The Third Sunday of Advent, December 12, 2021

Luke 3:10–18

The crowds asked John the Baptist, “What should we do?” He said to them in reply, “Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized and they said to him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He answered them, “Stop collecting more than what is prescribed.” Soldiers also asked him, “And what is it that we should do?” He told them, “Do not practice extortion, do not falsely accuse anyone, and be satisfied with your wages.” Now the people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ. John answered them all, saying, “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 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 with unquenchable fire.” Exhorting them in many other ways, he preached good news to the people.

In context, St. Luke has described the preaching of St. John the Baptist, calling on the Jews to repent before the Messiah comes, for he would judge them severely on account of their sins.  The people ask, “What should we do?” They ask John, not the scribes and Pharisees.  He replies, “Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise.”  John offers this not as a penance but as a way of life.  Those who have lived selfishly must now live generously.  We note that John does not say “can share” but “should share”, as if urging those with an extra coat or food to find someone to share this with.  “Even tax collectors came to be baptized.”  Perhaps the future St. Matthew was among these.  Luke’s remark tells us of the broadness of John’s appeal and how deeply it was felt.  “Stop collecting more than what is prescribed.”  Another man, preaching on his own and only interested in stirring up the people, would have condemned the tax collectors out of hand or at least made impossible demands on them.  But John is preaching under the influence of the Holy Spirit and so makes righteousness attainable for these men.  When soldiers came to him, he merely told them, “Do not practice extortion, do not falsely accuse anyone, and be satisfied with your wages.”  He does not tell them to give up being soldiers but to avoid abusing others.  We can understand John as taking to us, here.  He does not command us to live in the radical way that he does in the wilderness, but to live generously with others and to forsake using others to advance ourselves.

“Now the people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ.”  Through his righteousness, John resembled the long-awaited Messiah.  Through our own righteousness and sanctity we can nudge people into thinking of Jesus.  “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals.”  Jesus tells us, “Amen I say to you, there hath not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11, 11), and even he is undeserving of carrying our Lord’s sandals.  That should give us pause.  And yet, through our response to the Lord’s call to faith in him, he will allow us to do this and, indeed, one day to touch the wounds in his hands and side which he incurred for our sake.

“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  John uses water; Jesus uses fire.  This is to show the immense difference between the sign of John’s baptism and the reality that is Christ’s.  “His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn.”  John speaks of how we will face the Lord at the end of our lives when we have been reaped from the field of this life at the time when we should have matured spiritually, and at the end of the world when he brings his own into heaven.  “But the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  The chaff is good for nothing once the wheat is harvested and is to be burned.  While actual chaff burns quickly and is no more, those who did not obey the will of God on earth and so proved themselves useless to him will be burned forever: “Their fire is not extinguished” (Mark 9, 47).