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I just, more or less, finished writing my sermon for Sunday.  It's about John the Baptist (see also previous post).  But it's one of those texts that just has too much for one sermon.  One of the things that makes a bit of an appearance on Sunday, needs to be fleshed out a little more, so here goes, sermon appendix 1.A.
The Brood of Vipers.  Who were they?  Sadducees and Pharisees, two groups, who as a general rule disagreed profoundly, and didn't usually hang out together.  When they do get mentioned together, it is usually as a conglomerate group of religious authorities who are doing a bit of what I like to refer to as butt sniffing (you know that thing dogs do to one another that pretty much grosses humans out, but tells the animals quite a bit about their new acquaintance).  They are, together or separately, scoping out the competition.  In the text this week it's JBap, soon enough it will be Jesus.  In this case they don't do much, they just kind of show up to see what's up with this crazy dude in the wilderness.  John drops the people's elbow on them with great vengeance and furious anger.  The question is, why?
We know why after all, because we've heard all the other stories about them, we see them trying to trap Jesus and we know that they team up to get rid of him in the long run, but why does John go after them with such venom?
Several possible explanations:
1. John was actually one of the early travelling companions to Doctor Who and thus had been into the future to see what they did to his cousin, and he was really upset about what they were going to do.  While I personally like this one, it's not very likely, although John would have made a pretty awesome companion for the Doctor (think Leela from the Tom Baker years, except hairier).
2. (slightly less fictional) John was a member of the Essene sect who lived a spartan existence in isolated communities because they believed that the "secular" world  was going to pollute them.  (Think a combination of fundamentalist homeschoolers and doomsday preppers, actually it's not that hard to imagine).  John was really just reacting out of conditioned hostility to "them big city religious types."
3. The religious establishment had failed the people of God.  They had become too invested in protecting a Temple that God didn't want in the first place.  They had made alliances with Herod, who most people thought of as the devil, and by extension the Romans, who everyone knew were the devil, in order to keep their golden calf alive and well.  They had become, despite widely disparate doctrine, and profound disagreements among themselves, the owners of a thriving business in selling God.
Hmm, that does sound familiar.... where might you find that sort of thing happening now?
As my daughter would say: "Poop."
It's established religion at its worst, that's who the brood of vipers are.
As you may have read earlier, I really like John the Baptist, he's who I want to be.  I certainly don't want to be the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  But I do like the perks of the Temple.  I like my office, and my salary, and my pretty little church building, but I need to remember that those things are not what make us into the people of God.
What makes us the people of God is the reality that the kingdom of heaven has drawn near to us.
I think I envy John for his simplicity and his clarity.  He was able to be so bold and even bombastic, because he didn't rely on anyone for anything, he was utterly self sufficient, and also rather alone.
The one he was preparing for was not.
We learn elsewhere that John had a few adherents who might qualify as disciples, but frankly we don't hear much from them, while the men that Jesus took under his wing, end up doing quite a lot.  Jesus had his "brood of vipers" moment with the same band of folks (see Matthew 23) and he goes into a lot more detail.  He talks about how their religious practices actually shut the door of heaven in men's faces.  There's a whole chapter of Jesus just railing against the religious authorities.  Rather than indulge myself in a moment of  "you get em Jesus," I am conscious of the need to avoid becoming "them."
I like John, because I need to get in touch with my desert wild man sometimes.
I like Jesus in Matthew 23, because bureaucracy, particularly religious bureaucracy makes me angry.
But I know that the big question and the big warning here is the reality that we don't get own God.  We are not God's gatekeepers, we don't even have a secret handshake.
I get the temple thing, it's easy to imagine God's presence in an ornate, silent, sacred space, but God is also out there in the dust and the dirt in the wilderness where a bunch of ordinary people are repenting and being baptized in a muddy creek.  I'm sure it was not very decent and in order and I'm sure the Presbyterians.... I mean the Pharisees and Sadducees, probably did a whole lot of tongue clucking about how random and wild this John character really was.
Just wait til they get a load of Jesus.