“You brood of vipers!”
These harsh words met those who had made the rough trip across hot desert sands to see the wild desert prophet, in his rough animal skins. John’s vehement condemnation was as shocking to their systems as an immersion in the frigid Jordan River would be. It is shocking for us, reading of it in today’s Gospel passage.*
But it does get our attention, as it got theirs that day.
John continued his passionate warnings about the wrath to come, and what they must do to prepare. The crowd’s energy moved with him: they were filled with expectation. His words were eagerly absorbed by the crowd, as rain on parched soil. They were Good News—they strengthened the people and gave them courage.
For me until very recently, words about a coming wrath have not had that kind of resonance. After all, Jesus came after John to show us a God who is love, whose eye is always on the sparrow. That is the deepest truth. And still, there are signs all around us that we’ll need to come to terms with the reality that our individual and collective choices have created.
Yet, who doesn’t feel resistance to an image of ourselves as possible chaff to be burned with unquenchable fire?
The Message (MSG) version has a rendering that’s invited me to work with the wheat-from-the-chaff image in a new way. It tells us that the One who is to come “will make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God: everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”
For me, hearing John’s message in these terms, it no longer feels like a threat. Rather, it feels like a promise.
After all, isn’t that what many of us already pray, in one way or another? When we pray the prayer of St. Francis, for instance: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…” Isn’t that prayer us asking God to bring us fully alive, pruning back the deadwood of our lives, putting the detritus of our past regrets and present shortcomings and anxieties out with the trash? Isn’t it the longing we have to actually catch fire, becoming the passionate lovers of Life and the living that we were created to be?
Isn’t it also us admitting that, left to our own devices, much of our inner and outer reality would be deadwood? Without God’s grace daily, we would never come to be the green and blossoming tree of blessing we were born to be.
So I’m grateful for John’s passionate and shocking words—no matter how uncomfortable I might be at the same time.
-Jeanne Marcus, Alumna member of CoS communities
Questions for reflection:
- What is the Good News in your life right now, that strengthens you and gives you courage?
- What “deadwood” are you aware of in your life right now? What habitual thoughts or actions are getting in the way of you experiencing life fully?
- Who or what has been an unexpected wise messenger in your life this year?
