Third Sunday of Advent
Good News
Today’s Gospel seems strange. At the beginning, John the Baptist calls those who have come to hear him preach “a brood of vipers!” (Luke 3:7). At the end, we are told, “So . . . he proclaimed the good news to the people” (Luke 3:18).
I have a friend, a social worker, who is struggling with how he and his wife raise their children. So much of what he hears and reads about Christian faith feels like John the Baptist. It tells us how we are bad, what is wrong with us. My friend says it is really different from what he thinks or says as a social worker. He is wondering whether he can be a Christian, because Christian faith does not feel like Good News.
Perhaps the answer is in the middle of the Gospel, where John says someone greater is coming, someone who will baptize with fire and Holy Spirit, not water, namely, Jesus.
John the Baptist and Jesus have a similar expectation that their listeners can bear fruit, through God’s working to change their hearts and lives. But Jesus, John tells us, will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire—both of which are harder for us to control. Jesus will spend more time with people on the margins: those who are sick, those who are poor, women, those who are finding it hard to meet neighbors’ expectations, persons considered “sinners.” This Jesus will be God among us, Emmanuel (Matthew 1:23). The Spirit is the promise that the God we meet in Jesus continues to help us to live well.
That God is among us is an unusual and frightening promise. It is also Good News.
Hermann Weinlick, retired pastor
Minneapolis, Minnesota