"What Then Should We Do?"
Advent 3, Year C; Luke 3:7-18
In Luke’s Gospel John the Baptist is not quite the familiar wild figure accompanied by locusts and leather, as noted last week. In this version, when the word of God came to him it was time to leave desert life (1:80) and engage with human society (3:2), and preaching is the center of the exercise more than baptism itself. The unique material Luke presents about the preaching of John also makes him more engaged with the questions and issues of his audience (and Luke’s), and not just a forerunner to Jesus (although he is that too).
This passage falls into three fairly clear sections, reflecting the sources. At the beginning, Luke (with Matthew) reports a speech not found in Mark, addressed to the “brood of vipers” (vv. 7-9), where John asserts that claiming Abrahamic ancestry is no substitute for “bearing fruits,” and warning of the axe and the fire. Then Luke provides unique material with concrete advice for a set of those who have come (vv. 10-14), on which more below. Third comes what is shared with Mark, about the coming of Jesus and the relative status of the two, and the succeeding baptism with the Spirit (and, for Luke and Matthew, fire).
The exhortation about vipers, axes, and fire seems harsh; and while Matthew has John’s attack directed at the Pharisees and Sadducees, Luke even targets the people as a whole, “the crowds.” This broader attack has at least two consequences or purposes. First, it coheres with the pretended defense of Abrahamic descent, which is not narrowly applicable to the religious leadership, but applies to all. The question of true Abrahamic and Israelite identity will continue to be addressed through Luke and Acts, as Luke narrates a Gospel in which God’s faithfulness to Israel becomes the center of a universal story of salvation, rather than simply a matter of ethnic identity.
Second, the general call to repentance and “fruits”—meaning not dessert or snack, but crops, the products of agriculture that provide for human need—makes social justice a universal problem and responsibility. The whole of the “crowds” previously castigated respond (v.10), suggesting both that they did need a call to repentance, and also that they heard it. John’s mission is not calling out certain wrongdoers, but casting a harsh light on the whole of a corrupt society. These interactions—”what then shall we do” and the answers—expand the problem of those “fruits” found lacking in the threatening discourse of the axe and the fire.
The required fruits are clearly defined as a sharing of resources: “‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise’” (v. 11). John suggests that members of the community are mutually dependent, and that the surplus of one amounts to the need of the other. The wickedness to which this is the answer—the “viperous” behavior named earlier—is disparity between wealth and poverty, first of all. John puts forward a view that will appear again in Luke-Acts, in the presentation of the earliest Christian community as sharing resources (see Acts 2:44-47). Justice here does not mean getting what one deserves, however defined, but what one needs. The same theme is common in the Fathers; Basil the Great, commenting on another Lukan text (12:18) but clearly alluding to this one, says:
Whoever steals a person’s clothes will be called a robber; but is someone who does not clothe the naked, though able to do so, worthy of any other name? To the hungry belongs the bread you withhold from them; and to the naked, the clothing stored in your vaults (Homily 6 on Luke 12:18).1
The fact that tax collectors and soldiers (not Pharisees and Sadducees as in Matthew) are then singled out is intriguing. These were obvious instruments of oppression, but also objects of marginalization. It is an inconvenient truth for some that these two categories often coincide in the Gospels, and in Luke not least. The “righteous,” who will regularly complain about Jesus’ association with tax collectors and sinners, are in their own minds the social justice warriors of the day, yet their mode of operation is not actually focussed on change, but on maintaining their own identity and purity.
John addresses both the oppression and the marginalization, because the tax collectors and the soldiers actually ask for instruction. The two groups are also particularly responsive, as will prove to be the case through Gospel narrative, at least for tax collectors. The advice given will be very much in keeping with the statements already made to the crowds about wealth, poverty, and need.
The tax collectors are familiar Gospel figures. These are Jews, yet despised by those properly concerned with faith and justice. This could be because of their collaboration with Roman authorities, or because of their place in a system that raised taxes (mostly local levies and tolls) by private contract, creating a familiar incentive to gouge in the name of “efficiency.” Neither John here, nor Jesus later, make any concession to their proverbial rapacity, but both call them clearly and genuinely to repentance—then don’t balk when some of them actually comply. The concrete instruction by John—to collect no more than the amount prescribed—is clear, however likely it was to be fulfilled. Something similar is narrated in the story of Zacchaeus, also unique to Luke (19:1-10).
“Soldiers” here should not be imagined as the Roman occupiers. The context requires that these are among the “crowds,” tempted to claim Abrahamic ancestry for their justification; so, as most commentators acknowledge, they are also Jewish, and members of the local security forces such as those of Herod the Tetrarch. We might also however have to reckon with Luke’s audience, hearing this some decades later and far away, as having wider application to soldiery. In any case, they also have instructions which, like those for the tax collectors, were concrete but may sometimes have been no more consistently achievable than, say, a health insurance assessor prioritizing policy holders over share holders.
The “crowds” hear all this, and interestingly they now take on a different guise; they become “the people” (v. 15) instead, afforded the identity of a more coherent group, comparable to a nation or society rather than a mob. Having heard these teachings, accepting the challenge of mutual responsibility and care, they are changed. This is, then or now, the difference between an actual society and a set of people who happen to be in proximity.
This “people,” who by implication are now a more genuine version of Israel, God’s people, ask themselves whether the one who teaches thus might be the Christ. While they are wrong, they are not wrong to ask. Even after John shares in response the news of the one who is coming after him, sandals and winnowing fork and all, Luke says John “proclaimed the gospel (“good news”) to the people” (v. 18). Luke does not use this “gospel” language much or in a technical way, but it is right to give John his due here; what he teaches and its result are manifestations of God’s salvation.
Yet John is not the Messiah, and Jesus is still to come. The image of the winnowing fork attributed to Jesus seems to take us back to the confronting language of John’s opening address. We cannot make Jesus a kinder, gentler version of John. This sorting process is an extension of the “fruits” metaphor, the test of whether the “crowds” have indeed become “the people” by meeting the needs of those in their midst without food and clothing. John’s call to prepare is thus not merely about an attitude of expectation, or even of hope; it is a call to action.
PG 31:277