An Old-Fashioned Prophet

An Old-Fashioned Prophet

Luke 3:7-18

            How we long to go back to the time when everything was wonderful!  Families all had two parents (one of each gender), 2.3 children (evenly balanced between genders), a home on a sunny/shady street with just the right number of rooms, a perfect lawn, and a two-car garage.  Father had a job with a good, steady income, and mother was home all day to take care of the kids.  Everyone went to church on Sunday, and everyone watched the same (wholesome) TV programs.  Life was perfect—just like on those wholesome TV programs.  Why can’t we still be like that?

            The truth, of course, is that few of us ever were.  We like to think everything was perfect “back then,” but for most people it never was.  There were wars, poverty, crime, disease, broken homes—most of the same problems we have today.  The difference is that “back then” we could keep them at arm’s length.  We didn’t have to be reminded of troubles so frequently or so vividly.  Those problems were “out there,” or “over there,” not in the leafy suburbs or small towns where everyone lived.

            Judah remembered such a time in her past as inaccurately as we remember our gold-plated one.  There was a time when Israel seemed to be a major player in the Middle East.  The time was short-lived (David, Solomon), and was never as wonderful as the people remembered, but it was something for them to hold on to.  As we look in our rose-colored rear view mirrors, so they looked back on a time where all was perfect.

            Now Rome ruled, and kept corrupt and unjust kings in power.  The religious leaders were in cahoots with the Romans, and everyone outside of the ruling class felt oppressed and under someone’s thumb.  Oh, how the people longed for the good old days!

            Then came a man who defied every description of a leader they had ever imagined.  He wore weird clothing, ate strange foods, and said disturbing things.  He called his listeners a “brood of vipers,” and told them they were sinners.  He said they’d better repent, change their ways, and begin to care for those who were less fortunate—the way God had meant Israel to do from the beginning.

            “Perhaps,” the people thought, “this is the way to get back to the good old days.  Maybe if we do what he says Judah will become great once more, and Rome will disappear, and our evil rulers will disappear, and our oppressive religious leaders will disappear.  Maybe everything will be wonderful again, as it was before.”

            But John was not calling them backward into some mis-remembered, golden-haloed past.  He was urging them forward into a bright new future, a future that demanded—and depended upon—changed lives.  No longer would they be able to take refuge in restructured memories.  They would have to come to grips with the problems they had kept at arm’s length—the ones they had consigned to reaches of their memories so far removed from consciousness they could not even call them to mind.

            “Repent,” John said.  “Change your ways.  Follow the law as God meant you to, not the easy, self-absorbed way you have for the vast majority of your history.  And do it soon!  For One is coming who will not just call you to repentance, but will sift the good from the bad.  The good fruit will be gathered into his barn, and the chaff will be destroyed—now and for eternity.”

            John’s message is no less meaningful today.  God calls us to put away our half-true memories of past glories and look to an even more glorious future, one in which all of us can share, one in which God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.