Our reading this third weekend of Advent is again from the gospel of Luke:
John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
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“What should we do then?” the crowd asked.
John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”
Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?”
“Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them.
Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”
He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”
The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them. (Luke 3:7-18)
In our reading, John calls the people to bear fruit worthy of their claim to have changed. Repentance involves change. Socially, this bears out. For us as a society to repent of past wrongs, we must change the parts of society that are still participating in those wrongs. To fail to bring about change is to act in a way that contradicts repentance.
Later in Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells us that we can assess whether someone seeking to influence our communities is a “good tree” or a “bad tree,” and the test is simple: what kind of fruit does the “tree” produce?
“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briers. A good person brings good things out of the good stored up in their heart, and an evil person brings evil things out of the evil stored up in their heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. (Luke 6:43-45)
Character matters. Years ago I read part of Mohandas Gandhi’s autobiography where Gandhi rejects a Christian salvation that is only concerned with a “penalty for sin.” What Gandhi was questioning is whether Christianity offered any wisdom for how to bear different fruit in our lives. He was in dialogue with a Plymouth Christian who told him that change was impossible and the only hope was to be freed from the consequences of our actions. I agree with Gandhi that this is unacceptable:
‘If this be the Christianity acknowledged by all Christians, I cannot accept it. I do not seek redemption from the consequences of my sin. I seek to be redeemed from sin itself, or rather from the very thought of sin. Until I have attained that end, I shall be content to be restless.’ To which the Plymouth Brother rejoined: ‘I assure you, your attempt is fruitless. Think again over what I have said.’ (Mohandas K Gandhi; Mahadev Desai, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth, p. 64)
In our reading this week, John the Baptist isn’t concerned with consequences as much as change. He called his listeners to bear different fruit in their lives. That fruit is what we will be considering, next.
(Read Part 2)
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