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Of Vipers and Wart Hogs

The Episcopal Church of All Saints, Indianapolis

Year C, Second Sunday of Advent

12/14/03

Charles W. Allen

Zephaniah 3:14-20; Psalm 85; Philippians 4:4-7(8-9); Luke 3:7-18

“Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion.”

“Rejoice in the Lord, always.”

“You brood of vipers!”

If you’ve been around children the past thirty years you’ve probably seen that Sesame Street game: “One of these things is not like the other thing. / One of these things just doesn’t belong.” You see, maybe, a duck, a chicken and a pig—something pretty obvious. We can play that today. Which one of these things is not like the other thing?

“Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion.”

“Rejoice in the Lord, always.”

“You brood of vipers!”

Tradition calls this third Sunday in Advent “Gaudette Sunday”—“Rejoicing Sunday”—and in some places clergy put on rose-colored vestments and people light rose-colored candles. So on Rejoicing Sunday, which of these things just doesn’t belong?

“Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion.”

“Rejoice in the Lord, always.”

“You brood of vipers!”

I’m assuming the answer here is a no-brainer. When preachers call you something subhuman, when they threaten you with unquenchable fire, you don’t usually feel like throwing a party.This is a parish dedicated to helping all kinds of people recover from hurtful images heaped on them by a hostile culture, and the last thing we want to hear from the Gospel is more words of exclusion and violence. And it’s not just parishes like ours any more. Ever since last summer’s General Convention certain Archbishops in other countries have called our whole Episcopal Church practically every abusive name in the book. They say that our simply allowing a Bishop like Gene Robinson to be consecrated makes all of us lower than animals. We’re a church bound for that unquenchable fire. That’s what some people are saying, at least. And we’re tired of hearing that, and we’re certainly in no mood to hear anything like it today.

But Luke says that’s how John the Baptist preached, that people came to hear him in droves, and then he has the nerve to call this forbidding stuff good news. So where’s the “good” part in all this? How can name-calling and scare tactics be good?Well, whether we’re ready to hear this or not, today is a day to remember that good news doesn’t always sound good. You see a bumper sticker that reads “Smile, God loves you,” and maybe that sounds really nice. But that’s only because we might not realize what an unsettling thing it is to be loved by God.

God doesn’t just pat you on the head and send you on your way. God doesn’t just write you a check when you call and ask for help. This is a God who fills in valleys and levels mountains. This is a God who moves in and starts redecorating—without even consulting you—and then has the nerve to throw a party at your place for guests you never would have invited. Maybe you’ve enjoyed watching the Fab Five show up at people’s homes and do these drastic makeovers. Maybe you’re even crazy enough to want them to show up at your place. (I’d just as soon they stayed away.) But how would you like them to move in and put you through a makeover every day of your life?

God’s love, God’s very life with us and in us, is at least that unsettling, and if that’s what’s in store for me I wouldn’t mind getting a fair warning. And that’s what John the Baptist provides. Get ready to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Get ready to have everything rearranged. And above all, don’t presume to think that you don’t need a makeover.

The crowds who show up to hear all this are full of people who can’t imagine they need to be changed. They’re the people of God. They’re already insiders and they’ve shown up to watch the outsiders get washed up. And John the Baptist turns to them and says, “You’re not any cleaner than these other folk. You think you’re the decent people reaching down to bring these trashy types up to your level. But in God’s eyes you’re not that different. Call yourself decent or call yourself trash—either way you’re due for a makeover.”

Every time I read this lesson I can’t help thinking of a story by Flannery O’Connor.[1] It’s set in a doctor’s waiting room in Georgia in the 1950s, and the main character is a woman named Ruby Turpin. Ruby takes a lot of pride in who she is. She and her husband own a small farm, where they raise, among other things, pigs. They keep their pigs hosed down every day in a “pig parlor” with a concrete floor.They’re not rich, but they’re decent, hard working and respectable.

