On Reforming Vipers

[Sermon delivered at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Phoenix, Arizona on the Third Sunday of Advent, “Gaudete”, December 15, 2024 (The Sixth Sunday of Expanded Advent)]

✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in Essence and Undivided. Amen.

Anyone who has ever lived more than the space of a heartbeat has developed a complex system of shields and defenses against mental and emotional insults, irritations, and assaults. Some are more successful than others, while some fail utterly and become the walking wounded among us, some unhoused and on the streets, some locked away in institutions dosed with enough medication to make a wolverine or honey-badger chill and laid-back, and some let loose in our families and social circles oozing hurt from every pore. Some are so successful that we wonder if anything can get through to them at all, particularly the important stimuli meant to correct their insulting, irritating, and abusive behaviour. Regardless of how successful we end up being, it is still a universal impulse try to set up boundaries and barriers to keep the most serious mental assaults at bay and preserve some shred of happiness.

And so, I come to today’s Gospel. “You brood of vipers! Who warned YOU to flee from the wrath that is to come?”[1] For those listening to John the Baptist level this blistering tirade at them we can imagine their shields immediately slamming into place. I do not care to which society or culture one belongs, being called a “viper” is not a nice thing in any of them. A viper is a scaly, cold-blooded, venomous creature that can slither into small cracks and crevices and attack the wary and unwary alike; they have a reputation (probably undeserved, but they have it anyway) for being easy to set off, or vicious enough not to need provocation to spread fear, hurt, and death around them. So, when the Baptist calls his listeners “vipers” they recognize it for what it is, a very deadly insult, and immediately their psychological defenses move into place.

The problem here is that his audience is not just a collection of first century Jews gathering around him at a small river in the Middle East with a smattering of other nationalities burning with curiosity to see what the Jews around them find so compelling. His audience includes us. In hearing this Gospel account we too take the insult square on the chin; we too become the “vipers” he so bitingly condemns. So, we also mount our defenses against the assault levied toward us. “Oh, he was only talking to the Jews gathered around him,” we say. “Wow, he really let those worms have it,” we extemporize. I would wager, were I a wagering man, that various scribes and Pharisees present in the crowd, would have deflected the scorn to those around them, just knowing that the Baptist meant those people and not their righteous selves. I would wager that there are those among us today who would do the same. Truth be told, however, those shields are what condemn us, blocking a conviction meant to afflict all of us, but let us speak more on that later.

Instead, we hear that among the crowds there are those who actually let their barriers down. These individuals listened to John, heard his insult, and perceived it not to be a bludgeon to keep them away as to be a shock-tactic to get them to hear what he said next. Instead of shutting down and shutting out, they listened and instead of counterattacking, they responded. “What then should we do?”[2] They heard John’s insult, they heard his follow-up warning, and instead of digging in their heels and dismissing it they asked how they might rectify the situation, how they might “un-viper” themselves, as it were.

What he said was seriously heavy stuff and targeted to everyone’s individual situation. Those who have plenty need to share their excess and abundance with those who have nothing. Those who have an unpleasant public-facing job (the publicani[3] in particular) need to do so fairly, not being harsh or even rapacious. Those who have power over others (soldiers, whether Rome’s or Herod’s or the Temple’s) must not abuse it, they must not wring personal advantage out of it at the expense and to the detriment of others.[4]

Remember when I stated that we are part of that audience? Imagine were we to forgive the insult and heed the warning and ask how we might flee the wrath to come how he would answer us:

• You one-percent, and anyone else living comfortably, share your goods with the homeless and dispossessed and those on the edge of society who have nothing.

• You federal, state, and municipal revenue agents and you insurance agents and claims adjusters, stop dredging up vindictive audits and obstructive policies and false denials, and stop wringing even more money than is due out of everyone around you.

• You in the police and in the armed forces, stop your profiling and dehumanizing of those around you and do your jobs; you are here to protect, not to oppress.

• You professionals, tradespeople, and service workers, stop overcharging and short-changing, and cease from misleading your customers.

