Advent III – Sunday, December 16, 2018

Dear Brood of Vipers,

What do you think you’re doing? Are you ready to reap what you have sewn? It would be better for you if you had rather grown non-GMO fruits than made your money by investing in environmentally hazardous chemicals and toxic methods of mineral extraction and fossil fuels.  If you think that you are safe from the wrath of future generations, you should probably be aware that your care in your old age is entirely in their hands. If you do not invest in them, they will owe you nothing.  They will name their ancestors as only those who truly cared for them. The arrogant and self-centered are a dime a dozen and are easy to fire, while those who truly serve the people know that they nurture those who are not yet born and whom they may never meet but by so doing will themselves be honored forever.

Those who belong to the 1% are those who must learn to live with less, not those whom they would seek to deprive. Stop stealing what belongs to the people for all generations – clean water, national park land, entire species of animals, sustainable employment, just wages, healthcare, and even good health itself. You tax those who bear the greatest economic burden of your inflated prices – stop it! You give tax money to those who have far more than they need – stop it!  You build and populate prisons with minorities whom you have provided no viable alternative or route to human dignity – stop it! When they raise their voices and not weapons, you threaten the people with the same weapons you have created for fighting in foreign wars – these are your citizens – stop it!  You claim divine blessing and flaunt your so-called piety, dressing up your misdeeds within the robes of a corrupted belief – stop it!

As children are taught when they are very young, you must learn to share. You must be taught anew and learn well that you belong to a common God, a singular Spirit that binds you into one family called humanity. You must change your ways from fighting for an empire to cultivating common ground.

Well you may wonder, “Who does this person think they are who presumes to teach us and tell us what to do?” Your actions have already told me that you think that I am worth nothing. And you are right – not because I have no value, but because there is One who exists that is of greater worth than any of us. Neither you or I are worthy of his notice, yet he notices everything and forgets nothing and no one. I can’t harm you, nor would I want to do so even if I could.  No. Violence is your way, not mine and not his.

Do you know what Baptism is?  A little water, a dab of sacred oil?  These are only small signs, human gestures pointing only faintly to an immense reality far more powerful than anything you can do from your vantage point of human authority. Compared to one who was and is and is to be, you are as chaff that will be blown away on the winds of change. Baptism is a heritage of revolution from generation to generation. For, my friends, change is coming, and it will swallow you up whole. The people who are even now rising will be as a resurrection of hope to the world.  The fire of their love for one another and for all Creation will consume your petty greed and will set right all your common thievery and will till under the ground of your wars to plant a New Earth and new ways of being together that will bring life to all people.

So, prepare for your end, you Vipers. The poison of your work has met its healer, and only those whose action is illness and whose intent is death will know fear. Love is coming and is already here, dwelling as the flame of the Spirit within the hearts of those who champion the poor, the stranger, the victims of injustice. These are the truly Baptized, those who bring a revolution of Peace for all Creation.  If you do not change your hearts, you will not have the ability to enter into a better world – and that is your choice and your responsibility, not God’s.

Love,

John