John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You 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, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ 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.” “What should we do then?” the crowd asked. John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.” (Luke 3:7-14)

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

From the preaching of John, we learn that life is not actually a tolerance-oriented, hands-off matter of “you do you” and “I’ll do me,” however much we might like to think so. This notion so prevalent today is actually rather flat, admitting of no interference from any external agent aside from the horizontal pull of peers and influencers. 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. So it increasingly is in our world today. Our tolerance for any vertical dimension is disappearing.

John’s 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. God sees what you do, and what I do too. God judges those actions, but also invites us to repent, or quite literally “turn” toward better ones: toward actions that conform more and more to the contours of the Gospel of Jesus and the coming Kingdom of God.

“Producing fruit in keeping with repentance” is about more than just showing up at church or the Christian school. It is more than just doing the right churchy things of baptism or Professions of Faith. It is about your whole life. Your heart. Your actions at and in response to school, home, work, and the people you meet there.

You’d think then that those actions would have to be as radical as John’s message of fire—but no. John didn’t send the people out to change the world. Instead, he sent them right back to their ordinary corner of the world as changed people—people who’d encountered the vertical dimension of God and who had a change of heart, a repentance, a turning around because of it.

Nothing of John’s message changes your work or to-do lists, but it might change you. That’s what the good news of Jesus does. So, turn around. Repent—more and more each day. Live generously. Work with integrity and honesty. Be content with what you have and receive. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s a few snapshots of the Good News of Jesus fruitfully at work.

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

As you journey on, go with the blessing of God:

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you : wherever he may send you.

May he guide you through the wilderness : protect you through the storm.

May he bring you home rejoicing : at the wonders he has shown you.

May he bring you home rejoicing : once again into our doors.