,’ as in, “Now that we’ve been baptized, what shall we ‘do’ next;” is the same word translated as “bear” in v 8.

We ought to hear all this as, “Now that we’ve repented, turned around, got our old ways washed out of us, what are we bearing now and from now on.” I’m hoping that relieves us of overanxious measuring. You may have heard pastor of our Mission Partner congregation say it this way: since we have this new identity, what do we get to do and get to keep on doing. These questions don’t spring from our old identity’s gotcha, getcha, have-to, and should reality. Rather, they spring from our new identity that leans onto our true personhood and leans into our true people-hood as children of God.

I really do hope your hearing this as good news. There’s still more. Look at what John describes, or rather, doesn’t prescribe. John doesn’t tell any of them to run to the synagogue, high tail their sinful butts to the temple, or read the bible three times a day.

Instead, John tells them they will bear are the fruits of authenticity, genuineness, integrity. He says they will bear the fruits of identity, relationship, kinship and belonging. He assures them they will live in the world and not of the world.

The judgment John has pressed them to face and the judgment they’ve accepted makes them ready to receive and to join the message of the One coming after him. Namely, the tyrannical principalities of state-sponsored oppression, the submissive powers of cowardly religious systems, and the devices of self-induced delusion that entrap, enslave and deal death, will all be undone by the coming, Spirit-fired Messiah.

The fire of John’s message begins to shine a light by which we can see some new things. It matters to God that the society we sow still selects for the rich and sorts against the poor. God is concerned that the culture we cultivate still raises too many homophobes, racists and sexists. God is disturbed that the economies we establish exploit and enlarge an underclass. God cares that the ways we tend to the least among us leave too many folk out in the cold. God expects an "otherwise," fruitful harvest because God’s empowered us to keep Sharin’ Plenty Good News by equipping us for inviting, welcoming, discipling, nurturing, healing and rejoicing. God and all the hosts of heaven still sing with joy over one repentant sinner. God hungers for our holiness, as God is holy.

We can also see, when we receive the grace to look with courage, a new thing about both our true selves and God’s deepest desire for us. What God seeks is to separate us from the chaff we cleave to, so we can be gathered into the granary of God’s ever-growing heart.

What’s not to rejoice in and love about a God who loves us enough to speak all that truth to us?