Luke 3:7-18
Advent 3 - Year C
What question do you have of John? What loophole are you seeking to find that will allow your greed to continue?
If you have not heard the sermonette in song by Sweet Honey in the Rock entitled Greed - run out and get a copy. Follow that link to find the words, which, while powerful, lack the tonalities to sink it deep within your soul. [and later found is a musical setting that is indispensible].
Isn't it amazing how this counter-cultural perspective is recognized as being Messiah-like. Be bold in continuing to put forward John's vision. Being a disciple of John is a good starting point to being a fellow-traveller with Jesus.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/december2003.html
"Don't say we have Abraham as our ancestor."
Ah, the issue of entitlement. It shows itself all over the place. On the basis of some perception, in this case ancestorship, we are freed from all constraints of community participation. We are a special case with all the rights and privileges that attend such.
This issue does not go away. The crowd could give away to Goodwill what they consider to be their extra clothing and then find themselves entitled to claim something as obvious as feeling good about their charily and now worthy of some particular perquisite. Tax collectors could live by the letter of the law and find themselves entitled because they are a righteous individual in an unrighteous system and are due a perk for their restraint, but they need to see that they have also restrained themselves from calling an occupying government into further question. Soldiers carry with them an aura of power and violence; so they do not have to go out of their way to extort cooperation because it is preemptively given. If they act as quietly as possible they still carry a big stick that entitles them to, at any time, act as big as their stick even if they didn't double-dip the economy beyond their wages and pension.
Now comes the hard part for prophets such as John and Jesus and me and you. We can be so smug in being able to see and describe the entitlement of others and to prescribe a next step that may open them to all the hazards and joys of community. This smugness of simply being a forerunner or a model of a new way of living with GOD and one another is fertile ground for further temptation to ever more subtle forms of entitlement.
Even subsequent imprisonment and death at the hands of the most entitled of the entitled is not assurance of having escaped the clutches of entitlement due a martyr. Check your own sense of what you think you are due, what that is based on, and what the next entitlement might be if you successfully negotiated the inherent dangers of this one. Blessings upon you, we're in this together (but if we then raise the stakes to what we are together entitled to, we may have jumped from the frying pay into the fire).
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/december2003.html
A brood of vipers has a nasty ring to it. However, what is at stake here are issues of growth, not strength of venom.
Religious traditions are consistently attempting to mold people into their shape and size ("their" here is the mold the tradition has become, not the "mold" of what the people might yet become). Religious reformers are usually quite clear about the changes people need to make to measure up to their standards. Therefore they are constantly calling for skin changes and, it turns out, no state of being is quite good enough.
Having seen that there are consequences for actions, an easy response is to change religions, skins, to molt.
John doesn't spend a moment on skin changes - that we are to wait for the right appearance, more room for accumulation of resources, or other criteria before paying attention to justice issues. Who warned the crowd to come out to John and get changed? John ultimately doesn't care, he dives right into what is available in the stage of life currently available - "bear fruits".
Well, asks the crowd, if we are not here to get an acceptable molt or maintenance oil change, "What then should we do?"
Simple kindness and everyday justice, is John's response. He uses economic justice examples, but it boils down to human values we were created with, that are available to be expressed in our current life. Economic justice is a worthy fruit.
- - -
we came with high expectation
we just need to bow before Procrustes
we will become the acceptable size
we will find standards
we will solve today by focusing on tomorrow
John dashes the expectation
we are changing to a new high expectation
we just need to bow before John
we will have needed power
we fill find ease
we will solve today by focusing on John
John dashes the expectation
we are left waiting without expectation
we just need to be kind and just
we will be open to a change of heart
we will find assurance
we will solve today by focusing on today
John affirms this message of good news for the poor
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html
The deal here is not to flee from that which you are trying to avoid - wrath to come based on who I have become - future consequences for past actions. No, turn into that fearful place and be kind to yourself and your web-footed friends.
This kindness will show up in the equality of sustainability (the rich with twice what they need will not continue so because it would require those who have less than half they need to have even less). Kindness will appear with a willingness to not claim the usual perks of your familial/social/economic position (entitlement, for any old reason at all, comes in many guises). This kindness is also an antidote for power (a satisfied mind will be recognized for the blessing it is).
Beyond all that, turning from wrath will also show up with a gift of service. John needed to address his own station as well as that of a crowd, a tax collector, or a soldier. His encounter with G*D that led him to wilderness crying was not to privilege him. He is only to soften hard-hearted soil with a gift of water so a sealed seed of wholeness can finally sprout. His privilege is to do the difficult work of clarifying unrecognized need and beginning its journey to joy.
You don't have to be a Messiah or a Messiah-in-Waiting before you can join with Wilderness John in simply clarifying a deep need in the situation of life and pointing beyond a sprout to a fruit. In this small way your appreciation of the Presence of G*D will set in motion good news.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_12_01_archive.html
Living expectantly is a good thing. We can do so from a positive or a negative position. Whether expecting the worst or the best, our expectations do change our engagement with the world around us.
Expectations are motivational and perhaps a more discriminating reflection needs not to be between worst and best, but whether an expectation is based on something approximating reality so that we are not just operating habitually in a glass-half-full or half-empty manner. Can we expect either or both the worst and the best, not just one or the other, and begin to see which better fits a particular situation?
John is recorded as mostly being a worst-case motivator. As we move toward another shift in consciousness, my hope is that we not get stuck with wrath as our major source of energy to change. What about being motivated by love — as in love G*D, Neighb*r, S*lf, One-an*ther, and En*my? This seems to be more where John points as a revelation or recognition of an energized spirit even as he seems stuck on bad news as his way to get there.
So what is on your horizon? Disaster? Good Fruit?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/12/luke-37-18.html