Judgment, Holy Spirit, and the Unquenchable Fire

14 December 2015 | Third Sunday of Advent | Luke 3:7-18
Richmond Hill, Richmond, Virginia
The Rev. B. P. Campbell

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

The most puzzling line from this passage from Luke’s Gospel tonight comes right at the end. After strong invective, a violent speech and the threat of unquenchable fire from John the Baptist, Luke concludes: “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”

The word is Gospel. How could this possible be Good News?

Well, I believe it is good news. It’s just the full good news – the good news makes you catch your breath and marvel at the justice and mercy of God. One of my good friends, one of the founding board members of Richmond Hill, used to call this kind of good news the “x-rated good news.” It’s strong stuff. That means that it’s like rat poison to superficiality, but like gospel to those who seek God and are starved for eternal life-giving truth.

So tonight’s sermon is entitled “Judgment, Holy Spirit, and the Unquenchable Fire.” These are the topics of John’s preaching that we hear tonight. They are fundamental to Gospel and perhaps, as Luke suggests, there may even be Gospel in them.

1. Judgment

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

We don’t have all of the details in John’s statements of judgment, but they are pretty comprehensive. Pharisees and other leaders were present, as well as soldiers and ordinary people. Everyone was addressed in this broad brushed condemnation. John called them all a nest of poisonous snakes.

John’s condemnation seems addressed to more than simple personal sins. He is addressing the whole structure of the society – the hierarchical religion perverting the principles of God, and using them to maintain money and power and privilege; the militarism, violence and oppression of the occupation forces; the centuries of empire domination; as well as the petty thefts, hypocrisies, and personal immoralities of the population.

It could just as well be today, as current events uncover the centuries of distortion, theft, conquest, exploitation, sin, racism, and shame which have produced Western Europe, Russia, China, India, Africa, and the United States of America. The history of our civilization is not a pretty one. Here in Richmond, we have a clear microcosmic picture of the narrative: European conquest and theft of the land and culture of a non-European people; slavery; an economy capitalized by stolen land and stolen labor; and a society unable to repent in an effective fashion either of its injustices to its own people, or its manipulation of the wealth of other nations for its own profit.

If you want to talk about judgment – true judgment – in line with John the Baptist, it is going to look pretty massive, just from our perspective alone. And that says nothing, of course, of our own petty thefts, hypocrisies, and personal immoralities.

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

John knew how to dish it out, but he really didn’t have much sense of where to go after that. He gave different people advice on the small personal amendments to behavior which they had in their power. But to address the great sins of the culture and the time which he saw, he didn’t have much advice. All he could hold out, really, was the hope that some wisdom was coming which he didn’t have a clue about: “One who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

The judgment is heavy, but at some level it is necessary and inescapable. The problem is, of course, that the massiveness of the disrepair of the world is beyond the capacity of one generation or one people to address, even if all were willing and desirous of it. But the other problem is this: if you don’t tell the truth about history, if you don’t discuss actual sin and hypocrisy and hierarchy and inequality, you get further and further from the truth.

Judgment. John was peddling it, and a lot of people came to face it, but nobody knew what to do with it. There was something else. Someone was coming.

2. Holy Spirit.

John seems to have known about the Holy Spirit – in fact, you could and should say that John was imbued with the Holy Spirit. How else could he have seen his time so clearly? How else could he even have known that, with this clear and devastating thinking, something else was needed? And how else, in the face of this incredibly apocalyptic picture of the world, could he have felt the hope he felt – that a new spirit was coming? How, with all of this darkness which John so forcefully described and identified, could there be light? And above all, how could this light be enduring, eternal, even unquenchable?

