4th St. Johnstide 2015, Daughters of the Lamb

St. Johnstide

Luke 3: 7-18

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You are sons of the serpent yet! Who led you to believe that you can avoid the decline of the old ways of the soul? Produce true fruits in keeping with a change of heart and mind. And do not begin excusing yourselves by saying, “We have Abraham as our father.” For I tell you that God can raise up sons for Abraham out of these stones. The ax is already poised at the root of the trees, so every tree that does not produce good fruit is felled and thrown into the fire.”

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked.

St. Elizabeth of Hungary

John answered, “Let the man with two tunics share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.”

Tax collectors also came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?”

“Do not collect any more than you are authorized to do,” he told them.

               

Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

St. Martin 

He replied, “Do not intimidate and do not accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ, the Messiah.

John answered them all, “I wash you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will wash you with the breath of the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, while he burns up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

And with many and various exhortations John preached the good news to the people.

St. Johnstide

July 19, 2015

Luke 3: 7-18

A son or daughter derives much of their way of being from their parents. In many respects, (though not all), the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as the saying goes.

Beatus Escorial, wiki

John the Baptist tells the people coming to him to be baptized that they are yet ‘sons of the serpent’. That is to say that their life is organized around the uprighted serpent of their earthly senses, housed in the brain and spinal column. In a certain very real sense, our inherited physical constitution goes back to Adam and Eve, when this ‘serpent’ inserted itself into human evolution. We are all sons and daughters of the serpent, living by the senses.

But John has seen in Christ a new kind of human being. Seeing Christ gives him the image of a lamb, a young innocent who will nevertheless take on the burden of the world’s sin, which are the results of living only by the serpent.

We are called upon to become sons and daughters of the Lamb. We are to share the burdens of our fellow human beings; share our outer and inner wealth with them. We are not to unfairly heap more weight on them than they can carry. We are not to intimidate them or tarnish their reputation.

Becoming a son or daughter of the Lamb is no easy task. It includes undergoing a kind of purification by fire – a burning out of all the old serpentine ways of thinking and of acting solely for our own advantage.  What is of value in us will be winnowed out from what is useless in our nature. We prune and shape and cultivate our soul life, our very sense of self, so that it produces good spiritual fruits to offer to God and to our fellow brothers and sisters. 

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