Luke 3:1-6
Advent 2/Year C/December 9, 2012
Cormorant Lutheran Church, Lake Park,
MN
The first
verses of this gospel lesson sound like something straight out of Who’s Who
in the Ancient World.
Luke the
gospel-writer really drops the names here, ticking off an impressive list of
movers-and-shakers: Tiberius Caesar the Roman Emperor....Pontius Pilate the
Governor of Judea....Herod and Philip and Lysanias–territorial rulers
all...along with the Jewish high priests Annas and Caiaphas to boot!
Luke just runs
right down the chain of command, from the top dog in far-off Rome to the local
powers-that-be!
He does this,
I think, for two vital reasons.
First, Luke
wants us to see God’s saving Word at work in the midst of concrete human
history.
God’s Word,
you see, doesn’t come to some hazy, timeless, never-never land.
Rather, God’s
Word invades this particular planet, the Third Rock from
the Sun!
God’s Word
enters a specific slice of human history.
God’s Word finds a home in a locale, in an era populated with
personalities we can read about in history books who lived at particular GPS
coordinates.
It’s vital
to say that because we’re forever tempted to imagine that faith and
spirituality are about somehow escaping from the real world. We try to round off and smooth over all of
the embarrassing particularities about the God we come to know in Jesus Christ.
And Luke the
gospel-writer will have none of that.
Real faith,
true spirituality, the Holy Spirit-uality of Luke’s gospel nails us down
and nails God down to a chunk of real estate and a moment in time.
God in Christ scandalously stooped to
show up....in the fifteenth year of the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius.
This same God
is always stooping down and getting specific with you and me, too.
This same God stoops down to you and me
TODAY--December 9, a frosty morning in the “lake country” of northern
Minnesota, the 343rd day of the year of our Lord 2012.
But there’s a
second vital reason why Luke does all this name-dropping here in chapter three
of his gospel.
Luke speaks of
Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, Annas and Caiaphas....because they
are all being surpassed....they and all that they represent are on the way out.
This “Who’s Who” list of
first-century celebrities represents for Luke an old world
order that is passing away.
It’s as if
Luke is imaging the Word of God as a jumbo-jet coming in for a landing, but
this jumbo-jet “overshoots the runway,” so to speak.
God’s Word
passes over the imperial palace of Tiberius; over the governor’s
mansion of Pilate, over the castles of Herod and Philip and Lysanias; over
even the sacred temple precincts of Annas and Caiaphas. God’s Word “over-shoots”all those hallowed
halls....“landing” instead in the Judean wilderness where a nobody named John
the Baptist is starting his work.
God’s Word
does not land where you might think it would!
So also, God’s
Word doesn’t come to us just when everything is hunky-dory, when we’re sitting
on top of the world, when all is swell.
No–God’s Word
finds us, God’s Word makes its home in our hearts most often when we’re barren,
bereft, barely able to hold our heads above water. When doubt sways us, when sickness lays us
low, when grief o’ertakes us–then God has a chance to get a Word in edgewise
with us.
Luke stresses
that the Word of God comes to John “in the wilderness,” in that desolate
desert where God has been meeting his people for centuries, teaching them “in
the wilderness” how to walk by faith.
It is critical
that Tiberius and Pilate and Herod and Caiaphas and all the rest are named here
in the first couple of verses of Luke
chapter 3.....because they and their kind are on the way out.
The power of all
these bigshots was a “let’s make a deal” sort of power. Their power declared to all those living
under it: put up, pay up and shut
up. Their power-grabbing ways,
according to Luke chapter 3, are coming to an end.
Their old age
is passing away, being supplanted by the New World Order that God is
establishing in the most unlikely of places, in the barrenness of the Judean outback
where John the Baptist is proclaiming something startlingly new: a “baptism
of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”
And what might
that look like, this “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins?”
Luke unpacks
this pregnant phrase for us by quoting from the thrilling 40th
chapter of the prophet Isaiah. Luke
conjures up Isaiah’s ancient image of a divine excavating, earth-moving, road
construction project....a super-highway for God being laid down in the
wilderness.
And why does
Luke use that strange sort of image to speak of a “baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins?”
It’s because
of what actually happens every time a highway is built.
Road
construction always involves two basic steps.
First the
roadbed has to be prepared.
Workers in
hardhats need to remove all obstacles, lower the high spots, fill in the low
spots, sweep away all the old rocks and debris that clutter the roadbed.
Only then can
the second step follow. Only then can a
brand new highway be laid down.
The rhythm of
road construction is like the rhythm of repentance and forgiveness: repentance, the clearing away
of the old–and forgiveness, the advent of the new.
Here’s another
way of picturing it.
Let me
describe a transformation that took place at over the Thanksgiving holiday. Our house underwent an extreme makeover.
That’s because
Advent was coming: this delicious season
of watching and waiting for the Christ Child.
And one of the
persons who lives at our house is an interior decorator. She knows how to work wonders this time of
the year.
It’s a
two-step process, though.
The conversion
our home underwent after Thanksgiving began first with a massive taking down,
sweeping aside, and putting away of all the boring, ho-hum, regular stuff we
normally have sitting around. All of
that had to go (and where exactly it went, I’m not quite sure). But it’s all gone for now!
And in its
place, where all the old stuff usually sits....there are now angels and
evergreens and sparkling white lights and manger scene figures and holly and
ivy and ornaments galore.
Our house has become an Advent-
Christmas wonderland!
Repentance and
forgiveness are something like that.
Repentance is
the miracle God works in our lives when God frees us to put away all the old,
boring, humdrum stuff–the stuff that needs to go for Christ to have his way
with us. Repentance is the clearing
away, the setting aside, the smoothing out of all the obstacles between us and
God and us and our neighbors.
And
forgiveness–forgiveness is the good stuff that follows–like dazzling lights and
Christmas finery–forgiveness is the wonderful gift that fills us with newness
and freshness and boundless hope.
But here’s the
deal: there isn’t enough room in our
house for all our old, boring, every-day stuff AND the beautiful seasonal
Christmas stuff. We always have to put
away the old to make room for the new.
So also, there
simply isn’t room in our lives for all the old, boring, death-dealing stuff AND
the new, life-giving, hope-restoring stuff in Jesus Christ. The old has to go to make room for the new!
So,
for example, if you’ve got some torn, frazzled relationships that you’re aware
of, if there are persons you just can’t abide–folks you avoid like the
plague--all of that old enmity and grudge-holding needs to go. And God’s gift of repentance means that all
of it will go so that we have room for the reconciled,
restored relationships that Jesus brings.
Or if, for
some reason, you find yourself fresh out of hope…running on fumes…your “gas
tank” empty—all of that has to go, too. God
means to sweep that out of your lives, to make room once again for the only Good
News that never disappoints!
Or, if your possessions are possessing
you rather than you possessing them, your money always being spent only on
yourself....all of that needs to go as well. And God’s gift of repentance means that all
of it will go so that we’ll have room for the gracious
generosity that the Christ Child always ushers into our lives.
You get the
picture?
Whatever it
may be–whatever it may be: some grief,
some guilt, some obsession, some wonderful possession, some shame that gnaws at
you, robbing you of joy....all of that needs to go!
And God’s gift of repentance means
that all of it will go so that we have room once again for
the faith and the freedom and the forgiveness that God in
the Christ Child is always bestowing upon us.
In the name of
Jesus. Amen.
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