Advent 3 Year C

Zephaniah 3: 14-20; Philippians 4: 4-7; Luke 3: 7-18

You brood of vipers.

The crowd of spiritual seekers pitches up to listen to what John has to say. It’s a group of people who are looking for the way forward, hoping, praying, that this itinerant prophet will be the promised one, will be the one to tell them something new, something that will transform their lives, something that will give them a direction of travel. They were, of course, those who understood themselves to be the chosen people, the descendants of Abraham who would be treated in a special way by God. They gather hoping that they have finally found the preacher who recognises them as God’s chosen people and is able to show them the fast-track lane to salvation. They’re perhaps quietly optimistic that finally their time of searching will be over and that all of their troubles will come to an end.

After all, they’ve heard good reports of John. He is gathering a following. He is offering a baptism of repentance. He appears to speak with an authority that people recognise as coming from God. And he’s visibly different, set apart. He’s a powerful character who demands attention and commands respect.
So they come to John and effectively say, well what about us? And John is having none of it. As soon as he has their attention, he sets off to challenge, to call out their complacency and their lack of compassion. To call out the choices they make in their lives. He turns the spotlight back onto them and onto their focus on themselves, on their own comfortable lives, onto their ability to look past the poverty and suffering and need all around them. And rather than walk away to look for the next prophet who might have a more acceptable answer, they ask him, what then should we do?

John made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that they couldn’t just sit back and complacently wait for God to sort things out for them. He was quick to remind them that they had become rather lax in their observance of faith; that they may have paid lip service to the demands of a life of faith, but that wasn’t following through in their actions. And so he gave them a list of examples of ways that they could begin to live differently, of ways that they could live with integrity. In the language of our contemporary world, ways that they could walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
So what was this brood of vipers to do? They were to find ways to live differently, to live ethically, to live with integrity. That’s a language that we routinely hear; those are aspirations to which we can readily sign up. But what does it actually mean if we try to walk that walk?

It means that we need to make choices that aren’t always palatable or to our liking. It means that we need to take seriously the challenge to engage with the man who hangs on the cross, right there in the centre of our Cathedral. It means that we need to engage with the whole Jesus story, not just the bits that we like.

This is the third Sunday in Advent and, already, for most of us we’re increasingly in Christmas mode. Cards have been sent and received. Presents have been bought, or at least thought about. Food has been ordered. Decorations are in process. Our gaze is on that baby who will arrive in the manger in just a couple of weeks’ time. I spoke to someone this week who told me, in rather shocked terms, that they had seen a crib scene somewhere and the baby Jesus was already in situ. But he’s not arrived yet was the cry.
He's not arrived yet, but we speak about how we long for his arrival, how we are preparing the way for the birth of the Prince of Peace. This morning’s hymns all echo that longing, all look towards the day, the day when the world will be saved. And of course we look forward to that moment of celebration, that moment when we remind ourselves, yet again, of God’s redeeming love for all of us. That moment when we are assured, perhaps reassured, that we are all God’s chosen people.

But just as the story doesn’t either begin or end with the incarnation, so our engagement with our faith journey cannot begin or end with the incarnation. It’s an important moment, but it is a moment, a focal point, that invites us to enter more deeply into God’s vision for humanity.

The language of faith journeying is, I think, important here. We journey towards the Incarnation, we share in the joy and gift of that moment, and we then journey with the Christ child into a narrative where his ministry begins – and ends. We know how this story ends, just as we know how it begins. And we like the beginning better than the ending.

It can be such a temptation to rush to the crib and to linger there, to see the Incarnation in isolation, to focus on birth because we don’t like to think about death. We want to spend time with the warm cuddly Jesus, to engage with the helpless infant and the promise that he offers. We are happy to imagine the stable that has become such an ingrained part of our popular culture, to look for angels – even if we’re not sure that we believe in them. The Christmas story sucks us in, not least because it makes us feel good. It makes us feel good about God and about ourselves. And so, of course, this is where we want to go and wait awhile.

But we’re not there yet. Let’s not rush. Let’s not shortchange ourselves in our desire to be in the presence of that Christ child. Let’s pause this morning and listen again to the words of John the Baptist. Words that are as relevant today as they were 2000 years ago. What should we do to bear good fruit? The answer seems to be something about living with integrity. Walking the walk; putting ourselves out for others; finding ways to be fair, to be honest, to make the difference between what we want and what is right.

We have the benefit of Jesus’ teaching and the reflections of the church on that teaching over the years, starting perhaps with St Paul who reminds the people of Philippi to let their gentleness be known. There’s a translation I like that uses the word decency – let your decency be known. That strikes me as a powerful and challenging demand. Be decent to those you meet. Be decent in your decision making. Be decent in the ways you treat other people. Be decent in the way that you walk this walk.

And never forget that this is a journey of faith. We journey to the crib and onward. We journey into Jesus’ teaching ministry and onward. We journey to the cross and onward.

Like the people who gathered around John, we seek answers, we seek direction, we seek reassurance. And that all comes when we live what we have learned, when we find ways to transform ourselves from a brood of vipers into a rag tag group of disciples who are doing their best to let their decency be known.