A sermon by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, December 13, 2009
3 Advent, Year C -- III Zephaniah 3: 14 – 20; Psalm 85: 7 – 13; Philippians 4: 4 – 9; Luke 3: 7 – 18
Remember learning how to ride a bicycle?
If your experience was anything like mine, it was a harrowing and puzzling experience. I recall my learning process quite well: it consisted of some one who was older and more experienced at riding than I was (a friend), who put me up on the seat, told me what to do, and gave me a shove.
Off I went, the friend running alongside me. He’d say, “steer”. Then he’d say, “pedal!” Then he’d say (when I forgot to do one thing or the other) “pedal and steer.” Occasionally, he’d have to prop me up when I began to fall one way or the other.
Did you have an experience like that?
Well, of course, most all of us eventually got the idea of what we had to do in order to be able to stay upright, steer enough to stay on course, and pedal enough so that we could keep moving and so that the front wheel would assist us in keeping our balance.
But at the beginning, it was hard to remember to do everything we had to do (steer, pedal and stay upright) in order to be a successful bike rider. It was hard to master all of those necessary tasks, and to balance all three so that we could be on our way.
The walk with God is a whole lot like learning to ride a bike….it is a balancing act, one that involves a close and intimate relationship with God which nourishes us. It involves learning about the truth of God as we hear it in Holy Scripture, and it involves reaching beyond ourselves in God’s name and for the benefit of others.
But our walk with God differs from the task of learning to ride a bike in that the balancing aspect of it – the mastery of all of the tasks needed – never ends. Eventually, we get the “hang” of riding a bike, and we never forget how to do it (or so the old adage goes). But the Christian walk with God never ceases to call us into deep reflection about our success or failure with respect to keeping all aspects of our spiritual life in play at all times.
John the Baptist’s preaching called his original audience – as it calls us today – into a life of spiritual balance. John emphasizes three aspects of our relationship with God, all of which must be present in our relationship with God. They are:
- Prophetic teaching which acknowledges the truth of God
- Living a life of repentance
- Social outreach to others
A key aspect of Luke’s understanding of the Gospel is outward movement. We see it in today’s passage, in John the Baptist’s preaching, for John addresses first of all the inward disposition of the heart toward God, moving then into concrete actions which take us outside of ourselves.
We also see this outward movement in the identities of the three groups who come forward to ask John about their own actions. The identities of the three groups foreshadow the movement of the Good News outward from Jerusalem into the wider world.
So, let’s trace this outward movement. We will mention the larger movement only briefly (because it’s important to be aware of), and we will tie it to the three groups who come forward to ask John what they ought to be doing in order to be doing the will of God.
We begin with the larger picture of the outward movement of the Good News (the Gospel) of God:
The Acts of the Apostles: In Acts 1: 8b, we hear Jesus’ instructions to His disciples, who are about to become Apostles, when He says, “and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Luke understands that the center, the locus, of God’s redeeming acts is Jerusalem. But from there – the city where Jesus suffered, died and rose again, the city where the Holy Spirit descended upon the believers at the beginning of the Church’s work, the Good News goes forth into the surrounding countryside around Jerusalem, which is Judea, then northward into Samaria, and from there into the world itself. Outward movement is discernable in the geographic movement of the spread of the Good News.
Those who question John the Baptist: Three groups of people come forward to ask what they each should be doing. Present among the three groups is the same outward movement we see in Acts 1: 8b. Follow with me the three groups:
- The multitudes: Presumably, those in the multitudes who come forward are Jews, for John the Baptist addresses them at the beginning of our passage today, telling them that they should not lay claim to a special status because of their descendency from Abraham. So this initial group is most likely composed of Jews who live in the Jewish homeland.
- The tax collectors: In many cases, tax collectors were Jews who collaborated with the Roman occupiers of the Holy Land. So, in this group we begin to see the outward movement from the Jewish world into the pagan world, through the connection of these tax collectors to Rome and its army and to its governmental system.
- The soldiers: If the soldiers are mercenaries (as they might well have been), then it’s possible that they were Gentiles. If so, then the outward movement we’ve been tracing is reaching out into the pagan, Gentile world in its fullness.
These three groups (if I am correct in my hunch about the identities of the three groups) foreshadow the future reach of the Good News once the Holy Spirit has come, moving from the Jewish homeland into the wider world.
