Good News for a Brood of Vipers

Zephaniah 3:14-20, Isaiah 12:2-6, Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-18

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! You bunch of snakes! 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 with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

Good news? It’s good news that the axe as at the root of the trees and a lot of them are getting thrown into the fire? It’s good news that we’re a brood of vipers? Really?

Most pastors would tell you it’s not a good idea to start a sermon by calling your congregation a “brood of vipers.” Even if they are. It’s not how you win friends and influence people. Calling people names generally doesn’t get you much of a hearing. Yet somehow John the Baptist does this and it seems to work for him. I find that interesting.

Many of you have dealt with family members or friends who have been in the grip of an addiction to the point that you’ve needed to stage an intervention. And you know that you don’t start off the intervention by saying “You drunken S.O.B., you need to get your act together or else it’s going to be bad.” That just will not work. Because most people who have an addiction already know that their life is a mess. They know they’ve alienated people and they’re often ashamed of it, but if that was enough to get them to recognize the problem and seek help they would have already done it.

So the way to begin an intervention is to start with good news. “We love you, we care about you, we don’t want to see you suffer, we know that you need help and we want to help you get it because we care so much about you.” To stress not the bad consequences of staying on their current path – they already know how bad it is, even if they aren’t ready to admit it. What they need to know is that they are still loved and that they are worthy of getting better, that they will get help and support, that there is hope for recovery and a better life.

The way we usually think about John the Baptist is that he’s a prophet of bad news. Of judgment and coming disaster. Of fire and brimstone and the fear of God. Shape up and get ready for the Messiah, or else it’s into the fire with you! But if that was all there was to John the Baptist, if John’s message was all insults and threats, it wouldn’t have worked. Because telling people bad news never works.

I was intrigued to hear about a new movie that’s out in theaters this weekend. It’s called “Don’t Look Up.” I haven’t seen it yet – it’s gotten some really good reviews and some really bad ones, so I don’t know if I can recommend it. It’ll be on Netflix in a couple of weeks so we can all see for ourselves. But I think the premise of the movie is brilliant. Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio play scientists who have discovered that there’s a comet heading towards Earth. If nothing is done, in six months the comet will hit the earth with enough force to destroy all life on the planet. But when the scientists try to warn people about the comet, no one pays attention.

They tell the leaders in government, but they don’t want to hear it because bad news will make their poll numbers go down. They tell business people about the coming disaster, and they wonder how much money they can make from the minerals on the comet. Maybe we’ll all be dead, but think of how rich we’ll be! They go on TV to warn the public but the commentators complain that these scientists are depressing and yelling too much. Just not very good communicators.

This is usually how we think about John the Baptist – he’s got bad news about coming disaster. But the problem is, human nature doesn’t react well to bad news about imminent disaster. Maybe people should hear bad news about a comet by saying, My goodness, we’d better all work together and do something about this. But probably we wouldn’t. Probably we’d find a way to dismiss the scientists as kooks or curious oddballs but we’d find a way to ignore them and go on with our lives. Somehow we’d rationalize our rejection of their warning – because to accept the truth that a comet is coming and there’s not much any of us can do about it is too scary and too overwhelming and we just couldn’t deal with it. So we’d find a way not to.

The point of this movie is apparently to use dark comedy to show us how ridiculous we all are when confronted with bad news that we are too afraid to acknowledge. I’ll be interested in seeing if it works – as I said, so far some reviewers think it does and others don’t. I don’t know yet myself. But it seems to me, the way the last few years are going, the premise of the movie seems quite believable to me. There are truths about Covid and climate change and threats to democracy and a thousand other things that so many people just don’t want to face up to and will go to absurd lengths to avoid. That strikes me as quite believable.

