Zephaniah 3: 14 - 20; For the Psalm: Canticle 9; Philippians 4: 4 - 7; Luke
3: 7 - 18
A
homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given
at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon,
Illinois on Sunday, December 16, 2012.
“TO
COMFORT THE AFFLICTED, AND TO AFFLICT THE COMFORTABLE”
(Homily text:
Luke 3: 7 - 20)
It’s been said that one of the
preacher’s tasks is to “comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable.”
Today’s gospel reading, which
continues the account of John the Baptist’s baptizing in the River Jordan, and
his message of repentance for sins, does just that. His cry in the wilderness shakes people out
of their comfortable smugness.
John’s message applies to both Jew
and Gentile in his day, 2,000 years ago.
His message applies to all people everywhere, and to us today.
The Baptizer seeks to afflict us, to
shake us out of our slumber, to awaken us to God’s ability to stir us up, as
the Collect for the Third Sunday in Advent says, “Stir up thy power, O Lord,
and with great might come among us…”
As we look at the focus of John’s
address, we see that it is aimed at the Jews of his day, whose claims of racial
superiority as descendents of Abraham, are swept away. “…Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have
Abraham as our father,’” John says, continuing “for I tell you, God is able
from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”
“You can be replaced,” John is
saying.
Then, John turns his attention to
those who worked for the Roman government itself….He tells those who collected
tolls and taxes for the government that they are not to cheat people by adding
to the actual amounts owed. And to the
soldiers, he says that they are not to use threats of violence as a means to
extort money from people.
Both practices were widespread in
John the Baptist’s day. These were
practices that victimized helpless people.
As we move through Luke’s gospel account in this third year of our
lectionary cycle, we will see many examples in Luke’s writing that show his
concern for the poor and the helpless.
“To afflict the comfortable, and to
comfort the afflicted,” this is the preacher’s task. It is the prophetic voice that follows in
John the Baptist’s tradition.
The prophetic voice in preaching
often involves walking a lonely road, just as the Baptist did those many years
ago. The prophetic voice in preaching
dares to speak the unspeakable, to point out the ugliness of our unresponsive
attitudes toward God’s demands for repentance and for amendment of life.
For the Baptist’s cry isn’t just
meant to sweep away our defense mechanisms, by which we seek to isolate
ourselves from God’s demands. The
Baptist’s cry also demands that we demonstrate by the way we live that we have
heard God’s voice in the words of the prophet.
So the prophetic voice and its cry
are timeless, applying to all persons, no matter their station in life or their
heritage. It applies not only to our
beliefs, but to our attitudes and to our behavior.
The prophetic voice demands that we
lay down all our claims of special status.
It demands that we surrender all our notions of exemption from God’s
power and place in our lives. It demands
an integrity of life that unites our professions of faith with our actions.
And what of the comfort that may be
given to the afflicted among us? The
truth of God’s message, coming to us through the words of the prophet, is
this: When we lay aside our isolating
claims of privilege, we can honor the Lord’s command to care for the widow and
the orphan, and the poor among us. We
can become aware of the subtle ways in which we exploit the powerless and
oppress the defenseless. As we said
above, these, too, are Luke’s central concerns as he records the words of John
the Baptist and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with
great might come among us.
AMEN.
