I Will Meet You Halfway

So last Sunday I talked about my friend from seminary and her John the Baptist nutcracker. Well he sure seems to earn that rap today — Brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? And yet, he is surprisingly pastoral, meeting people halfway. And he has the passion of a man who deliberately chose not to follow in his daddy’s footsteps. In this slightly penitential season of Advent, a season of preparation for Jesus’s first and second coming, the Good News we hear from John the Baptist is that God will meet us halfway.

  Recall how John the Baptist came into the world. His father Zechariah was a priest serving at the Temple in Jerusalem. Like Zechariah, his mother Elizabeth was well past her child-bearing years. But as he was performing the priestly sacrifice, the Angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah and promised that he and Elizabeth would have a child who, as Zechariah would prophesy:

  You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, 

for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way

To give his people knowledge of salvation

by the forgiveness of their sins.

In the tender compassion of our God 

the dawn from on high shall break upon us

To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,

and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

  Do Morning Prayer enough and you might just memorize those last words of the Canticle of Zechariah. But, to fulfill his father’s words, John chose not to continue in the hereditary priesthood of his father. To carry out the ministry of giving God’s people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins, required ethical purity more than ritual purity. But, as Luke presents John the Baptist, even as he called all people to ethical purity, he meets them halfway.

  “And the crowds asked him, ‘What should we do, then?’ He answered them, saying, ‘Anyone who has two tunics must share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food must do the same.’” We don’t all have to be like John, wearing nothing but camel hair, and subsisting on locusts and honey. We just have to share from our excess.

  “Tax collectors, too, came to be baptised, and they said to him, ‘Teacher, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Collect no more than the rate appointed for you.’ Tax collectors worked for the Roman Empire. They were given a total amount of tax from an area that the Romans assumed should be able to be paid. If the tax collectors chose to charge a “commission,” that was their business. Collaborators with the Romans, John still met them halfway, if they at least wouldn’t extort commissions.

“Soldiers also asked him, ‘What about us? What should we do?’ He said to them, ‘No intimidation! No false accusation! Be content with your pay!’ Given their proximity to tax collectors in this reading, these would have been Roman soldiers, apparently drawn to the one and only God of Abraham, yet having to enforce the tax collection, and tempted to wield their power in abusive and humiliating ways. Outsiders to the Covenant community, John the Baptist met them halfway, if they at least wouldn’t abuse their Jewish subjects.

  What John would not let people get away with was the assumption that salvation was a hereditary privilege take for granted: “Produce fruit worthy of repentance, and do not start telling yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ because I tell you, God can raise children for Abraham from these stones.” Even halfway, forgiveness is a gift, not a privilege or a legacy.

  It seems that the end, John goes back to being the hard cop: “His winnowing-fan is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his barn; but the chaff he will burn in a fire that never goes out.” And yet, Luke reports this, along with everything else John said, as “good news.” I suppose that for those who were on the receiving end of unrepentant extortion and intimidation, fire might seem like justice, and thus, good news.

  Some of us might need justice more than others. All of us need the grace of forgiveness that meets us all halfway. In this Advent season, when we hear of preparing a way for the Lord, making straight paths and rough places into smooth roads, where you can promote justice, peace, and love, do so. And meet others halfway as God meets you halfway.

The Rev. David P. Kendrick

December 15th, 2024

3rd Sunday of Advent, Year C