Dec. 17, 2006
Plain and Unvarnished
By Harry T. Cook
Luke 3: 7-18
We meet in quick succession in the last half of Advent two of the most compelling characters in the gospel drama: John the Baptist and Mary the mother of Jesus. Outwardly they are quite different, and it is easy to miss the point that the messages their characters are meant to convey is one and the same.
Mary is depicted as the archetype of submission, John as the raving prophet of doom. We do not easily see them as two sides of the same coin. But they are. As you ponder the Baptist’s message today, read along side of it the text of Mary’s song as Luke imagined her singing it: Yahweh has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and has exalted the humble and meek.
Luke depicts the Baptist as telling it like it is, telling people what their religious responsibilities are. And not a one of them has to do with believing the right doctrines, performing the correct rituals or submitting to religious bureaucracies.
Religion has to do with these things: Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise. A moment of reflection: The second of those demands implies that someone hearing the Baptist might not have food. That should give us some idea of the economic situation in which the Baptist and later Jesus worked.
But to go on: To the hated tax collectors who apparently flocked to the Baptist, perhaps out of fear for their future tense, he said: Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you. The military came to him, asking what they should do: Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.
What ever was going on in Judea with the tax collectors and the army? The clear implication is, at least where people at the lower end of the economic scale were concerned, not much that was good.
John offered a baptism into a life of pursuing economic and social justice, into a life of looking out for the other guy. The Baptist gave it to his audience plain and unvarnished.
And so I give it to you in the same way and for the same reasons. We are at a time and season when want is felt more keenly than at other times when even then it is felt as only want can be felt. In the American culture, Christmas has become a complicated ritual of celebration, of giving and of getting and making merry.
Passing by in the dark outside our churches with their flickering candles and the sounds of familiar carols, outside the interior warmth and light of our homes on these dark and windswept nights are human beings who not only lack the light and the warmth we take for granted, but the basic stuff of life we possess in such abundance – multiple coats, stores of food and, just as important, the embrace of family.
“Share all that†is what John the Baptist was saying in his general rant and rave. He was right then. He’d be right now. Don’t tell him about the noble tradition of your religion (we have Abraham as our father). Ask him what you should do. Be careful, though, because he’ll tell you. And he won’t be telling you to deck the halls with boughs of holly. He’ll drown out your fa-la-las with his demands for simple justice.
© Copyright 2006, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
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