Sabbath Day Thoughts — “The Voice from the Margins” Luke 3:1-18

The Christmas preparations have been underway in the village for weeks. First, our lampposts were hung those giant sparkly snowflakes. Then, Berkely Green sprouted a bevy of Christmas trees. Salvation Army bell ringers with their red kettles are stationed at the post office and Kinney’s. Shopkeepers have decked their windows with lights and greens and tempting wares that we just might need to purchase for our beloved ones. Sparkle Village returned to the town hall with those wonderful one-of-a-kind crafts and gifts.

We have been preparing for Christmas at church, too. The Advent wreath has emerged from its basement lair to hang above the chancel and call us to worship weekly. Cherise has done yet another amazing job of greening our sanctuary and doors. Some of us are reading our way to Christmas. Perhaps you took home an Advent devotional, or you are gathering on Thursdays for lunch and book discussion. Scott and the choir have been hard at work on a spectacular anthem for Christmas Eve. The kids, under the direction of Ms. Kim, are preparing to delight us with a special play next week.

I know that there have been plenty of preparations on our home fronts, too. We may be working out final details on travel plans or preparing to welcome guests. Our front doors are sporting wreaths and our eves are dripping with Christmas lights. We are hanging favorite ornaments on our Christmas trees—candy canes, antique glass balls, and golden macaroni wreaths made by little hands long ago. We’ve been shopping, and if we are very organized, we are wrapping. If the baking hasn’t begun yet, it will soon—Christmas cookies, fruitcakes, panettone, stollen, and our favorite family recipes. If you are like me, there is joy in the preparation, a remembering of Christmases past and an anticipation of the holiday to come.

On this second Sunday in Advent, the gospel reading brings us John the Baptist, who gives us an earful about preparing the way of the Lord. When I served the Community Church in Morton Grove, I would tag along with my head of staff Michael Winters to attend a lectionary group. These were seasoned pastors who preached weekly and met to discuss the scripture and work on their sermons. The second Sunday of Advent was near, and we had just read together the reading I shared a minute ago—John the Baptist calling us a brood of vipers and exhorting us to repent. There was a long moment of silence following the reading, then Rev. Debbie spoke up, “Don’t you wish we only had to preach on John once a year for Baptism of the Lord Sunday in January? Who wants to hear about John at Christmas?”

John certainly wasn’t dressed for the holidays and his diet of locusts and wild honey hardly sounds like a tasty Christmas dinner. In 1457, Donatello cast a larger-than-life bronze statue of John the Baptist for the Cathedral in Siena, Italy. In Donatello’s imagination, John has unkempt hair and the burning eyes of a fanatic. He’s impossibly thin, a skeleton with skin, all lean muscle and sinew. He’s clothed in matted furs that part at the side to show bare flesh. His long, bony fingers extend, as if pointing the way to Christ, the stronger one who will follow. The statue is eerie, unsettling, discomforting. There is no bow big enough to dress John up and put him under our Christmas trees. Let’s face it, we would never invite John the Baptist to Christmas dinner because he would be certain to shout, wouldn’t wear a tie, and would probably smell like the wilderness he just rolled out of. No. At Christmas, we prefer the baby Jesus, the holy infant so tender and mild to the disconcertingly wild, wooly, and radical John.

The sermon that John gave doesn’t sound like something you want to read in a Christmas card. Let me channel my inner John . . .

Dear Brood of Vipers,

What is wrong with you?!

Don’t you know that God is coming? That’s right Yahweh, the great I AM. He’s really topped himself this time, dared to wrap himself in flesh and walk among us. He’s on the loose!

And you?! You’re oblivious! You just go on living large. It’s all about you, isn’t it?

And what about this world? God help us! Nation taking up arms against nation. Neighbor trash-talking neighbor. What about the poor, the orphan, the refugee, the folks who struggle to put food on the table or a roof over their heads?

