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John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, \u201cYou brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, \u2018We have Abraham as our father.\u2019 For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.\u201d \u201cWhat should we do then?\u201d the crowd asked. John answered, \u201cAnyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.\u201d Even tax collectors came to be baptized. \u201cTeacher,\u201d they asked, \u201cwhat should we do?\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t collect any more than you are required to,\u201d he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, \u201cAnd what should we do?\u201d He replied, \u201cDon\u2019t extort money and don\u2019t accuse people falsely\u2014be content with your pay.\u201d (Luke 3:7-14)

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Faced with the urgency of the Messiah\u2019s coming and the vivid pictures of His wrath that John painted\u2014the people asked: \u201cWhat should we do then?\u201d\xa0 John\u2019s preaching is confrontational: it demands a decision and a turning around of our lives and hearts.\xa0 We may not be as quick to open ourselves to this kind of a sermon, but it\u2019s good to try.

From the preaching of John, we learn that life is not actually a tolerance-oriented, hands-off matter of \u201cyou do you\u201d and \u201cI\u2019ll do me,\u201d however much we might like to think so.\xa0 This notion so prevalent in our society and culture today is actually rather flat, admitting of no interference from any external agent aside from the horizontal pull of peers and influencers.\xa0 They may speak into our lives, but submitting ourselves to the dictates of any vertical agent set over us like God or some institution like the church or government really rubs against the grain.\xa0 So it increasingly is in our world today.\xa0 Our tolerance for any vertical dimension is disappearing.\xa0

John\u2019s preaching would seek to wake us up from this flat, individualistic cultural peculiarity of ours though, and immerse us back into a full, three-dimensional reality where there is still a God in heaven with a valid opinion about how we live our lives.

We are responsible to God for our living and doing, says John.\xa0 God sees what you do, and what I do too.\xa0 God judges those actions, but also invites us to repent, or quite literally \u201cturn\u201d toward better ones: toward actions that conform more and more to the contours of the Gospel of Jesus and the coming Kingdom of God.\xa0

\u201cProducing fruit in keeping with repentance\u201d is about more than just showing up at church or the Christian school.\xa0 It is more than just doing the right churchy things of baptism or Professions of Faith.\xa0 It is about your whole life.\xa0 Your heart.\xa0 Your actions at and in response to school, home and work.\xa0

You\u2019d think then that those actions would have to be as radical as John\u2019s message of fire\u2014but no.\xa0 John didn\u2019t send the people out to change the world.\xa0 Instead, he sent them right back to their ordinary corner of the world as changed people\u2014people who\u2019d encountered the vertical dimension of God and who had a change of heart, a repentance, a turning around because of it.\xa0

Nothing of John\u2019s message changes your work or to-do lists, but it might change you.\xa0 That\u2019s what the good news of Jesus does.\xa0 So, turn around.\xa0 Repent.\xa0 Live generously.\xa0 Work with integrity and honesty. \xa0Be content with what you have and receive. It\u2019s not an exhaustive list, but it\u2019s a few snapshots of the Good News of Jesus fruitfully at work.\xa0 Remember Renita telling us about that?

Ultimately, it is through little things like these that the good-news Gospel of Jesus\u2019 coming begins to transform workplaces and schoolplaces, perhaps even our society and world.\xa0 But it starts ever and always with little things.\xa0 The fruit of repentance, the change of heart that comes from an encounter with the living God.

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