Luke 3:1-6
December 5, 2021
It was December 2010, and I had to
have surgery on my left foot. I was born, really and truly, with an extra bone
in each foot. According to my podiatrist, that happens sometimes. And the bone
in my left foot was larger than normal. This would not have been a problem
except that at some point it had been broken and was starting to cause me a lot
of pain. So, I was going to have surgery to remove the extra-large bone, and as
it turned out, a lot of bone fragments. No wonder my foot hurt so much.
I
knew that I was going to be off my feet for several weeks, and it would take
some time to get to the point where I could do a lot around the house. I needed
to be prepared before the surgery, so I was scrambling to cross off every task
on my to-do list. This included cleaning the house from top to bottom and
bottom to top.
At
this time, my parents still lived in the same town as I did. On the morning of
my surgery, my dad came by the house to pick up the kids and get them to
school. It was 7 am when he walked in the door. My surgery was in couple of
hours, and I was vacuuming as fast as I could, every surface of floor and
carpet. Some of my need to vacuum was because of nervousness about the surgery,
but mainly I just wanted my house to be clean before I left. My dad chuckled
when he saw what I was doing.
“Just
like your mother.”
Maybe
it was silly to vacuum before I went to the hospital to have surgery on my
foot, but I wanted to be prepared, and vacuuming was how I accomplished it. What
if someone came to the house while I was at the hospital? I wanted my house to
look nice. What if people came to see me after I got home from the hospital? I
wanted my house to look nice. Did I want to return home from surgery to a messy
house? Nope. I wanted to be prepared, and if that meant vacuuming my entire
house before I went to the hospital for surgery, then so be it.
I
realize that my needing to have my house clean is not exactly the same kind of
preparation that John the Baptist was calling for when he left the wilderness
because the word of the Lord had come to him, but perhaps there is some
parallel to be found in the urgency of that preparation.
From
the very first words of this passage, Luke goes out of his way to set the
historical stage. One commentator pointed out that Luke was determined to set
the salvific history of God precisely within the scope of human history. Seven
historical, political, and religious leaders are mentioned before a word is
written about John. And as this same commentator noted, probably none of them
would be thrilled to know that their names would be forever mentioned in
relationship to John or to what they saw as a fringe religious movement that
John played a part in. Yet there they are, and John is right next to them.
Earlier
in his gospel, Luke establishes that John comes from the religious upper crust
of the time on both sides of his family tree. His father, Zechariah, belonged
to the priestly order of Abijah. His mother, Elizabeth, descended from Aaron,
the brother of Moses. I suspect that John could have followed in his father’s
footsteps and been a high priest. He could have claimed his birthright as a
descendant of Aaron and lived almost like royalty. Yet John clearly walked away
from that life, from his heritage and birth right, because where do we find
John? Where does the word of the Lord come to John? In the wilderness.
Debie
Thomas in her essay on this passage for Journey with Jesus, writes that
Advent is a good time for us “to remember that the Bible we read and reverence
is a wilderness text.” The Israelites became a nation in their time in the
wilderness. Jesus’ ministry was solidified by his time in the wilderness. The
word of the Lord about God’s ongoing work in the world came to John in the
wilderness. And from that same wilderness John emerges with a message to
repent. Repent, or the Greek word metanoia, means to change your mind, to
reorient, to turn around and go a different way. Repent, John proclaims, turn
around, change your mind and reorient yourself again toward God, prepare for
the coming of the Lord.
Luke
has John quoting the prophet Isaiah just to make sure this point gets across.
“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.”
When
I traveled through the Middle East many years ago now, our group rode on a lot
of big busses to get from one spot on our itinerary to another. Driving through
the hilly terrain, the wilderness, in Jordan caused all of us to reread the
different wilderness passages. Because that’s what we were traveling through,
the wilderness. Now, we were on modern roads, or at least roads that were
created in the modern era. But the topography of that wilderness was
mountainous, with deep valleys, sparse vegetation, and just wild nothingness
for as far as the eye could see. And these roads that we traveled on followed
the outline of the land. They followed the twists and the turns of the hills
and mountains. At the edge of these roads, the deep valleys dropped off at steep
angles below them. I learned to stop looking down when I looked out the windows
of the bus, because it was far too easy to imagine that at some point our bus
would lose its purchase on the twisting, turning road, and crash down into the
valley below.
It
would truly take a supernatural feat of engineering to fill these valleys and
make level these hills and mountains. Only an act of the divine could make this
level of crooked straight and this kind of rough smooth. Anyone who had
glimpsed this wilderness, much less wandered in it, would have understood the fantastical nature
of these prophetic words, because the changing of that landscape was someone
only accomplished by God.
While
God’s ability to do this is not in question, I don’t think that a literal
transformation of the landscape was the message John was trying to get across.
John called the people to repent because it was the topography of their hearts
and minds and lives that needed to be changed, that needed to be made level and
even and smooth. What were they doing to prepare? What were they doing to make
ready? What were they doing to make way for the coming of the Lord within their
own lives?
Next
week, John will get specific on details about what people should do in order to
prepare. John will answer the peoples’ questions about what is needed for
repentance. But for this week, it is enough to ponder the outcome of
preparation. John does not mention individual salvation. John does not refer to
eternal glory of people leaving this life and going to a heaven beyond this
time and space. John the Baptizer, John the cousin of Jesus, John – who is
considered by the orthodox tradition to be the last great prophet in the line
of prophets – says that the preparation the people must do is so that “all flesh
shall see the salvation of God.”
All
flesh shall see the salvation of God.
If we keep reading in this chapter,
we know that the salvation that will be seen is the incarnate God, God’s son,
Jesus. That is who John is pointing to, the One who will baptize with fire and
the Holy Spirit. The salvation of God is a who, not a what. The salvation of
God is embodied in the person of Jesus the Christ. John wants the people to
know that what all flesh shall see is flesh and blood and bone. The people must
prepare. The people must prepare their hearts and their minds. They must smooth
the rough edges of their hearts. They must prepare the way within them, so that
they will be able to see with their eyes and see with their hearts.
All flesh will see. In this season
of Advent, we too are called to prepare, to prepare the way of the Lord. The
same urgency that pushes us to prepare our homes for the holidays, to prepare
for the arrival of guests, for the giving and receiving of gifts, should also
drive us to prepare ourselves, to see the salvation of God.
Prepare the way. Prepare your
hearts. Prepare for God’s new thing in our midst. Prepare for God’s coming once
more. Prepare our hearts, our minds, our eyes, every aspect of ourselves to see
God’s salvation. May all flesh see the salvation of the Lord.
Let all of God’s children say,
“Alleluia.”
Amen.
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