Stop, people! Just stop. Turn it around before it’s too late. You need to remember who is really in charge around here and it’s not you. It’s God Almighty. So straighten up and fly right. Be prepared!

Got it? Good!

Yours truly,

John

On this second Sunday of Advent, the ill-mannered, ill-timed, wild-and-crazy John the Baptist breaks into our lives and throws a big fat monkey wrench into our Christmas customs and timeworn traditions. Truth be told, we need John. We need him to startle us out of our Christmas complacency and call us away from our ordinary lives to a time and place of awareness and anticipation. We need John to urge us to leave, if only for a little bit, our kitchens and Christmas trees, our on-line shopping and office parties, our school books and family festivities. We need John to remind us of the reason for the season and tell us what it really means to prepare the way of the Lord. We need John’s encouragement to repent (metanoia), to thoughtfully and honestly reflect upon our lives, redirect our actions and energies, and re-commit ourselves to God-centered living. We need John to remind us that, no matter what the circumstance of our lives may be, we can be redeemed and renewed. We can come back to God because every year at Christmas, we are reminded that God comes to us with help and healing and love beyond our wildest imaginings.

Our Advent book this year is Season’s Greetings, an imaginative collection of Christmas letters from those who were there at the first Christmas. The author, my friend Ruth Boling, invites us to imagine John as “one of those wacky inflatable air dancers outside a car dealership.” You know those annoying windsocks that rise and fall and gyrate in unexpected ways that captivate our attention? According to my friend Ruth, John says, “I’m here to do that. To get you and everyone else to stop racing around on your Christmas hamster wheels, to get you to take notice and to study what I—wacky inflatable air dancer—am pointing toward. Here, people of God, is the one you want to be chasing . . . Don’t be a hamster, or a lemming, or an idiot. See, here is the one who came to redeem and restore.” It’s Jesus.

In the coming weeks of Advent, the frenzied pace of our Christmas preparations will build to a crescendo. That Kanoodle Ultimate Champion game that we purchased online for our grandchildren will be backordered, and we’ll scramble for a last-minute gift. Grandma’s recipe for authentic German stollen will disappear, and we’ll spend hours trying unsuccessfully to duplicate her kitchen magic through guesswork. Our Christmas trees will dry up and shed boatloads of needles, and we’ll wake up in the middle of the night to worry that our house might burn down. Our children will grow SO excited that they will not sleep a wink on Christmas Eve, and neither will we.

Amid the crazy-hamster-wheel-joy of this Advent season, may we listen for the voice from the margins. The Baptizer still calls out in the wilderness. May the wild one summon us away from the holiday rush to quiet moments with God for reflection, redirection, and renewal. Prepare the way of the Lord, my friends, make his paths straight.

Resources

Troy Troftgruben. “Commentary on Luke 3:1-6” in Preaching This Week, Dec. 8, 2024. Accessed online at Commentary on Luke 3:1-6 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

David Lose. “Commentary on Luke 3:1-6” in Preaching This Week, Dec. 6, 2009. Accessed online at Commentary on Luke 3:1-6 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

Audrey West. “Commentary on Luke 3:1-6” in Preaching This Week, Dec. 5, 2021. Accessed online at Commentary on Luke 3:1-6 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

Ruth Boling. Season’s Greetings: Christmas Letters from Those Who Were There. Nashville: Upper Room books, 2024.

---

3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, ² during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. ³ He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, ⁴ as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
    make his paths straight.
⁵ Every valley shall be filled,
    and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
    and the rough ways made smooth,
⁶ and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ”

⁷ 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? ⁸ Therefore, bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. ⁹ Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

¹⁰ And the crowds asked him, “What, then, should we do?” ¹¹ In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise.” ¹² Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” ¹³ He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” ¹⁴ Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

¹⁵ As the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, ¹⁶ John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷ His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

¹⁸ So with many other exhortations he proclaimed the good news to the people.

---

Donatello, John the Baptists, 1457, Duomo di Siena.