You Brood of Vipers

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” [Matthew 3:7b].

Not exactly the warm-up act for Christmas we were hoping for. It’s the Second Sunday of Advent, the season when we're supposed to be lighting candles and singing carols, and the lectionary (RCL, Year A) gives us John the Baptist in full prophetic fury. He’s wearing camel hair held together with a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey, looking like Elijah come back from the grave. And he’s calling the religious leaders snakes.

This is the voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. This is how we get ready for the Messiah’s arrival — by being told we’re vipers who deserve the axe.

John isn’t one to mince words. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, he announces, and you’d better repent because God’s about to separate the wheat from the chaff. Every tree that doesn’t bear good fruit gets cut down and thrown into the fire. The one who’s coming after John will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, winnowing fork in hand, ready to burn up the chaff.

It’s stern stuff — a dose of holy fear to shake us before we get too cozy with the Christmas story.

But when the Messiah John announced actually showed up, He wasn’t quite what John — or anyone else — expected.

The contrast is stark. John preached judgment — God as thresher, axe at the root of the trees. His message was urgent, uncompromising: repent now or face the fire. Jesus preached something else entirely. He talked about a father running to embrace his wayward son, about a shepherd leaving ninety-nine sheep to find the one that wandered off, about God as host of a great banquet where the invitation goes out to anyone who'll come.

John lived in the wilderness, subsisting on locusts and wild honey, keeping his distance from the compromised and the sinful. Jesus seemed to prefer their company — eating and drinking with tax collectors and prostitutes, touching lepers, welcoming children, defending an adulteress. John baptized as a sign of repentance. Jesus healed as a sign of grace.

There’s an old saying that captures it perfectly: John didn’t get along with the authorities because he wouldn’t eat with anybody. Jesus didn’t get along with the authorities because He ate with everybody.

No wonder John had second thoughts.

We know he did, because Matthew tells us. John’s sitting in Herod’s prison — he’d made the mistake of telling a king the truth about his marriage — and he sends his disciples to Jesus with a question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” [Matthew 11:3].

John the Baptist — the voice crying in the wilderness, the one who recognized Jesus at the Jordan, who said “Behold the Lamb of God” — John himself isn’t sure anymore. The Messiah he announced would wield an axe and a winnowing fork, separating the righteous from the wicked with decisive judgment. The Messiah who showed up was throwing dinner parties with the people John had called vipers.

Jesus’ answer: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” [Matthew 11:4-6].

“Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Jesus knows his ministry is offensive — not because he’s crude or cruel, but because he refuses to honor the categories people use to make sense of God’s justice. The righteous and the wicked. The clean and the unclean. Us and them. Jesus keeps eating with “them,” keeps touching the untouchable, keeps welcoming the unwelcome.

We might be tempted to see Jesus as simply the soft alternative to John’s harshness, the gentle grace that replaces stern judgment. But that would domesticate the Messiah into something manageable, turn Him into the Jesus of greeting cards and sentimental carols — meek and mild, safe and predictable.

Jesus himself says otherwise. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household” [Matthew 10:34-36].

So which is it? Is Jesus the one who eats with sinners and welcomes outcasts, or the one who brings a sword and divides families? Is He grace or judgment, peace or conflict?

Both — but not in the way we expect. Jesus doesn’t bring the kind of peace the world offers, the peace that comes from everyone knowing their place, from clear boundaries between righteous and sinner, from proper categories that tell us who’s in and who’s out. That kind of peace is achieved through exclusion, through maintaining the walls that keep “us” safe from “them.”

Jesus brings a different kind of peace, one so disruptive it looks like a sword. He brings it by eating with tax collectors, by defending an adulteress, by offering living water to a Samaritan woman, by touching lepers and calling fishermen to follow him. He tears down the walls we've built to organize our world and make ourselves feel righteous.

That’s precisely why families divide over Him. Some can accept this kind of Messiah — one who extends grace to people who don’t deserve it, who tears down the walls we’ve carefully constructed between the righteous and the sinners. Others can’t stomach it. They want a Messiah who confirms their sense of order, who validates their judgments about who deserves God’s favor and who doesn’t, who rewards the good people and punishes the bad ones.

John called the religious leaders a brood of vipers and warned them about the wrath to come. Jesus ate dinner with them. John saw the axe lying at the root of every tree that didn’t bear good fruit. Jesus told stories about shepherds searching for lost sheep and fathers running to embrace prodigal sons. John saw categories that needed enforcing. Jesus saw people who needed welcoming.

This isn’t weakness on Jesus' part. It’s instead a different kind of strength, a different understanding of what God’s kingdom looks like. And it disturbs people — disturbs them so deeply that it divides families, creates conflict, brings not peace but a sword.

So this Advent, as we prepare for the coming of the Messiah, we need to ask ourselves: Which Messiah are we expecting?

The one who sorts people the way we would sort them? The one who draws boundaries where we’ve drawn them? The one who rewards people like us and punishes people like them?

Or are we prepared for the Messiah who actually came — the one who scrambles our categories by eating with tax collectors, who touches lepers, who defends adulteresses, who alls fishermen and sits down to dinner with anyone who’ll have him?

Even John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness, the one who prepared the way, had to wrestle with this question from his prison cell: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

John announced a Messiah with a winnowing fork in his hand, ready to separate wheat from chaff. The Messiah who showed up had open hands, ready to break bread with sinners.

Both John and Jesus disturbed the authorities. Both got killed for it. John because he wouldn’t eat with anybody. Jesus because he ate with everybody.

The peace Jesus brings isn’t the peace the world gives — the peace of proper boundaries and clear categories. His peace disturbs. It disrupts. It divides families because some can accept grace this radical and others can't.

This Advent, we light candles and sing carols and prepare our hearts. But we need to be honest about what — or rather, who — we’re preparing for. A Messiah who makes us comfortable, or one who makes us new?