Second Sunday in Advent
December 6
Luke 1:68-79 / Luke 3:1-6
Our gospel today begins, “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea…” It goes on to mention three pocket puppet princes, and two high priests who served consecutively but are always recalled as if joined at the hip. On Christmas Eve we’ll turn back the clock as Luke tells us of another emperor, another governor, and an imperial decree. In both stories Luke also gives us a map, like Google Maps inset on a webpage. We know where John the Baptist preached. We know the road Joseph and Mary had to take.
This is Luke’s way of telling his first audience that the events behind his stories really, really happened. More than that, today Luke tells us God’s plan for the redemption of the world unfolded in time, in a place, for a purpose, in the face of imperial powers dressed in the trappings of divinity. The advent of the Messiah meant far more than the spiritual renewal of the world. John announced, and Jesus incarnated God’s decisive intervention in the world against the powers of the world.
According to Luke, John took his script from a worthy source. Isaiah’s words referred literally to the roads the exiled Israelites had been pressed into building in service of Babylon’s emperor and Babylon’s gods. With prophetic imagination, Isaiah looked forward to a day when another Emperor would set the exiles free. God would build a highway so God’s people could go home on a wide and level road. What did John look forward to?
Luke tells us in his stories of Jesus and of the apostles’ acts of faith and daring, that all unfolded within the Roman Empire, but beyond imperial control. The empire built roads that tied lands and peoples together, under close watch and control. Imperial gods weren’t paraded on those roads, but imperial governors bearing the Emperor’s divine seal of approval were. Commoners could watch those parades, but the roads weren’t for their use.
John stayed clear of those roads. He walked rocky paths. He tramped through brush. He called people to come with him, to leave the symbols and products of imperial oppression behind. John announced that God the road-builder was already at work. People who responded to John’s prophetic voice put their feet firmly on the ground and followed God’s way. The people of Palestine lived as exiles in their own land. God’s anointed would end their oppression. This is what John’s father, Zechariah, sang about. It’s our psalm for today. Jesus’ mother sang about it too. It’s our psalm for Advent 4.
Zechariah prophesied that John would prepare the people for the advent of the One who would guide them “into the way of peace.” God’s shalom. So much more than the enforced absence of conflict of the infamous Pax Romana. A pathway not of this world, but that can be followed in this world. Made possible not by Caesar, but by the Dayspring Messiah.
Don’t push the names and place names aside as you rush to a personal, spiritual Christmassy message. Every name represents someone whose authority John and Jesus challenged. John announced, and Jesus incarnated, a reversal of the order those named men stood for. Every place named was a location for the road-building of God’s new work. John calls us today to look and see where God is already at work in our wilderness. John calls us to get to work, digging, scraping, levelling the way of peace.
