Don’t you just love a fresh piece of ripe, juicy fruit?  This is the time of year when delicious fruit starts arriving at my door, and I love it.  Other treats start arriving as well: cookies, fudge, candy and so forth.  I love that too, and that’s a real problem.  I’ve already got a few extra pounds to show for eating too many sweets and I suspect that there are a few more to come before the season is over. But you can’t eat too much good fruit.

I had a ruby red grapefruit this morning sent from a dear lady in a church I served in Milwaukee.  Every year she sends me a box full of them.  Does anyone here like to sprinkle a little sugar on top of a half grapefruit?  You probably like to pour ketchup on your fillet too.  Not me!  I eat my ruby red grapefruit unadulterated.  That lady in Milwaukee happens to be the first cousin of our own Mary Lovshin, who also sends me citrus at this time of year.  I can’t get enough of it.

Right now I am waiting for some Royal Riviera Pears to ripen on my basement floor.  At just the right moment I will slice one in half and take a spoon to scoop out a mouthwatering morsel.  Yum!  Do you know how I got those pears?  I was visiting a church family here one Christmas and saw some pears on their counter.  The lady of the household saw me staring longingly at them and asked if I would like some.  I said, "Sure!"  As she put one pear after another into a paper bag, her husband got this pained look on his face like, "Take it easy honey.  Save some of those for me."  Ever since I get a box from this fellow to keep me away from his stash.

After I finish my last pear I will go to the supermarket and buy some from the produce section, but here we are taking chances.  Sometimes the fruit at the market is good and sometimes it is not, and there is really no way to tell by looking at it.  I’ll buy a couple of hard pears and take them home to ripen, but they never do.  They just stay hard.  Other times I’ll cut into a grapefruit and it is pithy and juiceless.  Some grapes are sweet and juicy, while others set your teeth on edge.  All the bad fruit in our household gets tossed to the critters in the hopes that they will find use for it.

Otherwise nobody likes bad fruit, including, we are going to find today, God.  We are speaking metaphorically here, as Jesus spoke figuratively of fruit in his parables and as John the Baptist so spoke before him.  In our text for this morning John speaks in spiritual terms of both good and bad fruit.  We are going to find out what that means for us and our relationship with God.  Our text follows upon our text from last week where John the Baptist is "A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way fro the Lord….’" (3:4).

Advent is a season of preparation.  Not just preparing for the holidays with food and gifts and cards and such, but preparing the way for the Lord to come into our hearts and to take control of our lives.  When Jesus takes control of our lives—when Jesus is truly the Lord of our lives, our lives show it by the fruit that they bear.  Today we are going to hear from the Bible what a fruitful life is like, and why it is pleasing to God.  By the same token, we are going to find what an unfruitful life is like and why it is as distasteful to God as a rotten apple would be to us.

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?" (Verse 7).  I don’t think John would be very good at our Orientation Class.  I think we are going to have a big turnout at our next Orientation Class for visitors to our congregation, but I don’t suspect many of them would return if I called them a brood of vipers.  "Who told you to come to church, you snake in the grass."

A brood is the young of certain animals that hatch at one time.  The larva in my beehives is called brood.  A brood of vipers, or venomous snakes, is a fearful thing to behold.  I came across a brood of snakes while fishing as a kid under a bridge.  I never fished under that bridge again.  Our inherent fear of snakes is probably why the devil is envisioned as a serpent in the Bible.  You will recall how Eve was tempted by the devil in the form of a serpent.  Hence we find Jesus saying to the Pharisees and teachers of the law:  You snakes!  You brood of vipers!  How will you escape being condemned to hell?  (Matthew 23:33).

As we saw last week, the multitudes are streaming out to the desert wilderness to search out John the Baptist as a spiritual alternative to the stale and lifeless religiosity of the organized synagogue system.  Not only do the people have to endure the inconvenience of the desert, they have to suffer the indignity of being likened to the sons and daughters of the devil himself—a brood of vipers.  Why is John so brusque?  Why is he so hard on is hearers?  Why does he make himself so hard to find?

Because John is reacting to a faith that is too easy.  The Jews were taught that they were the Chosen People.  As far as the Kingdom of God was concerned, Jews were insiders and non-Jews (Gentiles) were outsiders.  As long as one was a descendant of Abraham by birth or adoption (conversion), one was practically "in" on that basis alone.  But then you had Jews like John saying people must repent and be baptized.  So you have all these people going out to John to repent and be baptized.

