Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 8, 2024

Malachi 3:1-4+Canticle 16+Philippians 1:3-11+Luke 3:1-6

Those of you who know me know that I love history. If you check out my podcast queue, you'll find titles like "Gone Medieval," "The Rest Is History," "History on Fire," and others  (yes, there are others). The author of Luke's gospel represents himself as a historian right off the bat by saying, "I, too, decided, as one having a grasp of everything from the start, to write a well-ordered account" (1:3). He then proceeds to preface the events around the birth of John the Baptist like this, "In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was descended from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth" (1:5). Of course, we are all most familiar with those words we hear on Christmas Eve every year, "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria" (2:1). Connecting the narrative to well-known, identifiable figures to give it some heft, some legitimacy, seems to be Luke's method.

I need to add here, however, that historical methodology in the 1st century was not exactly as rigorous as it is today, and you don't have to scratch the surface very hard to find inconsistencies. But we don't read scripture for historical accuracy. We read it to uncover the story of God’s love for humankind, pieced together over centuries, and giving us a glimpse into the unfolding of our salvation story.

Given what I have just told you about our historian, Luke, it should come as no surprise that our reading today opens with the same kind of situating of the scene in time:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. (3:1-2)

So, we have this laundry list of really important people, and if we're not paying attention, we might just lump John, son of Zechariah, into that list, but John was nobody. John was not in the halls of power or in allegiance with Rome or anybody else. But for all his lack of importance, the word of God came to him one day when he was out in the wilderness.

With all these important people God could have spoken to, God chose John, the one we now know as the Baptizer or the Baptist. Unlike in Mark and Matthew, Luke does not present John as some kind of wild man living in the desert and eating bugs and wearing animal skins for clothing. No, Luke tells us that John "went into all the region around the Jordan" (3:3), presumably baptizing those he encountered in whatever part of the Jordan he happened to find them. This is the kind of detail a historian would find important.

From where we sit, it is easy to miss the nuance and the intention and even to situate ourselves in the story. We must remember that the bible from beginning to end was written by people suffering under imperial rule, whether it was Babylon or Rome. As Dr. Wil Gafney says, "It is the underground literature of an oppressed people."[1] 21st century residents of the United States are generally not an oppressed people, but it is easier and (more palatable perhaps) for us to put ourselves in the shoes of Mary and Joseph and John the Baptist rather than those of Tiberius or Quirinius or Pontius Pilate. We forget this at our peril.

So, the word of God came to this nobody wandering around the Jordan and connects him with a 700-year-old prophecy of Isaiah: "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord'" (Isaiah 40:3). And when Isaiah wrote those words, the kingdom of Israel was under threat of invasion from Assyria. That is the thread that runs through these passages.

But why do we get John the Baptist this morning? Because John is the one preparing the way, making straight the paths, filling in the valleys for the one who is to come. He is a prophet-engineer, as one who might pave the streets and plant some flowers or shrubbery along the side of the road for a monarch who is about to pass by.[2] The word of God came to this John - this nobody - who was simply the forerunner, the one who got himself into trouble later on by criticizing Herod's infidelities.

What word of God might come to us today? If we were to write about it in the style of Luke, it might go something like this:

In the 24th year of the twenty-first century, when Joe Biden was President of the United States, and Phil Murphy was governor of New Jersey, and Ravi Bhalla mayor of Hoboken, and Sean Rowe was presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the word of the Lord came to All Saints in Hoboken.

What are we to do with what this voice is saying? How do we prepare the way of the Lord and make straight those pathways? For John, it was calling people to repentance and to baptism. I think we could do worse than that. Repentance, I remind you, is not about beating ourselves up over failings and unkindnesses. It is recognizing that maybe we haven't gotten everything quite right and turning around, asking God's help to do better, and walking in the way to which God invites us.

We may not be an oppressed people in the great scheme of things. In truth, no matter how rich or highborn or powerful, we are all just human beings trying to find our way. What do we do in this meantime, existing somewhere in the expectation of what is to come?

The Apostle Paul reminds us at the very beginning of the letter to the church in Philippi, written while he was in prison, that a posture of gratitude and hope are what will sustain us in this meantime:

I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:3-6)

It is God who began the good work and God who will complete it. And when that word of God comes to us, I pray we will be ready for it.

[1] Sourced from an online meme shared by Dr. Gafney.

[2] With gratitude to Dean Andrew McGowan for this imagery.