Set

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday December 13, 2009, the 3rd Sunday in Advent.

Zephaniah 3:14-20
Isaiah 12:2-6
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

A couple of weeks ago[1] I lamented the way that preparations for Christmas are getting earlier and earlier each year. On Tuesday, I read a posting on one of my favorite websites by a Mr. Mike Kowalski of Rancho Cucamonga, California. He writes, “[I] Went to Disneyland on November 24, in search of, among other things, Disney-themed Christmas ornaments for 2009. Alas, none could be found. But there were plenty of Christmas ornaments with the date 2010.”[2]

In that sermon two weeks ago, I said that before Labor Day seemed excessive to begin preparing for Christmas, but compared to over 13 months in advance of the next Christmas August seems downright reserved.

Disney, in a kind of a sick way, is calling us along side toward the celebration of our dear Savior’s birth. Of course I think they’ve gotten ahead of themselves and that’s what I love about the liturgical calendar as opposed to the marketing plan of a major multi-national corporation and their mouse.

The joy of the liturgical calendar is that at this time of year it prepares us for the coming of the Lord and the coming of Christmas. The discipline of the liturgical calendar also exhorts us not to get ahead of ourselves. We get ready; we get set for the season that is to come. This exhortation is where we start this morning, leading us into John’s exhortations to the crowd.

But first, what is exhortation? According to the dictionary,[3] exhorting is like urging, advising, or cautioning earnestly. It also means admonishing urgently. It can also mean giving urgent advice, recommendations, or warnings. According to my big biblical dictionary,[4] the goal of exhortation is to persuade someone or some ones to act, or think in a particular way. Going back to the Greek roots of the scripture, exhortations came in two ways,[5] as comfort and as admonition. So in by whatever measure you use, exhortations contain elements of discipline and of soothing. There is not necessarily reprimand, but neither is there molly coddling.

Just as important, the Greek version of this word also involves calling the people to the exhorter’s side.[6] The one who exhorts calls the one who receives the word to come together and walk together. This becomes no more evident than when we discover that the Greek root of this word is later used by theologians to describe the Holy Spirit, Paraclete.

Our passage contains four very specific exhortations. I want to start with the last three before returning to the first.

In the first of the set of three exhortations, the crowd asks John “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”

John’s exhortation calls the people to share. But there is an important condition he places on this giving, a qualification which makes a great difference. John calls for those who have two coats to share and those with food to do likewise. John calls those who have more than enough to share with those who do not have enough.

What John advocates is radical. In a way, it is a privately supported welfare system which provides that those who have enough share with those who do not. It requires people who have enough coming forward to share, and it also requires those in need to come forward and receive what they need that they may survive.

This is truly a tightrope of love. While many people with more than enough are more than willing to share, there are others who are not. While many people with need seek help and assistance, there are others who are ashamed to ask. There too are those with surplus and those with need who manipulate the system, causing skepticism among all. Still, when this tightrope is walked with love, when those with more than enough walk alongside those with need; there is enough for everybody.

The next exhortation is directed at the tax collectors that came to be baptized who ask John “Teacher, what should we do?” John tells them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.”

As the old Revolutionary War saying goes, “Taxation without representation is unfair.” As the old Mad Magazine corollary goes, “Taxation with representation isn’t all that great either.” John exhorts these men to be honest, and more than being honest is the exhortation to be fair in assessing taxes.

Lurking just below the surface of this exhortation is a little known fact. Being a tax collector wasn’t always the job of “robbing from the poor” we think of when we think of tax collectors. The tax collector’s job is to pay tribute to Rome through the proper middle men. It didn’t matter if the people didn’t pay the tax collector; the tax collector still had to pay the state. So if an individual failed to pay their taxes, the collector was left in a lurch with the Roman overseers. Since this position was also often inherited much in the same way as a family farm, the problem became multi-generational.

In short, some tax collectors were as poor as the people they were collecting taxes from. Some of the tax collectors were in as big a pinch as those they were collecting taxes from. In a way, the only way a tax collector could be assured that they would have no need to over-collect from those who had more assets is for everyone to pay their prescribed taxes. How’s that for an odd exhortation, while directed at the tax collectors to collect no more than the prescribed amount, it also exhorts the people to pay the prescribed amount so that the tax collectors wouldn’t be tempted to take more than was due.

Again, this is a call to be fair in dealings, even paying taxes in love. Again, there were those who manipulated the system. The gospel story of Jesus dining with the tax collector is a fine example. When the tax collector promises to repay those he has cheated three times what he cheated them, we learn both that there’s a lot of tax cheating going on and it can be profitable, but this is not always the case. John exhorts us to respond in love, even in paying taxes.

The third exhortation was in response to the soldiers who asked “What should we do?” John tells them do not “extort money from anyone by threats or false accusations, and be satisfied with [your] wages.”

John tells those with direct and immediate authority to act justly. I can’t speak to the wages of what were probably local men serving as soldiers protecting the tax collectors. But John made their call to the general well being, protecting all manner of people from all manner of evil.

At least one scholar posits that the soldiers were paid poorly and expected to shake down the people to make ends meet[7] making manipulation a part of the system. So this is more than just a call to the soldiers to do their jobs and be satisfied with their wages, it is a call to the government to pay soldiers enough so that they won’t need to shake down the people to make ends meet. It is a call to the people to pay workers equitably so that they not be tempted to steal.

In all three of these cases, John illustrates the “fruits worthy of repentance.” John calls for radical and sweeping reform of the way business is handled in first century Palestine. He calls for the people to take care of each other and the government to take care of the things individual people cannot. People are to refrain from exploiting their positions for their personal gain at the expense of others. People who have wealth, power, and authority are to care for those who are less powerful.

But before we leave the specific exhortations, let us look at the first exhortation. John cried out to the crowd, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” I see this as more the discipline element of exhortation than the soothing.

He sees many of those who came out to be dead trees unable to bear fruits worthy of repentance. He sees the unrepentant as ax fodder, kindling for the fire which burns hot the chaff. Still, this is the same crowd he addresses with the exhortation on sharing. John knows that as God can raise children for Abraham out of these stones, the people can repent. John also knows that the people have come, and that is their start.

The crowd comes out to see John. Last week he tells the crowd to get ready. He tells them to prepare the way of the Lord, making his ways straight. This week he tells them to get set. He shows the crowd different ways that they can make straight the ways bearing the good fruit of repentance through a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He also warns that those who do not follow will face horror of unquenchable fire.

The last verse in our gospel this morning reads, “So with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.” John walks beside us, providing examples to prepare us for the one who will baptize us with the Holy Spirit and fire. Comfort and admonition are how we get ready and set for the Advent of the Christ child. Next week, we complete the set.

[1] Coming. http://timelovesahero.blogspot.com/2009/11/coming.html
[2] Easterbrook, Gregg, Tuesday Morning Quarterback. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/091208&sportCat=nfl, retrieved December 8, 2009.
[3] Exhort, dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exhort, retrieved December 12, 2009.
[4] Exhortation, The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Vol. 2.Nashville, TN: Abingdon Publishing, page 366.
[5] parakale,w, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Volume V. Gerhard Kittel, Editor. Grand Rapids, MI, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, pages 779-780.
[6] parakale,w, Bauer, Walter, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Third Edition. Frederick William Danker, Editor. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000.
[7] The New Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. IX. Leander E. Keck, Senior Editor. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995, page 84.