Daily Devotion – December 8, 2021 – Dr. Pat Taylor Ellison
Luke 3:7-18
John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.” As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.
John the Baptist was pretty tired of his countrymen and women thinking they had their salvation all sewn up because they were born into a society that God protected. John wanted people to actually, daily, live the kind of lives that shared the blessings of God among the poorest of the poor, including the foreigners and others often forgotten. His sermon to the traditional Jews who came out to hear him preach tells you everything you need to know about John’s point of view.
John also knew that the Lord was about to show up among them, and that Jesus would live the kind of life John was describing. Probably most of the people thought John was pretty weird, and most of them would come to think Jesus was a similar kind of weird. The Jews were expecting the Messiah to be a revolutionary leader who’d get rid of the Romans. Instead John is getting them ready for a Jesus who will ask them to share with the poor and be kind and generous to everyone, even those who don’t belong or who are different from us. Do John’s words ring as weird to us as they must have to the Jews of his day? Would Jesus’s ministry also be a weird and unexpected type of ministry to us? Think about that. Wonder about that. And thank God for that.
Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you giving us prophets like John and your very Son, Jesus, to show us the way you want us to live. Help us to listen to them and live like them. Amen