I think we act the same way today.  What do we have to do to be a Christian?  Be baptized?  Okay, I’ll be baptized.  Be a member of a church?  Okay, I’ll join a church.  That’s easy enough.  I guarantee you that if a warden walked into his prison and said, "All prisoners who repent of their crimes will be set free," virtually every prisoner there would shout, "I repent."  Anyone can say, "I repent."  Anyone can be baptized.  Anyone can become a card-carrying church or synagogue member.

But John says that more than lip service is needed.  More than going through the motions is needed.  John says, Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.  And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ …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 (Verses 8-9).  If saying, "I repent," is not good enough; if being a child of Abraham is not good enough; if the stakes are being cut down and thrown into the fire what must we do to produce fruit in keeping with repentance?  That is exactly what the crowd asks John.  "What should we do then?" the crowd asked (Verse 10).

There were some soldiers in the crowd who were most likely Jewish.  The Romans occupied the land, but helped establish an indigenous security force to help maintain order, just as we have tried to help establish Iraqi security forces to help maintain order.  Unfortunately, some Shiites in the security forces have misused their authority against fellow Iraqis who happen to be Sunnis.  Something similar was happening in John’s day, where security forces were supplementing their meager pay by extorting money from their fellow citizens.  John said to them, "Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay" (Verse 14).

A similar message was given to tax collectors in the crowd.  Tax collectors in that day actually bid for their jobs.  Why?  Because there was money to be made.  Just like some people today cheat on their taxes by not paying what they should, back then the tax collectors were the cheats who collected more than required by Rome.  Whatever extra they were able to collect from, say, the vulnerable elderly, they kept for themselves.  "Don’t collect any more than you are required to," he told them (Verse 13).  This is what it meant for tax collectors to Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

All this should make sense to us, because it is simply another way of saying "Don’t steal," which we all know is wrong.  But once I preached a message entitled "Passive Stealing."  We can actively steal by taking what does not belong to us, like the tax collectors and soldiers were doing.  Or we can passively steal by withholding what we should rightfully give to another.  Hence John said, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same" (Verse 11).

In this week’s issue of US News & World Report we read, "The richest 2 percent of adults on Earth own more than half the household wealth in the entire world. …If you have net household assets exceeding $61,000, then you are among the richest 10 percent in the world; have assets exceeding $500,000, then welcome to the richest 1 percent…. By the way, the bottom half of the world’s adult population—some 1.8 billion—must make do with barely 1 percent of global wealth."

"The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."  By withholding what we should rightfully share with those in need, we passively steal by the standards of God’s kingdom.  So many Americans wonder why other people of the world hate us so.  It’s not because of religious or cultural differences, despite the rhetoric.  It is because they are so poor and we are so rich.

Somebody left me a satire this week about solving the problem in Iraq by giving every man, woman and child a credit card with a $10,000 balance.  Compared with what we are spending on the war, by the way, such an alternative would have represented a huge bargain.  But convincing Americans to give $10,000 to every Iraqi would be an awfully hard sell.  It is easy to say:  "I repent."  It is not easy to bear fruit in keeping with repentance.  If it was easy to share what we rightfully should, our stewardship campaign would exceed our budget rather than the other way around.

Of course, bearing fruit in keeping with repentance is not always to be understood in economic terms.  There are many ways to bear good fruit that cost little or no money at all.  Today we are making a special appeal for prospective Stephen Ministers—those willing to undertake 50 hours of training in compassionate listening skills.  And after 50 hours of training, to offer many more hours meeting with care receivers who need more than anything a nonjudgmental sounding board.

Every one of us is going to be stressed from time to time trying to adapt to life’s changing circumstances.  A death, a divorce, a relocation, a lost job—all these things and more have great potential to exceed our coping mechanisms.  If we have someone who will patiently listen as we get it all out, then we can sort it out.  I have so many wonderful ways to illustrate the good fruit of our Stephen Ministry program, but I am constrained from sharing them by issues of confidentiality.  I hope you will take my word for it enough to inquire at the table we have set up in Fellowship Hall to help you explore whether being a Stephen Minister might not be right for you.

I hope that all of us will find a way to bear good fruit during this holiday season.  Perhaps you know someone for whom the holiday will not be so happy this year.  Maybe that loved one will be spending their first Christmas without a special loved one by their side.  A spouse might have died, or been deployed into harm’s way around the world.  Someone might be in the hospital, or ill at home, or lonely or bitter or forgotten.  Will we find time in our busy holiday preparations to do a good deed for that needy person?  Will we bear good fruit in keeping with repentance?  Will we prepare the way for the Lord this Christmas?