Advent 2A - Additional Thoughts - Contemporary Application

As I was driving about today, I thought more about this passage and its unique problems for a contemporary application.

Those who have already repented of their sins and are part of the Family of God are easily tempted to take this passage and apply it to someone else. We're tempted to find out who those pesky Pharisees are in today's culture so we can go stick it to them like John the Baptist did. However, there is a paradox here that becomes difficult to resolve.

The moment we apply this passage to someone else, we fail. The moment we paint a caricature of the Pharisees that looks like 'that church down the street,' we've missed the point. As soon as pastors preach the text in such a way that it points fingers at someone else, they blew it. The very minute we use this passage to condemn someone else, we become the condemned...we become most like the Pharisees.

We must first-and-foremost find ourselves as the Pharisees. We must first find our own rigid patterns of behavior that prevent God from doing a new thing. We must eliminate any sort of judgmentalism that puts us in the seat of the religious elite. We must soften our hearts so that we might be transformed by the Living God.