A sermon on Zephaniah 3:14-20; Philippians 4:4-7 & Luke 3:7-18 by Nathan Nettleton

John the baptiser almost gets it. He almost gets what Jesus is on about, what Jesus means. In many ways John stands in the middle as the transition figure between the expectations Israel had long held about the coming messiah and what Jesus actually turned out to be. As the transition figure, he has moved beyond the expectations of the masses, but he hasn’t entirely broken free in the way that Jesus does. Now it might be sounding a bit arrogant of me to be saying that I can judge that John didn’t quite get it, and thus implying that I do, but the truth is that most of the time many of us, me included, are actually still stuck in that same transition with John. We set out to follow Jesus, but we keep falling back into old ways of thinking and expecting Jesus to fall into line with what we used to imagine a messiah would be.

Expectations are at the heart of the account we heard about John tonight. After a summary of some of his fiery preaching, we heard the gospel writer tell us that “the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah.” Now John quickly hoses down this speculation that he himself might be the one, but the fact of this swirl of expectation around him tells us quite a lot. The expectations obviously arose because John was ticking all the expected boxes. John seemed to be what the people were expecting a messiah might be before he made his move.

One of the things that was expected of the messiah was that he would judge between good people and bad people. He would divide the sheep from the goats as the saying went. And can’t you just hear that in what we heard tonight of John’s preaching? “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance.”

“What sort of fruits?” the people ask. “What then should we do?”

And John begins to spell out the behavioural implications. These are the expectations of those who belong to God, those who will come out on the right side of the judgement. “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Etc. etc. “Even now the axe is ready and every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” The fire of judgement that would be. The fire that will divide the good from the bad, the saved from the lost. And when John hoses down the expectations that he might be the one, he promises the people that they’d know the true messiah because he would come baptising not just with water, but with 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.” The good and the bad will be sorted out once and for all.

In a few minutes time, we will be celebrating the growing faith of our junior catechumens. And one of the things we will be talking about in the rite tonight is our hope and prayer that they might grow to be the kinds of people who would share a coat with someone who has none, and do likewise with food, just as John said. And we probably often hear this and think of this in much the same way that John seems to have done. We want our youngsters to become people who bear fruits worthy of repentance in order that they might survive the judgement of fire and come out included among the good, the chosen, the saved, the favoured ones of God, as opposed to being chaff that will be burned in unquenchable fire. But are we really just trying to purchase good fire insurance for our children and ourselves? Is that what we’ve reduced good deeds and even the gospel to, fire insurance? And divisive fire insurance at that: a world starkly divided between the blessed and the cursed. Or isn’t such divisive us-and-them thinking precisely what is fuelling the apocalyptic fires we’ve lit for ourselves that seem to be increasingly threatening to consume the good and bad a like? Isn’t that the kind of thinking that gives us a Donald Trump, who is able to so cleverly position himself as the one who can understand and articulate the hostile thinking of a frightened people and thus sell himself as their potential messiah who will close the borders and drive out all those dangerous “others”?

You see, John’s expectations of fires of judgement dividing us and them seems to have been just where he was still unable to break free from the old religious ways of thinking. Later on when Jesus’s public ministry has been underway for some time, John himself begins to doubt whether Jesus could be the one who would baptise with Holy Spirit and fire. Where’s the fire? Where’s the winnowing fork? Where’s the chaff being thrown into unquenchable fire? Sure Jesus was saving the lame and gathering the outcasts, as we heard the prophet Zephaniah promising, but Zephaniah had, in the same breath, spoken of a messiah who would “deal with all your oppressors at that time.” But Jesus seemed just as gracious and hospitable to Roman centurions as he was to the lost sheep of Israel. Where’s the fire? If fire was to be what set the real messiah apart, then Jesus was turning out to be a big disappointment.

Indeed, by the time we get to the reflections of the Apostle Paul, the descriptions of the messiah are sounding very different indeed. Tonight we heard from his letter to the Philippians which is the letter in which he talks most explicitly about imitating Jesus, but what we heard him say tonight was not, “The Lord is near, let your fire be known to everyone.” Instead it was, “Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” And it is not the fiery judgement of God that passes all understanding, but the peace of God. It is not the fear of judgement that will guard your hearts and minds, but the peace of God, made known in Christ Jesus. This didn’t add up to John. It probably never did because it didn’t really add up to anyone much until after the resurrection. Right up to that last week, even Jesus’s closest disciples were still waiting for the fire and the sword and the glorious victory over Israel’s oppressors. They were still expecting Jesus to change tack at any moment and start breathing fire like the Donald Trump type messiah.

But the fire that Jesus brings, the fire that not so much surpasses all understanding as defies all understanding, turned out to be the fire of love. A fire of love that burned brightly for good and evil alike, for oppressed and oppressor alike, for insider and outsider alike. A fire of love that doesn’t incinerate our enemies, but incinerates the barriers of hatred and hostility that divide us, a fire that incinerates all that would keep us from recognising one another as brothers and sisters, all made in the image of God and all being gathered into the gracious love of God. Ultimately, it is a fire of love that confounds and consumes one half of those expectations that we held, that John held, and that his hearers held, and that so many of us still have trouble breaking free of. Jesus would repeat words like those of John about giving away a second coat and sharing your food with those who have none, but when Jesus sounds these calls, it is not about positioning ourselves to avoid the fires of judgement. It is about reciprocating the love we have been shown, the love that burns brightly for all. It is about living as though the day of justice and peace had come on this day. It is about age of love being lived right here, right now. So as we come now to celebrate the growth and faith of these children, let’s not be praying for mere fire insurance or for them to be so separate from the ways of the world that they become hostile and suspicious of all but their own kind. Let’s be praying that they might burn brightly with the fire of love that sees not us-and-them, but only one big huge us, a whole world gathered up and burning with the unquenchable fire of love and mercy and grace and the peace that surpasses all understanding.