“What Shall We Do?” Luke 3:7-16 Lawrence Jackman

The person on a soap box use to be a very real image. People stood on a busy street with whatever they could bring to raise themselves above the crowd. Their job, of course, was to get out a message with no budget and no ability to really get an audience.

The last time that I can remember of really confronting one of those folks was a year and a half back when the General Assembly was meeting in San Jose, California. Coming back to the convention center late one afternoon we were confronted by a little group of people—complete with picket signs. The male leader of the group appeared to have his son with him—a teenage boy. There were also two female members of the party. Now, as nearly always happens, this group was very busy making sure that we all knew that we were going straight to hell.

They waved their bibles, shouted words of condemnation, frothed at the mouth and generally yelled at the heathen Presbyterians. One group of folks from the Presbyterian meeting stood in a circle, held hands and sang hymns. I stood for a long time between the two groups and simply looked at the leader of the other folks.

We watched each other for quite a while. I didn’t believe that I should approach him unless he offered some sign of relaxing. He didn’t. I really wanted him to approach me, but that didn’t happen. We just ended the encounter with a bit of a standoff.

John the Baptizer was pretty much the first century equivalent of the nutty looking street preacher on the busy corner in a major city. He was and they are mostly full of hell and brimstone. He came across the desert floor to set up shop on the route that many took to travel from the north or the east to go to Jerusalem. The place was just a few miles from the north edge of the Dead Sea. Here, you had to cross the Jordan at a sort of a ford.

So just like the street preacher John came with a message of pure threat. “Who warned you to escape the wrath that is coming? You brood of snakes. Time to get right and to get there right away.”

Somehow struck by the message (more that I was with the street preacher in San Jose) groups began to ask the question, “What shall we do?” John’s answer to that was terribly interesting from three perspectives.

One was that his answer about what to do was specific to groups. He does not have a “one size fits all” approach to salvation. Secondly, when you look at the answers to groups of people, the direction is pretty trivial and not so very profound. John wasn’t asking for some sort of deep cleaning of he human soul. Instead what he gave off were very practical messages that were targeted to issues of socially good behavior and also toward community as the profound value. That is the third perspective—this is all about community. That community direction is consistently toward the creation of wider community.

Now contrast those simple points (which maybe number three) to the directions given to us by folk like the street preacher. You know some of those guys have hit it big and don’t need a soap box. They have TV and the internet. Some of them still stand on the street corner or in the pulpit of a church—where ever, it does not matter.

Most of those folks seem to me to do it differently than the Baptizer on all three fronts. They do talk about “one size fits all” theory of salvation. The corrective actions they ask for are a total remaking of the human personality (in a way that is impossible, by the way). And lastly they keep arguing to make community smaller and smaller.

Here is what the message of John the Baptizer is trying to tell us. First, the road to a greater relationship with God is incredibly individualized. We do not need to all be at the same place either before or after our experience together. There are many roads and millions of travelers. It is the height of arrogance to suggest that everyone must be on one path. John didn’t see it that way. Jesus didn’t see it that way.

Yet throughout history we seem to always be seduced into expressing the faith in culturally specific ways. We favor our pet sins that are considered “acceptable failures” and we condemn other people’s behaviors as though they were never acceptable.

I use to work with a man who was just totally consternated by a whole group of folks who worked with us and who lived very differently. All of us claimed Christian churches as our spiritual home. “Don’t they understand that they need to take sexual sins more seriously?”, Ernie would rhetorically demand. “I am guessing not, Ernie.” I would say. “Maybe it is something like your church and greed. Isn’t that almost a virtue over at your church as long as the church gets 10%?” I could have confessed Presbyterian sins to him also. I just wasn’t in the mood to tell him we can be self righteous and smug.

You get the point. We all start from differing places. No one gets to tell you where to start from. They may well be behind you anyway. Everyone of us is responsible for our own journey and not one of us is responsible for another’s. So, do your job. That is, take care of your own spiritual journey and quest. If it is good, bad or indifferent share it with others. One size does not fit all. We can all learn from each other and if you already know it, you are probably in the wrong universe.

Focus, John suggests, on some very tangible and practical behaviors. The day to day crowds got the advice to share and to do so according to some very practical ways. You got two coats? Give one of them away. You got extra food? Share it. The tax collectors want to know what to do. Well do your job honestly—don’t take more than is due. Soldiers, don’t plunder and steal from people. You guys have power, swords and can pretty much do as you please. Don’t use your force to rob and steal.

This is practical stuff, but it is the absolute preparation for the journey. The issue is not a great big thing. It is simple. Focus on your human interactions if you want to be ready to receive God’s arrival in your life. Somehow, John is telling us, we must treat others in a fair, just, honest, and benevolent way. When we do that we will be ready. If we don’t do that then remember that the wrath is coming.

That third lesson is pretty strong too. It is essentially a statement that community is to be expanded. The crowds are to look around them. They are all travelers. Nobody is out here at the Jordan River crossing except travelers. It would be like being on I 65 where it crosses the Muscattuck River.

So, you are to look around you—at your fellow travelers—see which one of them doesn’t have a coat. If you have two give him one. Is someone you can see hungry? Do you have extra food? Feed them.
Community is bigger than your group of travelers. Community is all travelers.

Tax collectors were outcasts—they could associate with each other and not many other people. That made it easy for them to treat people like economic opportunities. The message to them was treat those people like you belonged to the same family.

Soldiers had power and were not so well thought of either. There were literal walls between and the society. Soldiers, you are supposed to treat others like they are family.

Community is to be expanded. You have no right to exclude, isolate, or wall off others. Open up—don’t close up.

Here is the key word of John’s message. Repent. Literally that means “turn around”. At it’s core it means “change your mind”. That is it. Refuse to see things the way you do now. Every one of us—do that. See the world differently. See your fellow travelers differently. See them all as sisters and brothers. Love them like that.

There is nothing else. Turn around.