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.
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| 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?”
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| 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.
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| 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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