IT IS thing that snakes shouldn’t have human feelings. If they did, they’d probably be hurt by John’s referring to them as symbols of evil, dishonesty, and cowardice. They surely wouldn’t be surprised, though; for snakes get a nasty press all through the Bible. Even Jesus uses the damning phrase “brood of vipers” as a rebuke (Matthew 23.33). A “brood” was in earlier times a word for offspring of creatures that lay eggs; it once communicated a way of heat, protection, and nurture.
It could also be Bible passages like these which have printed on the word “brood” its newer, darker meaning. If we use the word today, it’s equally more likely to be a contemptuous way of referring to a gaggle or class of individuals. This is how J. R. R. Tolkien used it in The Lord of the Rings, when he called Shelob’s kind (giant spiders) a “foul brood”. So, the word “brood” combines two ideas: one positive, the opposite negative. Nurturing warmth, with parental care, is interwoven with condemnation of a whole category of beings. If we’re to avoid criticising John and Jesus for stereotyping people in line with preconceptions about their identity, we’d like to tread cautiously.
John is all the time the prophet. He calls out what he sees, with no hesitation or self-doubt about whether he’s being fair, never mind kind. We trust prophets to get such calls right. Certainly, we trust Jesus to be right when he condemns the Pharisees in the exact same terms.
Prophets are prophets because they perceive truth that’s hidden from the remaining of us: truth that God has communicated to them directly. In this instance, John meets a gaggle of people that appear to be doing the appropriate thing (coming to him to be baptised). But, with that divine clarity bestowed on him as a real prophet, John sees beneath their surface motivation to what is basically driving them.
What might that be? There might be many aspects involved, corresponding to the attraction of getting people’s attention by making a public display of devotion, and the pleasure of feeling holier than other people (Luke 18.11). Or it might be what John accuses them of (in what, I presume, is a rhetorical query): suggesting that they’re fleeing from God’s coming wrath.
As I write this, I’m also working on a service for the evening of Advent Sunday in Caius College chapel. The service shall be centred on the medieval sequence Dies Irae, or “Day of wrath”. It was fascinating and galvanizing in its time, nevertheless it has fallen out of fashion due to the terror that it may well fire up, and since it focuses on hell as much as on heaven.
Thinking of God’s anger can feel improper to us. This could also be because we would like to consider in a Father who’s forgiving and merciful somewhat than one who confronts us with our own hypocrisy and non secular vanity. The individuals who hear John denouncing them are so shocked and frightened that they don’t waste time searching for to justify themselves. They do the appropriate thing (something that we perhaps overlook because they’re Pharisees, and so “must” be within the improper): they ask the prophet what they need to do.
His answer is easy. Share what you may have. Be honest. Be content with what’s yours. If we truly wish to flee the day of wrath — if we want to be counted among the many sheep, not the goats (Matthew 25), on the day of the Lord — that is what we’d like to do, identical to the Pharisees, and the crowds, and the tax-collectors, and the soldiers.
John ends this teaching with a climactic prophecy, authenticating Jesus’s identity: “He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. Eventually, this man Jesus, whose sandals John is unworthy to unlace, will eclipse his kinsman. Later, he’ll go on to redeem the word “brood” by comparing himself to a mother hen: ”Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . how often have I desired to collect your kids together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings!” (Luke 13.34).
As we await the day of the Lord, we should always remember to count ourselves among the many Pharisees, tax-collectors, and soldiers, all with faults to amend, as a substitute of echoing the Pharisee in Luke 18.11: “We thanks, God, that we usually are not like them.”
