What Then Should We Do?
AM Psalm 80 • PM Psalm 77, [79]
Esther 4:4-17 or Judith 7:1-7, 19-32 • Acts 18:1-11 • Luke (1:1-4),3:1-14
What a movie the reading from Luke would make! The cast: Tiberius, the emperor, holding the highest honor and rank (surpassing king, by the way); Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, a headstrong authoritarian with a weak and vacillating personality; Herod, ruler of Galilee, a Jew but not Jewish enough, the man Jesus refers to with contempt as “a fox” (not in the way we use “clever as…” but rather as an unclean animal in Jewish holiness codes); Annas, a high priest installed and removed by the Romans, now a puppet master over his son-in-law Caiaphas; and rounding out the group, John the Baptist, a camel-hided locust-eater, preaching in the wilds.
Of course, God’s protagonist is the most unlikely candidate in the whole of the Roman empire, and what God imparts through this nobody from the boondocks will affect everyone. Jews in the time of Jesus were not protagonists of their own history; sending both John and Jesus, however, shows God’s deep involvement in the geo-political and historical messiness of humanity, albeit in completely unexpected ways. John was outside mainstream Judaism in his day, proclaiming the new kingdom of God and the destruction of the old order which was corrupt; corruption not limited to the Roman occupiers but also to the Jews who collaborated with them.
In Luke 3:1-14, our protagonist is preaching far out of town, out in the scrubland, close to the riverbank. With unapologetic anger, John tells his audience they better wake up and repent—you brood of vipers—being baptized isn’t enough to save them; being Jewish isn’t enough either. They need to have a radical change of heart and they need to have it soon—the axe is already at the base of the tree. And not just a change of heart—there must be hard evidence of this change. What should we do then? the crowd asks. John’s answer is urgent and concrete: Share what you have with the needy, your clothes, your food; don’t hoard. Among the listeners are some of the low-life of the day: tax collectors, who collaborate with the Romans, profiting from the struggle of their own neighbors, and skimming off the top; and soldiers—the Romans themselves, the enemy who intimidate and persecute. One of the tax collectors asks for specific instruction; John does not tell them to stop collecting taxes but to stop cheating people. A soldier asks the same—Stop using extortion and threats, John tells them; if you cannot make enough money being honest in your work, find other work.
All of John’s instructions to attain forgiveness deal with possessions. They all deal with justice. And they all deal with the right way to treat one another. To bear these fruits “worthy of repentance” must not only be evident in our individual behaviors but in our communities as well; bearing these fruits means pursuing economic justice.
John the Baptist was preparing the way for the One who was to follow bringing good news, but good news for the poor and marginalized is bad news for the powerful, the arrogant elite who believe they hold life and death over others. John and Jesus both spoke of the need for a radical, transformative change of heart so fierce, we are compelled to change our actions—to love one another as Jesus loved us.
What then will I do?
Written by Bernadette Reda
...who is forever grateful to the dear friend who invited her to a lecture at St. Paul’s over 24 years ago!