If all John the Baptist had to offer was bad news – The end is near, you brood of vipers, the axe is already at the root of the trees, and all the trees that don’t bear fruit are going into the fire – if that was the whole message of John the Baptist, I think he’d have gotten the same reaction that Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio apparently get in the movie. There would be TikTok videos going viral on the Internet making fun of his wardrobe – camel hair and leather belts are so tacky. Cable news would bring on nutrition experts to say that if your diet is locusts and wild honey you risk being overcome with insane thoughts about coming doom. There would be Facebook pages quoting Bible verses that supposedly prove that John is a false prophet. If all John had to offer was bad news about coming judgment, that’s how people would react, even if he was right. It’s just human nature.

But it’s not just unrealistic to imagine that people responded to John because he told them the bad news they needed to hear about their need to shape up. It’s also not what the text says.  Luke tells us that people flocked to John because he was giving them good news. So if John’s message sounds like bad news to us, maybe we’re not hearing it correctly.

Now, John isn’t telling us good news by calling us a brood of vipers. In fact, that isn’t really news at all. If we’re honest, we know that already. We know we’re not children of Adam and Eve, innocent people living in the paradise that God created us for. We know that we’re more children of the serpent, ready to come up with a thousand rationalizations for not accepting inconvenient truths and persuading others to ignore them as well. That’s really not news. What would be good news, though, is that God is coming to set all of that right, that God still cares enough about us to fix the mess that we have made of God’s creation. That would be good news.

The good news of John is not that the axe is at the root of the trees and they’re all about to come down. If we’re honest, we already know that a lot in our world is on the verge of falling down, and rightly so. The good news is that when they fall, this will not just be bad luck, and it will not be our just deserts, reaping what we’ve sown. No, when the trees fall, this will be God’s doing – not because God is punishing us but because God is clearing the way for the new world that God has promised to bring. And that is good news.

That the world as we know it is passing away isn’t bad news, it isn’t really even news. But that the world as we know it will be transformed by the coming of God into something that’s finally worthy of the God who created it and the people who live in it – that, that is good news.

Last week we read from the prophet Malachi. You want the Lord to come to the people but you don’t know how to get the Lord to come? Don’t worry, Malachi said, good news: The Lord will come to the Temple when you least expect him. But are you ready for him? Because his coming will bring purifying fire and a harsh cleanser. Today we read from another not-very-well-known prophet, Zephaniah.

Zephaniah puts the accent more on the good news. When the Lord comes, Zephaniah says, God will save the lame and gather the outcast, God will change shame into praise, God will sing loud songs of joy and victory over you. And at that time God will deal with all your enemies, and God’s enemies – all that keeps you lame and outcast and ashamed, God will take care of it all on that day. God will burn it all down and cleanse all that stuff away, and isn’t that good news?

The day of judgment is coming near – but don’t be afraid, the prophets say, this is good news. The day of judgment – the day when everything will be revealed and seen for what it actually is – don’t be afraid of that, because what will finally become apparent is that you are God’s beloved. And all the things that paralyze you and have made you experience exclusion and shame and powerlessness – all this will be burned away and dealt with fully by the God who loves you and will come to set you free, and everyone else too. That is the good news that brought the crowds to John – the Promised One who will do all of this is coming soon.

And so the people came to John in large numbers. But they didn’t come for a good healthy dose of fire and brimstone to put the fear of God into them and get them back onto the straight and narrow.  People came to John to be baptized as a sign of their faith and trust in the good news that God is actually coming. That God is about to stage an intervention in this world gone horribly wrong – because God loves the world and because God loves us and God wants more than anything for the world to be made right again.

Of course, Jesus did not carry out this intervention in the way that John the Baptist expected, or that most of the crowd that was baptized by John expected. And the completion of God’s promise to restore all of creation is still in our future. But in Jesus, God’s final intervention in this world has already begun, and in our baptism we begin to participate in this intervention and to be transformed by the way Jesus has pioneered for us.

And from this perspective, the message of John the Baptist really is good news. Yes, we may have some of the serpent in us. Yes, the tree is about to come crashing down. Yes, some days it feels like the world’s on fire, or soon will be. But God’s love is sure, God’s plan to redeem creation will not be defeated, and God promises to walk with us and ahead of us in our recovery and ultimately to set all of the captives free.