Asbestos Abatement
THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Zephaniah 3:14-20 • Philippians 4:4-7 • Luke 3:7-18 • Canticle 9
Asbestos is a wonder-substance that’s resistant to heat, fire, and corrosion. It’s used in the brakes and clutches of cars, and in insulation and other building materials. Skyscrapers, offices, public housing complexes, single-family homes, and schools built especially before the 1980s contain asbestos. A few years ago, I had to work from home for several months during the renovation of the building where I do my weekday job. The building badly needed asbestos abatement and it wasn’t safe to enter.
Unfortunately, the wonder-substance asbestos happens to scar the lungs and cause cancer. Construction workers who did their jobs before the dangers of asbestos were fully known or when these dangers were deliberately concealed, or who didn’t receive protections against this workplace hazard, often died of exposure to asbestos after years spent building much of the country we live in today.
“Asbestos” also happens to come from the Greek word used in today’s gospel to describe the fire of God’s judgment, which apparently is also something that doesn’t burn itself out. When the crowds coming to John for baptism wonder whether John might be the Messiah, he explains that he baptizes only with water. Someone more powerful than he would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. This coming judge would appear with winnowing-fork in hand to separate the wheat from the chaff, gather the wheat into his barn, and burn the chaff with “unquenchable fire.” That word for “unquenchable” is “asbestos”—something resistant to burning up or burning out.
John the Baptist’s fiery preaching is terrifying. The axe at the root of the tree appears to demand literally “radical” change from this world. The winnowing fork suggests that entering the kingdom is an either-or proposition: either you’re in with the wheat, or out with the chaff.
But John’s tone shifts a bit when the crowds press him to get pragmatic. They ask, “What then should we do?” John’s answers aren’t necessarily all that radical. To start, people with more than they need should reallocate their extra clothing and food to people without enough. John faces a tougher test case when not just generic Jewish crowds press him, but “Even tax collectors (καὶ τελῶναι)” come for baptism and pragmatic guidance. What on earth should tax collectors do to survive the coming judgment? John advises them just to take no more in taxes than prescribed—that is, they shouldn’t use their positions to line their pockets. Possibly posing an even greater challenge to John, the gospel tells us that “even soldiers (καὶ στρατευόμενοι)” came to ask about the implications of the kingdom for them. John tells them not to extort or bring false charges against people—that is, they just shouldn’t abuse their power.
For all the talk among many Christians over the years about the stark opposition between “the kingdom of God” and the Roman Empire, John’s advice here isn’t all that different from the reforms of Caesar Augustus himself. Savvy emperors know in all times and places that fairly-administered government fees and well-disciplined armies, and the elimination of bribes and abuses of power, are keys to building a lasting kingdom.
In the gospel of Luke, Jesus too reenforces the message that practicing the kingdom of God is even for agents of imperial Rome, even for tax collectors, even for soldiers, even for you, even for me . . . although the richer one is, the harder it seems to be to get there. Jesus also sometimes repeats the threat of unquenchable fire.
Jesus’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus—only found in Luke’s gospel—echoes John the Baptist’s warning today that people’s status as ancestors of Abraham won’t be enough to save them from fire, but sharing food and clothing might. The rich man in Jesus’s parable has clothes made of purple and fine linen, and he eats sumptuous daily meals. The poor man Lazarus longs for crumbs from this man’s table, and the sores on Lazarus’s body imply that he doesn’t have enough clothing. In the afterlife, though, Lazarus gets to rest in the bosom of Abraham. The rich man, who withheld precisely those things that John called on people to share—clothing and food—he ends up tormented in flames.
Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan—found only in Luke’s gospel—also reenforces and directly echoes John’s preaching. An expert in biblical law presses Jesus to get practical by asking the same question that the crowds, tax collectors, and soldiers asked John in today’s gospel: “what should we do?” Jesus then tells the man the story of a Samaritan helping a wounded Jewish man, and Jesus ends with words almost identical to John the Baptist in today’s reading: “do likewise (ὁμοίως ποιείτω / καὶ σὺ ποίει ὁμοίως).” Jesus’s audience saw Samaritans as aggressors, not vulnerable outcasts, so the message was surprising: even Samaritans can do what it takes to enter the kingdom of God.
So, for all the unquenchable fire, the message of John and of Jesus in Luke’s gospel isn’t that the kingdom of God will be entered or practiced only by the pure. In fact, the kingdom can be practiced even by people the crowds thought of as bullies—even agents of taxation and state violence, even aggressors like the Samaritans. If even they can enter the kingdom, maybe even we can too.
There are several ways to deal with our asbestos problems. We can tightly seal our walls and ceilings from asbestos leaks and just carry on with new, urgent tasks of working and living in those buildings, no matter how they were made decades ago. We can do the expensive and dangerous work of asbestos abatement when those buildings desperately need renovations. Or, we can tear them down and build something asbestos-free.
The news that the kingdom of God is at hand presents us with similar choices. What should we renovate? What should we tear down completely? And when should we just inhabit the structures we’ve inherited and do what we can to make them more fair? Many of us inhabit structures of all kinds, built from labor practices that exploited human strength and cut short human lives. What to do about the asbestos? And how should those whose jobs expose them to hazards that most of us don’t have to face on a regular basis—how and when should they be judged?
As terrifying as the judgment of unquenchable fire may sound at first, I find hope in the fact that even the judgment proclaimed by John the Baptist takes place between each one of us and our God. God knows how and why we respond to the call to repentance and to the good news of the kingdom in the particular way that we do. In middle age, I find the judgment of my peers a bit more frightening—for choosing the wrong answer or the wrong approach, or sometimes for seeming too radical, and sometimes for not seeming radical enough. I also fear that there’s less time in today’s world for any of us grow and learn and change before the axe of condemnation suddenly drops. But I find comfort that even when John the Baptist, the fiery preacher of repentance, was asked whether he was the Messiah, he made it instantly clear that he was not the ruler, the savior, or the judge of this world. The only audience for our own, idiosyncratic performances of the kingdom isn’t John the Baptist, or public opinion, but the Lord who knows us through and through, and who meets us where we are, and who assures us that the kingdom is for us—even us.
© 2021 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas