“The Axe and the Viper” Mount Olive Lutheran Church Season of Advent Sermon December 8, 2024 – Luke 3:1–20

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday December 8th 2024: Season of Advent / Luke 3:1–20 “The Axe and the Viper”

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:

‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

make His paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled,

and every mountain and hill shall be made low,

and the crooked shall become straight,

and the rough places shall become level ways,

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

He said therefore 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 in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to 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 shall we do?” And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but He who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. 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 barn, but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.”

So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people. But Herod the tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother’s wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, added this to them all, that he locked up John in prison.

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends if you want to have fruit from a tree you’ll first need to plant a seed or a sprig, then you’ll need to tend to it over time making sure it has light and water and fertiliser; and if you want to cut a tree down you’ll first need to sharpen your axe, you won’t cut it down with an axe as dull as a butter knife, you won’t be able to cut it down with your bare hands. Again we focus on the necessity of preparations in life, so when we arrive at readings like our Gospel Reading for today we are faced again with the realities of, not just short term, but long term preparations.

When the crowds that come to John the Baptiser ask him, “What then shall we do?” And John answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise,” this boils down to preparing to live a life of charity and kindness to others. Our congregation is receiving more and more requests for help when it comes to the physical needs of people in our community, without preparation for such requests it’s easy to be caught flatfooted. We need always, as Christians, to ask ourselves how prepared are we to assist those in need of help? How can we continue to improve in our ability to assist and care for others? From there we need to further ask, how prepared am I to assist when the request doesn’t come to the congregation but directly to me? How charitable am I? Am I open to having my heart be prepared to give of my time, talents and treasures or am I afraid that the Lord won’t provide for me, am I afraid I will not have enough for myself if I provide help to someone else? Do I fear poverty and hunger more than I fear the Lord? Do I trust in myself regarding my finances more than I trust in the daily bread give to me by the Lord?    

Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And John the Baptiser said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” Not many of us in Canada work for the CRA and even fewer of us Canadians have direct bureaucratic or governmental oversight regarding the Canadian Revenue Agency but all of us to a greater or lesser degree either pay taxes or are impacted by taxes even if we are exempt from income tax, or we receive back GST rebate cheques from the government. Saint Paul teaches and encourages us with these words, “first of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.”[1] So we are called to pray for all these people in such a way that they would, by the grace of God, not act in greedy covetous ways, thieving from people and misusing what has been entrusted to them. And when economics and financial instruments are transformed into a crushing boot to hold down the many and feather the nests of the powerful we need to pray, “Lord have mercy,” and if any of us end up in a role or position where we are responsible for the collection of taxes we need to ask how prepared am I to fight for fair taxation. Am I open to heaving my neck on the chopping block of unemployment in order to be a whistleblower on corruption or to speak up for the needs of those overtaxed for unethical reasons? Do I fear public embarrassment and unemployment more than I fear the Lord? Do I desire to go along to get along more than calling out evil and faithfully caring for the needs of others?    

Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And John the Baptiser said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.” Now as is the case with all these examples John isn’t pointing things out that aren’t issues, soldiers where in fact misusing their authority to drum up false accusations, to threaten, to extort. We have issues with these and other criminal offences regarding the military even now. If it were not so we would not have Military Police and Military Courts and we wouldn’t have the Canadian Forces Service Prison and Detention Barracks (CFSPDB) nicknamed “Club Ed” located at Canadian Forces Base Edmonton. Beyond soldiers we have the R.C.M.P and you have the local Regina Police Service and the soon to be Saskatchewan Marshal Service, what John the Baptiser says to the soldiers applies to all who serve in the vocation of the sword. We regularly pray for them and extend our appreciation for the difficult nature of their work, alongside all first responders, with a godly desire for them to be virtuous in their actions, that they would resist temptations to misuses their authority: for as Saint Paul teaches they are intended to be God’s servant for our good. They are called to be servants of God, avengers carrying out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer[2] not vain perpetrators of crimes against those they are called to protect and serve. If you serve in this vocation in life how have you been prepared toward ethical conduct? Have these preparations reflected what you know to be true from the Word of God? Are you fighting the temptations to corruption or are you more afraid of honouring your friends in the force than you are of dishonoring the Lord by unworthy conduct? Do you trust that the authority entrusted to you is from God[3] or are you an authority unto yourself? This last question can be asked of all those with responsibilities involving authority over others where they must uphold what God commands.  

Now even though John the Baptiser lived off of the land eating wild honey and locusts for food and was not someone you could easily tax, and even though he had a leather belt and a camel hair tunic[4] and didn’t need the tunic off of anyone’s back, the point of the swords that the soldiers carried could just as easily end his life as anyone else’s, the blade of the sword could just as easily hack away at his body as it could anyone else. So what you see in this Gospel account is a man, who had his priorities straight, who was prepared to speak the Word of the Lord to the crowd without fear of them when John said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” The sharp swords of the soldiers were not as important to John the Baptiser as the sharp axe of the Lord laid at the foot of the tree of John’s eternal life, at the roots of the tree of the eternal life of the children of Abraham. There was nothing the soldiers could do to him, or the tax man could do to him or any of those folks could do to him that would impact his salvation or the coming of the Saviour whose paths he was called to make straight, in fact his calling them to repentance was part of making those paths straight in their hearts and not leaving them crooked. For their part they had no power over any of that, only God did. The worst that such folks could do was to refuse to listen and to make his life brutal and short, but they couldn’t determine what would happen after his life was over, that was in God’s hands.[5] So being afraid of them was fruitless but trusting in the Lord is promised to be fruitful.[6] 

Now later in the Gospel of Saint Luke—in chapter 13—the one John the Baptiser is preparing the way for, our Lord Jesus, tells this parable about an axe laid at the roots of a tree: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And [the vinedresser] answered [the owner of the vineyard], ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”[7] This is very similar to what John the Baptiser says when he looks at the crowd and says, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.” Because God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,[8] He both provides the warning for us and the way of salvation. The sharpened axe doesn’t immediately start swinging to cut you off at the ankles. Consider yourself the tree, and remember that in this parable told by Jesus He is the vinedresser who is seeking to care for you, who is calling for patience and more time for the tree.    

Now if you think all these warnings are for other people and not for you and you see the tree as not you but someone else who isn’t bearing the fruit you want to see then it is very tempting to want to pick up the axe laid at the roots of the tree and start swinging because ‘that useless tree is using up the ground.’ Dear ones when you think you know best in what area someone needs to have a change of heart remember you may also be very wrong about this, just as others might be very wrong about you. A fellow Christian may have private challenges with temptations and sins that you know nothing about, that you are completely unaware of, the Lord knows, just as the Lord knows your heart, not all of us are called to judge when the axe should swing.[9] Ask yourself, have you been “appointed to be judge and to punish by virtue of your office?”[10]

‘But pastor you had a lot to say about charity and bureaucracy and abuse of authority, and John the Baptiser clearly gave harsh warning to those who came to see him by the Jordan River?’ This is true, you are right on both accounts. “However, [our churches believe teach and confess that] the civil government, preachers, father, and mother are not forbidden to speak out. This is based on the understanding that [the eighth] commandment does not allow evil to go unpunished.”[11]     

The axe of course is not sharpened without reason, it has been prepared and it has been laid at the roots of the tree, and it’s equally true that the tree has not, by its own efforts, been fruitful in keeping with the desires of the owner of the vineyard. The ones who came out to see John the Baptiser actually were a brood of vipers, the children of a poisonous serpent,[12] so was this warning enough for everyone to straighten up and be perfect? No. They were also baptised for the forgiveness of sins, and as forgiven ones they embraced a life of repentance—which is turning away from a life of unobstructed sinning to gratify selfish desires—yet they still ultimately needed to be saved by the very one John was proclaiming.

This is where Jesus comes in. While He personally was without sin, and was not a viper like the rest of us He willingly took each and every sinful snake bite that this brood of vipers would sink into Him; He took all the poison we had to give right down to the last drop as He hung dying upon the cross, every bite of sin you had to give as your fangs—along with all the rest—like nails pieced His hands, His feet, His brow, His side. That sharp axe of justice, which would have cut down your tree, was taken to your Saviour crucified upon the cross with its branches, cleaving Him as it were limb from limb in your place. Jesus was both prepared and able to receive the very real death penalty that sin demands, which was coming to each of us, so that we could be spared the axe. His charity was without fault, His fairness was without fault, His use of authority was without fault; He was without sin so that your sin could die with Jesus and stay dead, so that you would have life in Him, so your tree would flourish and bear fruit in keeping with the desires of the Owner of the vineyard. And where you in your sin weren’t able to use the axe of God’s justice upon the viper, “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world,”[13] whose poison causes such pain and turmoil in our lives, it was God the Father who at the cross, in His Son Jesus’ death, struck the viper down: And in this work of mercy, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son [Jesus] in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”[14] He prepares you daily; strive to live your life in harmony with His preparations, not in resistance of them. Amen.    

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] 1 Timothy 2:1–2
[2] Romans 13:4
[3] Romans 13:1
[4] Matthew 3:4; Mark 1:6
[5] Matthew 10:28
[6] Proverbs 9:10-11
[7] Luke 13:6–9
[8] Psalm 145:8
[9] Eighth Commandment, Luther’s Large Catechism, Concordia, the Lutheran Confessions, Reader’s Pocket Edition, Concordia Publishing House 2006, page 545.
[10] Ibid, page 546.
[11] Ibid, page 547.
[12] John 8:44
[13] Revelation 12:9
[14] Colossians 1:13–14

Photo Credits: Main Photo etching by W. Hollar of a peasant who was cutting down a tree turning his axe on a passing snake from wikimedia commons.