Short, easy to use, thought provoking background commentary for your sermon, bible study lesson, or scripture reflection.
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Year C, Season of Advent
Third Sunday of Advent
Sunday Between December 11 and December 17 Inclusive
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
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Contrary to Arthur Paul Boer's excellent advice, Never Call Them Jerks, I often have to resist adding as a personal aside while reading Verse 7, "You brood of vipers (and you know who you are) ..." But just as with Jonah and the Ninevites, it turns out that even vipers can heed warnings and repent.
However, as Malina helpfully points out, this phrase would also be understood as, "you offspring of vipers." And since all of one's social standing derived from one's parents - this is a high insult indeed. An insult that would be strenuously challenged by those listening to John - and a challenge that John anticipates and cuts off by saying, "Don't say that Abraham is your ancestor ..."
Indeed by going further with his image of the axe cutting at the ROOTS of the tree - as compared with cutting at the trunk of the tree - John is deepening the meaning of repentance to be RE-ROOTING. Luke does not explicitly expand on this in this text, but the practice of baptism for the Christian community would very early on become not just a rite for repentance for the forgiveness of sins - but more crucially, a rite for re-rooting one's identity away from one's birth family into the community of followers of Christ's way. It is this baptism of RE-ROOTING as a child of God that Jesus undergoes.
What Luke does expand on is John's message of repentance. And so, probably the best sermon title for this week is, "New Roots That Bear Fruits of Repentance." (Verse 8)