It's all about security

When the NRA is advocating for armed government schools in our elementary schools, you know we've crossed a threshold.  Gone are the days when we worried about losing our freedom to tyranny.  Now we're willing to mortgage everything in the name of security.  If there was any lingering doubt about the United States being an empire, Wayne LaPierre should have banished them with his speech on 21 December. 
In his book The Common Good, Walter Brueggemann says:

I believe it is impossible to overstate the defining nature of the empire of force among us, if empire is understood as a political, economic, military, ideological practice of self-security and control.

We, as American Christians, are being defined by the nature of empire - as have generations of Christians before us in various historical empires.  We are the brood of vipers John the Baptist preaches of in Luke 3: 7-18.
Brood is such an antiquated term.  For me, it loses its meaning.  Instead of offspring, or children of snakes, it sounds to me like a group of snakes.  Like a gaggle of geese, a pack of wolves, a litter of puppies . . . a brood of vipers. 
Brood is offspring.  John the Baptist says I am (we are) the offspring of snakes - like I am a child of the 80s, or a son of the Midwest, or a real, live nephew of my Uncle Sam.  It's a metaphor for the influences on my life.
And the snake which does the influence is empire.
The author of Luke drives this point home by calling out two groups from among the crowd - tax collectors and soldiers.  Economy and warfare.  Why not call out tentmakers or shepherds or carpenters?  Tax collection and war are two basic elements of Empire.  
Brueggemann:

All empires act according to the principle of scarcity, imagining that they need more land, more tax money, more revenue, more oil, more cheap labor, more energy.

In the name of security and control, empires hoard. 
Look at what John tells the people who ask what they should do: Give of your clothes.  Give of your food.  He tells them to step into the breach of insecurity.  To give up the need for control and security.
His advice to the tax collectors and soldiers is the same.  They had been using the system in ways that enhanced their own positions - their own wealth - their own power - their own security.  John tells them to stop doing that.  Step into the breach and trust that your wages are enough. 
It is important to note that John does not tell the tax collectors or soldiers to abandon their jobs.  They are not to abandon empire.  But, they must recognize how being raised in empire has impacted their thoughts and actions.  They must (we must) recognize that the call of Christ is to a different life.  It is a call not to security, but to vulnerability for the sake of others. 
We cannot do the work to which Christ calls us if we are desperate for security.  We cannot budget for mission if we are desperate to secure the future of our churches.  We cannot reach out to the marginalized if we are desperate to maintain our respectability. 
This week we celebrated the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.  We celebrate God entering our world and becoming vulnerable.  And we celebrate it as a brood of vipers deathly afraid of becoming vulnerable ourselves.  We fear because we listen to empire when we should be listening to the Word of God. 
Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.