The Rev. Dr. David Lose, Ph.D., (bio below) suggests that in these verses from Luke's gospel, John the Baptist "offers concrete ethical instruction" to people gathered to hear him in the wilderness around the Jordan River. The content of John's instruction, says Dr. Lose, "is rather surprising. After announcing impending eschatological judgment with some vim and vigor, John’s counsel seems fairly ordinary, even mundane. To the (presumably poor) crowds: 'Share.' To the tax collectors, 'Be fair.' To soldiers, 'Don’t bully.'”

In Dr. Lose's view, "There are opportunities to do God’s will, to be God’s people, all around us. These opportunities are shaped by our context: the roles in which we find ourselves and the needs of the neighbor with which we are confronted. But make no mistake, opportunities abound. John may have come from the wilderness, but the crowds — and we — live in the towns, villages, and marketplace, and these, too, can be places of testing and the arenas in which we offer our fidelity to God through service to neighbor."

"This explains Luke’s variance from Matthew in his depiction of John’s unlikely congregation. Luke is less interested in contrasting the ministry, mission, and message of John and Jesus with that of the Pharisees and Sadducees than he is of stressing that their message is for all people."

"If John instructs, rather than condemns, the lowly poor, the corrupt tax collector, and the bare knuckled mercenary, then who, one might reasonably ask, is excluded. The answer, as it turns out, is no one. John preaches to all, Jesus comes for all. Apparently, when Luke quotes Isaiah as saying that “all flesh shall see salvation of God,” (3:6), he really means it."

"More surprising than the content of John’s ethical instruction is his audience. They are more than ordinary; they are, at best, the riff raff: poor crowds with little to offer, despised tax collectors who profit from the oppression of their countrymen, mercenary soldiers known for extorting the vulnerable. Yet they are not excluded from John’s attention or the possibility of “bearing fruits that befit repentance."

"Most peculiar still, perhaps, is the “eschatological location” of the good fruits. Tax collectors are not called to sever their relationship with Rome, nor are the soldiers exhorted to lives of pacifism. Even in light of impending eschatological judgment, they are called to serve where they are; to take their stand for neighbor amid, rather than apart from, the turbulence and trouble of the present age; and to do good because, rather than in spite, of their compromised positions. By sandwiching such ordinary instruction amid eschatological warning and messianic expectation, Luke’s John hallows the mundane elements of daily life."

The Rev. David Lose, Ph.D., is Senior Pastor of Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minn. Before his call at Mt. Olivet, he was President of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. A faculty member at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. for 14 years, he served as Marbury Anderson Associate Professor of Biblical Preaching, academic dean, founding director of the Center for Biblical Preaching and leader of the creative team that developed WorkingPreacher.org.