There are those, then and now, who get past the Forerunner’s harsh words to get to the core message. St. John’s message is not, “You all are scum and will be wiped up and thrown away!”…unless you want it to be. No, buried within his harsh words is the exhortation, “bear good fruit.”[5] Those who choose to listen hear the exhortation, and instead of dismissing him as a crank they ask instead how to bear good fruit. Now, for the multitudes of the agriculturally challenged who may not fully understand this, what the Scriptures mean by “fruit” are the actions and changes effected by the attitudes and efforts expended by the individual, as the same work of fruit trees and vines produce fruit. “Good fruit” is the good that benefits others. “Bad fruit” is quite the opposite. Do our attitudes and efforts bring joy to others and promote their welfare? Or do they poison everything around us, creating a toxic and detrimental or even parasitic environment, taking only and giving nothing? Is our presence sought-after for its life-giving and life-affirming benefit, or is it venomous, or worse yet, addictive and subtly harmful?

This begs the question to which we alluded earlier: who among us today need to let down their barriers and listen to what St. John the Forerunner has to say? The temptation is to look around us and point to certain people and say, “Oh, definitely him!” or “She’s a real piece of work, this is for her!” or “Definitely <insert name of high-profile politician/business mogul/celebrity/influencer here>!” Yet rarely if ever do we look within and say, “Oh, it’s me!” St. Paul is clear in his letter to the Roman Church when he says, “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”[6] There is no room for us to throw up ramparts and hunker down and say, “We’re no vipers!” Thanks to the corruption present in all of us after the fall, we bear the poison of our condition, the cancer that eats us and each other from within. St. John the Baptist warned then, “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,”[7] and likely today might say, “Don’t kid yourselves by saying, ‘I’m a cradle Episcopalian,’ or ‘I’m a cradle Catholic,’ or ‘I’m a born-again Christian.” There is no distinction, both then and now, for Jew and for Gentile; the Forerunner speaks clearly, “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”[8] Thanks to the corruption in us, our fruit is damaged, rotten, poisonous, and we need to hear St. John and his exhortation to turn things around. Believe it or not, as St. Luke tells us, this is good news. Good, because it addresses and calls out evil; good, because it proclaims a better way; good, because it offers hope that we are not trapped in the cycle of corruption, poison, and death; good, because a Saviour is coming who will make all this possible.

“One who is more power than I is coming…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire…”[9] St. Paul writes that all of us “…are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,  whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.”[10] St. John the Forerunner tells us one is coming who will cleanse us from our sins with the Holy Spirit and with fire. St. Paul tells us this one is Jesus, the Messiah, whose Passover sacrifice upon the cross effects this baptism by Spirit and by fire. Like the Forerunner, Our Lord preached the Good News of repentance and of the deliverance of all from the bondage of sin, of the hope of the poor and of the desire of the nations. Unlike the Forerunner, Our Lord addresses the root of the poison within us, giving the Good News its power and us the fire within to effect the change inherent in our new Nature bestowed in our Baptism. The Forerunner’s Baptism was one of repentance, but Our Lord’s Baptism is one of life-giving power in His Resurrection from the dead and the redemption of our kind. As we have made straight in the desert of our hearts a highway for our God, so now let us bear the fruits worthy of that repentance and be the Good News that both John the Forerunner and Jesus Our Messiah proclaim.

Come, Lord Jesus.

✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Holy Dominic, and all the saints, Saviour save us. Amen.

A fresco of St. John the Baptist preaching at the Jordan River from the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission Church, Al-Maghtas. Photo: Anton Pospelov / Pravoslavie.ru

[1] Lk. 3.7

[2] Lk. 3.11

[3] Publicani were contracted tax collectors under the Roman Imperial system, noted for grossly overcharging and keeping the difference. Rome took no issue with this so long as the tribute met quota.

[4] Lk. 3.11-14

[5] Lk. 3.9

[6] Rom. 3.22b-23.

[7] Lk. 3.8

[8] Lk. 3.9

[9] Lk. 3.16b

[10] Rom. 3.24-25