Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Several years later: John prepares the way of Christ

3 ^1-6 In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius (a year when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea Herod tetrarch of Galilee, Philip, his brother, tetrarch of the territory of Iturea and Trachonitis and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene while Annas and Caiaphas were the High Priests) the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, while he was in the desert. He went into the whole country round about the Jordan proclaiming baptism as a mark of a complete change of heart and of the forgiveness of sins, as the book of the prophet Isaiah says—‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill brought low; and the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God’.

^7-9 So John used to say to the crowds who came out to be baptised by him, “Who warned you, you serpent’s brood, to escape from the wrath to come? See that you do something to show that your hearts are really changed! Don’t start thinking that you can say to yourselves, ‘We are Abraham’s children’, for I tell you that God could produce children of Abraham out of these stones! The axe already lies at the root of the tree, and the tree that fails to produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

¹⁰ Then the crowds would ask him, “Then what shall we do?”

¹¹ And his answer was, “The man who has two shirts must share with the man who has none, and the man who has food must do the same.”

¹² Some of the tax-collectors also came to him to be baptised and they asked him, “Master, what are we to do?”

¹³ “You must not demand more than you are entitled to,” he replied.

¹⁴ And the soldiers asked him, “And what are we to do?” “Don’t bully people, don’t bring false charges, and be content with your pay,” he replied.

^15-17 The people were in a great state of expectation and were inwardly discussing whether John could possibly be Christ. But John answered them all in these words, “It is true that I baptise you with water, but the one who follows me is stronger than I am—indeed I am not fit to undo his shoe-laces—he will baptise you with the fire of the Holy Spirit. He will come all ready to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to clear the rubbish from his threshing-floor. The wheat he will gather into his barn and the chaff he will burn with a fire that cannot be put out.”

^18-20 These and many other things John said to the people as he exhorted them and announced the good news. But the tetrarch Herod, who had been condemned by John in the affair of Herodias, his brother’s wife, as well as for the other evil things that he had done, crowned his misdeeds by putting John in prison.