LUKE 3:7-18

Laterally Luke…Advent 3…2018

To start in the middle, what JB says here sounds very Jesus-like, doesn’t it? But it’s never JB who’s meant to be centre-stage. By all means preach this to highlight why Jesus is attracted to this wild Prophet out in the desert. Stay centred, though, on Jesus Himself; the One whose appearance among us JB comes to announce!

Maybe it’s JB’s ‘hairiness’ that reminds me, but years ago I come across an article  from Harvard Business Review about B-HAGs! Yes, B-HAGs! I’m about to run for the pesticide when I find they don’t bite. Well, not that way! It’s simply an acronym for Big Hairy Audacious Goals! (Like Henry Ford’s, when he markets his T model, is ‘to run the horse off the roads’!) Today JB has a 3-fold B-HAG. When ordinary folk  ask him, ‘What must we do?’ JB tells them, “Share what you have with those who don’t”. When bureaucrats ask, it’s “Be honest!” When those with physical power to bully others ask, he replies, “No shakedowns, no frame ups, &, be content with your pay!”¹  To prepare the way of the Lord, JB wants people to have such God-given & God-driven Big Hairy Audacious Goals as will drive everything else off the road!

As our societies are descending more, &, more quickly, into chaos today, how can we preachers lead people to the point of asking, not JB, but God, through Jesus, & by His Spirit, questions appropriate to life today? Beginning by asking those same questions of ourselves. Incorporating into our discipleship B-HAGs from our Lord, who by His very nature is the most God-filled human being ever.

However we decide to approach this, we need to go beyond JB’s B-HAGs, exciting as they are. We need to go further as Jesus does: that we love one another. That’s the B-HAG that shows a greater than John has come among us; demands even more of us as only He Who Is Being Itself can ask. If all this sounds too hard, be assured Jesus never asks of us anything He Himself doesn’t do for us, &, wouldn’t do for us!

If people’s hopes are rising at JB’s teaching [v.15], history tells us they’re dashed in more ways than one, beginning with JB’s murder & Jesus’ arrest & crucifixion. One lesson I take from this is that any hopes we have for a better, less hate-filled world will also be dashed till we become people who have B-HAGs; as big as love one another - even the unlovable!

Brian

Afterthought: 

JB’s emphasis on Baptism (it’s not our Christian Baptism) reminds us of our need to re-discover, grow into, our own Baptism. Let it really happen to us by living & loving it out. That’s a B-HAG indeed! A Big ask! Hairy, most probably! Audacious indeed! All as we live out Jesus as the Way, the Truth, the Life, & the Love of God.

¹ Complete Gospels, Polebridge, ad loc.