Now, let’s turn to the inward aspect of this outward movement. And to trace this motion, we return to the text before us today.
The first thing to notice is John’s call to outward movement. It comes in the form of a call to “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” Bearing fruit has everything to do with producing something which comes – in the plant world - from a relationship of the plant to the soil, to the water and nutrients in the soil, to the sunlight, and so forth. From this relationship springs discernable, outward fruit. Applying this principle to the spiritual life, we can see that being grounded in God, in an intimate relationship which is unmarred by the presence of sin and which allows the spiritual “nutrients” that flow from God alone, creates the conditions necessary for the discernable, outward fruits that God desires.
Now, notice that John the Baptist addresses the inner disposition of the heart. He begins by brushing aside any claim to be in a special category of people that God might favor, admonishing his hearers that they should not claim to be “children of Abraham”, for God could raise up children out of the very stones themselves, John says. So, by reminding his listeners of this reality about God’s nature, John preaches the truth of God (the essential meaning of the word “prophecy”) which says that God will, first of all, destroy all the defenses we might want to erect around ourselves.
(Next, John reminds his listeners that every tree which does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.)
John’s prophetic preaching must have been very effective. The questions begin to come, and they seem to have an air of urgency about them.
All of the answers John supplies have to do with outward, visible fruit, fruit which springs from a right relationship with God as the starting point for being able to produce anything at all.
All of the answers John supplies carry a person outward, beyond themselves, into the world in direct, discernable actions which are the mark of a fruitful life: give someone else your coat (John’s words, put into modern terms) if you have two coats, be honest in your dealings with others (the root application of the admonishment to the tax collectors) and don’t exploit others (the “bottom line” of the instruction to the soldiers).
It’s worth noting at this juncture that each of these actions fit well into Luke’s understanding of the Good News. For Luke is deeply concerned with living the everyday life of God in the world. Luke’s concerns are deeply practical ones. He seems to be wrestling with a question which may well have been on the Church’s mind at the time he wrote, which might be characterized this way: “What does God want us to be doing, as God’s people if we are going to be in the world for a considerable length of time?”
Indeed, what does God want us to be doing today, as God’s people in the world and in this place? How might we bear “good fruit” for the kingdom of God?
And this concern brings us back to the question of balance.
Remember that we began with the idea of learning to ride a bicycle. At first, remembering to do all the things a person has to do to be able to ride is difficult. It’s hard to balance everything that one has to in order to make the machine go forward.
Recall also that we said that, eventually, most people get the concept of balancing the various tasks so that riding a bike becomes second nature. But, we also said earlier on, that the spiritual life we live with God isn’t like that. This walk with God requires constant attention to the balancing of all the aspects of living the Christian life.
And it is to this question we turn, as we look into the wider Christian world. There, we can see some churches that focus their attention and their energies on the proclamation of God’s truth (prophecy). Others tend to hold in high esteem a person’s private life with God, while others tend to put lots of time and attention into practical, social outreach projects.
Relatively few are the churches who manage to balance all three of these aspects of the Christian life. Indeed, the church I grew up in during my youthful years probably did an excellent job at teaching, preaching, and prophecy. But it did a poor job in the areas of social outreach. Inward, personal values were highly esteemed in the church of my childhood, but meeting the needs of people around us who were in need in some way almost didn’t reach the radar screen of our consciousness.
And we could cite other examples where just the reverse is true.
Luke’s understanding, as we hear his record of John the Baptist’s teaching, would be that we must bear good fruit for the kingdom. But we can only do so from a life of repentance which allows a firm rooting in God’s soil. Furthermore, if we are to bear good fruit, then we must remain solidly rooted in the Lord in order for good fruit to appear. For the bearing of fruit is not optional. Every tree which does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire, John reminds us.
Fruit which is fit for the kingdom will be outward, observable, good fruit which bears testimony to our relationship with God in the innermost parts of our being. Good fruit is the outward-and-visible-sign-of-an-inward-and-spiritual-grace , the grace of God, present within us. Put another way, this would be “sacramental living”.
Today’s text calls us into reflection, and into a comprehensive life in God which has as its core an intimate and deep relationship with God, which acknowledges the truth of God, and which bears good fruit for the kingdom.
May it ever be so with us.
AMEN.
