Second Sunday in Advent, Dec. 9, 2018
Baruch 5:1-9 Malachi 3:1-4 Luke 1:68-79 Philippians 1:3-11 Luke 3:1-6
In our gospels, we are not allowed to warm up to the manger child until we‘ve first gone down to the river and been blistered and baptized by John the Baptist.
Luke‘s story of John the Baptist‘s public ministry begins with a list of the powerful and well-placed: Roman Emperor Tiberius; Roman Procurator Pontius Pilate; Governors Herod and Lysanias; High Priests Annas and Caiaphas.
These were the power-brokers, the dominant players in John‘s time.They controlled the world. They had everything---except the one most important thing.
Except “The word of God (which) came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.“ (Luke 3: 2)
Wilderness is the essential Biblical setting for the birth of a prophetic critique of our economy and culture. In E. L. Doctorow‘s novel The Lives of the Poets, “The Leather Man“ is an itinerant who wanders around New England a hundred years ago always dressed in layers of coats and shawls and pants. The narrator says: “He makes the world foreign. He distances it. He is estranged. Our perceptions are sharpest when we‘re estranged.“
When we listen to poets, prophets, the poor (and John the Baptist) we estrange ourselves from our culture and become open to the chastening word of God. Estrangement is essential for faithful living.
The word of God is a word of justice, mercy and love. The word comes to those in prisons, bread lines, refugee camps, to the poor not the rich, to the victims not their oppressors, to the war-torn not the warlords.
So the word of God came to John in the wilderness and not the intelligentsia in Jerusalem. Immediately he went public “ ... into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins ...“ (Luke 3:3).
“Repent“ is a blunt instrument of a word which John used like an axe at the root of a tree (Luke 3:9). It is a straightforward word that demands radical change, forsaking old ways and going in new directions. Repentance can save our lives.
When the country music star Roy Clark was on the Tonight show he told Johnny Carson how he grew up in a tiny, dusty, little Texas town. He said: “When I found out where I was, I left.“ That‘s repentance.
David Buttrick has said that there‘s only one story in the Bible: If you‘re in Egypt, leave. If you‘re a slave or slaveholder in the Roman Empire or any empire, leave. If you‘re bound by the power of greed or fear and death, leave. This, too, is repentance.
This, too, is the good news according to John for us: God is our liberator. We are dependent on God and so independent of all that is not God. God's reign is at hand. Repent and rebel.
The Rev. Bill Steward is a retired clergy member of the Iowa Annual Conference. Together with the Rev. Bill Cotton he produces the weekly "MEMO for Those Who Preach," which is distributed by email. Click here to subscribe by email.