IT IS a good thing that snakes do not have human feelings. If they did, they would probably be hurt by John’s referring to them as symbols of evil, dishonesty, and cowardice. They surely would not be surprised, though; for snakes get a bad 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 sense of warmth, protection, and nurture.
It may be Bible passages like these which have imprinted on the word “brood” its newer, darker meaning. If we use the word today, it is equally likely to be a contemptuous way of referring to a group or class of people. 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 other negative. Nurturing warmth, with parental care, is interwoven with condemnation of an entire category of beings. If we are to avoid criticising John and Jesus for stereotyping people according to preconceptions about their identity, we need to tread cautiously.
John is always the prophet. He calls out what he sees, with no hesitation or self-doubt about whether he is 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 exactly the same terms.
Prophets are prophets because they perceive truth that is hidden from the rest of us: truth that God has communicated to them directly. In this instance, John meets a group of people who seem to be doing the right thing (coming to him to be baptised). But, with that divine clarity bestowed on him as a true prophet, John sees beneath their surface motivation to what is really driving them.
What might that be? There could be many factors involved, such as 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 could be what John accuses them of (in what, I presume, is a rhetorical question): suggesting that they are fleeing from God’s coming wrath.
As I write this, I am also working on a service for the evening of Advent Sunday in Caius College chapel. The service will be centred on the medieval sequence Dies Irae, or “Day of wrath”. It was fascinating and inspiring in its time, but it has fallen out of fashion because of the terror that it can stir up, and because it focuses on hell as much as on heaven.
Thinking of God’s anger can feel wrong to us. This may be because we want to believe in a Father who is forgiving and merciful rather than one who confronts us with our own hypocrisy and religious vanity. The people who hear John denouncing them are so shocked and frightened that they do not waste time seeking to justify themselves. They do the right thing (something that we perhaps overlook because they are Pharisees, and so “must” be in the wrong): they ask the prophet what they should do.
His answer is straightforward. Share what you have. Be honest. Be content with what is yours. If we truly wish to escape the day of wrath — if we wish to be counted among the sheep, not the goats (Matthew 25), on the day of the Lord — this is what we need to do, just like 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 will go on to redeem the word “brood” by comparing himself to a mother hen: ”Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings!” (Luke 13.34).
As we await the day of the Lord, we should remember to count ourselves among the Pharisees, tax-collectors, and soldiers, all with faults to amend, instead of echoing the Pharisee in Luke 18.11: “We thank you, God, that we are not like them.”