Day of the Church Year: 2nd Sunday of Advent
Scripture Passage: Luke 3:1-6
Not to Emperor Tiberius
Not to Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea
Not to Herod, ruler of Galilee
Not to Philip, ruler of Ituraea and Trachonitis
Not to Lysanias, ruler of Abilene
Not to Annas or Caiaphus, the high priests
When the word of God appears in first century Israel, it does not come to the high and mighty, and it does not come to the temple in Jerusalem or to any palace or to any hall of power. The word of God comes to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. John enters the wilderness because that is where God drives him, a wilderness of danger and uncertainty, of scarce food and water, of loneliness and isolation. The word of God comes to John in the wilderness, and he preaches from Isaiah 40 anticipating the coming of Jesus: Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
For me as a preacher, John the Baptist is a very difficult biblical character because he was a real person. He lived two thousand years ago, a relative of Jesus, a man called by God to prepare the way of the Lord. But this highly unconventional, locust-eating, truth-telling, wilderness living man would, in our culture, would be deemed crazy, not worth listening to, and be systematically marginalized—even by religious people. Honestly. Every Advent, I truly wrestle with this question about who I listen to, who I consider authoritative in speaking God’s word, and then wonder who might be called by God to share the word of the Lord here and now—and whether they are someone I ignored while walking along the street one day.
The gospel writer Luke clearly intends to make this very point: that the word of God is going to come to us in ways we don’t expect. The people who gathered in the wilderness with John, remember: they didn’t go to the temple in Jerusalem or even their local synagogue to hear the word of God. They went to the most dangerous place in first century Israel, the wilderness, to listen to a man who had no credentials preach from the prophet Isaiah. Where will we hear the word of God today? Dare I say it might not be in church. It might not be from a preacher. It might not come from someone whose authority rests in a system. Instead, we might hear the word of God from someone who meets us where we are, from a partner or neighbor, from a coworker or a Grace community member, from a stranger on the street. We might hear the word of God from places in our culture we thought profane or unseemly.
There’s no resolution for me in Advent. That the word of God comes to John in the wilderness instead of coming to the high priests in the temple confuses the heck out of me—but also gives me hope because it suggests that God speaks to us where we are. If we’re here at church, God speaks in song and prayer, in the reading of scripture and the sacraments, in the gathered community. If we’re elsewhere, God meets us there somehow. I can’t tell you how exactly. I don’t know. But if the word of God came to John in the wilderness, the word of God will also meet us there—in whatever wilderness we find ourselves. Thanks be to God! Amen.