So Ruby’s quite pleased with herself. Now there’s nothing wrong with liking yourself, but Ruby can’t seem to do this without looking down on lots of other people, especially the ones she calls “white trash” and, of course, African Americans, which she calls by another term that doesn’t need to be spoken today. And while Ruby’s in the waiting room she’s busy ranking people.

There’s a stylish older woman waiting with her daughter Mary Grace, who’s reading a book. Mary Grace keeps making strange, ugly faces at Ruby. And there’s a woman with snuff-stained lips that O’Connor simply refers to as “the white-trash woman.” Ruby and the stylish woman have this pleasant conversation going that’s full of implied put-downs aimed at the other woman. And with every exchange the daughter, Mary Grace, looks madder and madder.

And just when Ruby feels most satisfied with how she’s turned out, just when she actually utters a “Thank you Jesus” out loud in the waiting room, something snaps. Mary Grace hurls the book across the room, hitting Ruby in the head, and lunges across the table and starts choking her. She has to be wrestled to the floor and sedated. As she’s being taken away Mary Grace fixes Ruby with one last stare and whispers, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog” (500).

“You old wart hog.”

“You brood of vipers.”

For some reason Ruby can’t shake the conviction that this is a revelation directly from God. Through most of the story she’s been thinking that her own hogs in their pig parlor are cleaner than that trashy woman. And now here’s this deranged girl, a modern day John the Baptist, calling her a wart hog from hell. She can’t get over it. It nags her the rest of the day. And in the evening, while she’s hosing down the pigs in their parlor, she starts demanding some answers. She shouts toward the sky: “How am I a hog? … Exactly how am I like them? … There was plenty of trash there. It didn't have to be me [who got that message]. If you like trash better, go get yourself some trash then” (507).

There’s no answering voice. But she looks up and sees “a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson,” and that’s when she’s granted a vision. But it doesn’t give her much comfort.

She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were tumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black [folk] in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the given wit to use it right … They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away (508).

“Even their virtues were being burned away.” “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Ruby might as well be standing at the Jordan River listening to John the Baptist. “You brood of vipers.” “You old wart hog.” Get ready to have everything rearranged. Call yourself decent or call yourself trash. In God’s eyes you’re not that different, and either way you’re due for a makeover. Even your virtues will be burned away.

Now of course it’s easier to hear this prophet’s name-calling when it’s directed at the Ruby Turpins of the world. It’s easy to see how her smug self-satisfaction could use a little shock treatment. It’s even kind of fun to watch it happen. But part of what makes it fun is that we’re inclined to think we’re not at all like her. We’re not perfect, but at least we’re not that bad off. We don’t play her games.“Thank you Jesus.”

And of course that’s when we may need a Mary Grace to throw a book at us. The joke’s on us too. The moment we say we’re not like Ruby, we’re exactly like Ruby. We’re still playing the same games. We’re still finding excuses to count some people as more worthy of our company than others. We still find ways to look down our noses at certain people. Maybe we don’t rank them on the same scale that Ruby uses, but we have our own scales: the music they like, the liturgy they prefer (or whether they know what a liturgy is), the grammar they use. And we can’t seem to help secretly thinking that we don’t need God to make us over quite as much as the Ruby Turpins of the world need it.

But John the Baptist’s message is that by the time God gets through with us we’ll have no way of measuring who’s changed the most. And we won’t even care. As far as God’s welcome is concerned, it really doesn’t matter where we started from. It only matters where we’re going. It only matters if we’re on the way to becoming as welcoming as God already is. And if we should forget that, if we should need somebody to throw a book at us, God is always happy to oblige.

You brood of vipers, you old wart hogs, you Anglo-Catholics, you Episcopalians, you hardworking Christians, get ready for God to move in. Get ready to be made new. That’s today’s good news. Rejoice.

[1] Flannery O’Connor, “Revelation” in The Complete Stories (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1971), pp. 488-509.