What Should We Do?
a sermon based on Luke 3:7–18
by Rev. William A. Palmer, Jr

The test of good preaching is not necessarily how interesting or well delivered a sermon may be. The real test is: Does it get results? Or, as John the Baptist may have put it: Does it bear fruit? John was unique in many ways. The Bible comments on his manner of dress and his diet, but even more compelling was the fact that crowds flocked to his sermons even when he addressed them as a "brood of vipers" and warned them that the ax was about to fall on those who did not get with the program. The test of John's preaching was not just that crowds gathered in the wilderness of the Jordan to hear him. It was not his riveting appearance or his hectoring of his listeners. It was rather the results he got. The key to his effectiveness as a preacher is stated clearly in verse 10 of our Gospel reading for this morning: "The crowds asked him, 'What then should we do?'"

Do we know what to do to get ready for the coming of Jesus?

As I've run into people at the post office or in the Food Lion over the past week or so, I've heard the same question on many lips: "Are you ready for Christmas?" When we stop to converse, we talk about buying gifts for our loved ones, getting Christmas cards into the mail, or decorating our homes. Yet even if we were to have every one of our gifts purchased, paid for, wrapped, and ready for their recipients; even if every one of our Christmas cards had gone out into the mail a week ago; and even if our home was decorated for the holiday in a way that might be approved by Martha Stewart, we still might not be ready for Christmas.

What should we do, indeed?

Most of us should be sophisticated enough to understand that Christmas really isn't about brightly wrapped packages or beautiful greeting cards or twinkling lights on a tree or a twenty-foot-high inflatable Frosty the Snowman. We know that Christmas is really about the birth of a child in a manger, a child whom the prophets called Emmanuel-God with us. Christmas is about how we respond to that child-and to the adult he would become-as far as his expectations for our lives. We may ponder about the meaning of Jesus' coming into the world. We may try to wrap our brains around words like incarnation and immanence and transcendence and kenosis. But ultimately Christmas is no more about abstract theological thinking than it is about tinsel and mistletoe. Christmas is about practical matters like life and death and meaning. And practical matters deserve practical answers. Which is why John the Baptist can speak so powerfully to us, even today.

What should we do? What should we do to get ready for the coming of Jesus?

Three times that question is asked in this morning's gospel lesson. And three times the answer that comes back is intensely practical. Practical answers for a practical question-that's what John was about in the wilderness two thousand years ago, and John's answers still have practical relevance for us today.

"What then should we do?" the crowds ask, and John says, "Whoever has two coats must share with any who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." To get ready for the coming of Jesus, we have to learn to share.

At the end of this month I will reach the close of my tenure as treasurer of the West Point Ministers' Association and the Good Neighbor Center, a post I have held for a year and nine months. This has been a wonderful experience for me, because I've discovered that we have a lot of generous people in our community. I have received donations from people whose names, if I were to tell you them, are names you would recognize because they are leaders in our town, people we know to be well off. There are other names, if I told them to you, that would leave you shaking your head because you wouldn't recognize them. Often they are people who have little but who share what little they have with others.

Month after month our own congregation fills a box in the narthex to overflowing with canned goods and cereal and other foods. The people who do so may indeed remember what John said-that whoever has food should share with those who do not. It's practical advice. It's one of the simplest and most direct ways of dealing with the problem of hunger in our world. It may even come under the heading of one of those important things we learned-or should have learned-in kindergarten. We get ready for Christmas-and for the far more important day when Jesus comes a second time-by sharing. But if the only sharing you're planning to do this Christmas is with your spouse or your kids or your parents, that doesn't count. John tells us to look for those without coats and those without food. Those are the people with whom we need to be sharing at Christmas.

"What should we do?" ask the tax collectors, people who were about as popular two thousand years ago as they are today. The difference probably is that more of them were dishonest in John's day than in ours. John's practical advice to them is "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." Contained in that instruction are two things we all need to hear. The first is, "Don't cook the books." Dishonest bookkeeping is not just a matter of concern for tax collectors, or corporations like Enron, or mutual fund managers. Being honest with money is just as important for taxpayers as it is for those who collect the taxes, something we all need to be reminded of as we enter the new year and start putting our finances in order for the IRS. The second thing John makes clear, and the thing that usually lies at the root of dishonest bookkeeping, is that greed is a temptation for every one of us. Our entire society seems to be gripped in the clutches of a passion for more of everything-bigger salaries, bigger houses, bigger SUVs, bigger credit card debts. John challenges us to ask ourselves how much we really need. He doesn't tell us to go out into the wilderness and live wearing a camel hair shirt and eating locusts and wild honey. He simply tells us to live honestly within our means. It's a practical answer for those who want to get ready for the coming of Jesus.

The soldiers are the last to ask the question, "What should we do?" And John has two practical instructions for them that certainly are relevant for us as well. The first is don't abuse your power. "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation." In John's day, people who wielded spears or swords were those who could exercise power improperly. Today you don't need a sword or spear or even a gun to abuse power. When a teacher or coach or scoutmaster or clergyperson molests a child, it's not because that person used a weapon in the commission of the crime. Rather, a person who was vested with power by virtue of his or her position took advantage of another person who was essentially powerless. To take away someone's money at the point of a gun is criminal; to take away someone's innocence by abusing power is worse.

Secondly, John tells the soldiers to be satisfied with their wages. Do you know anyone who is satisfied with his or her wages? That universal dissatisfaction drives the mobility of our society today. We move from job to job and from city to city in a never-ending quest for satisfaction, yet we never really seem to be satisfied for long. John says that those who really want to focus on getting ready for Jesus should try to be satisfied where they are and with what they are getting.

Do you see a common thread in all this practical advice? Those people in the wilderness two thousand years ago seemed to be consumed with getting and spending, getting and hoarding, getting and getting more. Just like us. Only when our thinking is completely turned around, when we start to think about giving and sharing, and finding satisfaction in our lives that is not rooted in the accumulation of things, will we join those who truly are making themselves ready for the coming of Jesus. It's all pretty practical, really. And as the Bible says, it's good news.

Are you ready for Christmas?