The challenge which John identified so well – the fundamental challenge which defines the search for eternal life – is the ability to find both true judgment and rock-solid hope. They seem, in the calculations of John the Baptist and of most scholars and commentators, to be impossible. Cynicism and sophisticated scholarship agree; newscasters and citizens join the chorus. Religion pulls itself away from accuracy in order to sing uncontexted songs. We avoid being specific in church here in Richmond. 1200 churches, at least, will consider it inappropriate to talk about public transportation in sermons and worship, just as our ancestors considered it inappropriate to talk about the slave market, just as their ancestors considered it appropriate to steal native lands and import enslaved Africans in the name of Christianity.

Hope is terrific as a Christmas Pageant. But it is dangerous as a specific challenge to cynicism and evil, especially if money is involved. When faced with any piece of that great structural mess that John the Baptist identified, we cower and say of the great transformation, “It’ll never happen.”

Unless there is a holy spirit. The Holy Spirit, Jesus said in John’s Gospel, is the spirit of truth. “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about…judgment:…

because the ruler of this world has been condemned. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”

In other word, in the face of the massive castle of shame which the world has erected, which John bemoaned, and which we have the privilege of seeing so very clearly here in Richmond, the Holy Spirit will prove the world wrong. The ruler of this world has been condemned. The spirit of truth will pick his way through cynicism and guide those who will listen into all truth.

Careful, of course. We are easily deceived. But our knowledge of our own frailty is also an easy excuse for inaction. The Spirit can lead, and the Spirit can correct – assuming the Spirit we are following is the humble spirit of Jesus – but the Spirit cannot act unless you say yes.

John saw the desolation of the world. He saw the need for change – but the only change he could see was personal admission of guilt and the need for change. What he could hint at, but not know, was the transforming, new-building, hope-founded work of the Holy Spirit, a work which is so different in Spirit from the paralysis of human judgment that, as John says, the one is not worthy of the other.

Judgment. Holy Spirit.

3. The Winnowing Fire.

Now we come to the crux of this conversation: What could possibly be good about a winnowing fork and an unquenchable fire? “One who is more powerful than I is coming,” John said. “I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Well, without the Holy Spirit there is only “the Fire next time.” There is only the repeated destruction of things, people, societies, and cultures by the negative conflicts and competitions of forces that the world generates.

But if you can see, if you can believe, if we can hope, there is not only a home prepared for us hereafter in the bosom of the Father, but there is one to lead us, and a spirit of hope to identify, which brings the kingdom of heaven to hand right now. However it is preached, however it is presented, it is that spirit which is being prepared and identified again right now, here in metropolitan Richmond, at the end of 2015.

I don’t know about you, but I believe that on a personal level, life puts us through a pretty rigorous process from birth to death. The last few chapters are pretty difficult, in that we have absolutely no opportunity for escape. We all go out of here the same way. There is a lot of pain along the way, from the beginning to the end. It would be easy to see human life as tragedy – unless you had seen how God can bring joy out of sadness and triumph out of tragedy – unless you had experienced his salvation so definitely that you could not deny it. Then you know that true hope is not a flimsy wrapping thrown around a horrible package, but a rock-solid pathway to glory both here and in the world to come. That little baby is a survivor – and a servant – and a king.

In the light of this kind of thing, tragedy becomes a winnowing, taking the chaff away and exposing the truth of life and love and relationship. This is true individually, and it can be true collectively. If Richmond becomes the capital of reconciliation, it will be because God can use the destruction and evil as a winnowing fork, making the fire which destroyed the city and the Confederacy a part of his unquenchable fire – a fire of destruction, of course, but – if we can receive it – a fire that lights the pathway to his permanent kingdom.

We might, as we walk through this valley, see only destruction and death. But we might also see winnowing, and the sloughing away of chaff, and an increasingly unquenchable fire of judgment, the Holy Spirit, and rock-solid hope.

Is this what Paul means when he says, “Rejoice in the Lord always?” Is this what Isaiah means when he says “the people who lived in darkness have seen a great light?” “So, with (this and) many other exhortations, (John) proclaimed “good news to the people.” Judgment. The Holy Spirit. The unquenchable fire.

The Rev. B. P. Campbell
Richmond Hill