Preached December 6, 2009
Luke 3:1-6
At the 8:30 service, we only have two readings, so the given lay reader for the week reads either the Old Testament or the Epistle reading, depending on what is being preached. If we’re preaching on the Gospel, the reader can choose which reading he or she would like to do. Invariably the decision boils down to either the length of the readings or the number of names that are hard to pronounce. When I was reading this morning’s Gospel during our staff meeting this week, I started feeling sorry for the poor sucker who would have to end up reading this one. The length is fine, but oh the names! Tiberias, Ituraea, Trachonitis, Lysanias, Abilene, Annas, Caiaphas, and Zechariah. Of course, I soon realized that since it’s the Gospel reading, that poor sucker would be either John or I. I was joking that you could pretty much just skip that whole first sentence where all the hard names show up. After all, what do we care who all the rulers were in all these random places? The real meat of the story isn’t there anyway.
Or is it?
Luke is constantly throwing in little intros like this just before he starts talking about a new piece of the story.
Right before the angel appears to Mary to tell her about her pregnancy, we hear: “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David….”
Just before Mary and Joseph set out for Bethlehem, we are told: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria….”
After Jesus’ baptism and just before he is tempted in the wilderness, we get his entire ancestry, all the way from “He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph” until we reach Seth, “the son of Adam, the son of God.” With, would you believe, 73 names in between, some of which are familiar (like David and Abraham) and some of which are total mysteries (like Shealtiel and Arphaxad).
There are more examples, but I think you get my drift.
But this is more than just some show-offy writer demonstrating his knowledge of history and geography and genealogy. This are more than just a way of letting us know when and where each of these incidents took place. This attention to detail anchors these pieces of the story in the concrete, tangible history of the world. Luke wants us to know that this story of God preparing to come, and then coming, to dwell among us as one of us is firmly rooted in real, live history with all of its wild and unpredictable twists and turns.
Take this strange man, John the Baptist with his rough ways and his hard message of repentance for sins. This odd bird who dresses in animal fur and eats locusts was chosen in particular to be the direct forerunner of Jesus, sent to help prepare Jesus’ way and make people ready for Jesus’ ministry. And of course, Jesus himself is God becoming incarnate in a particular time and place, a particular child born in very strange and unlikely circumstances to a particular woman Mary.
And now it’s our turn. Here comes this piece of the story into our particular time and place. This hard piece of the Gospel where John the Baptist is crying out to us to prepare ourselves, along with the people gathered around him in the region by the Jordan. In Luke’s language it might sound something like this:
In the first year of the reign of President Obama, when Tim Kaine was still governor of Virginia, and John Baker, son of Samuel, was the rector of St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, the word of God spread into the region around the Potomac and came to the people of St. Aidan’s through John the Baptist, son of Zechariah: “Repent and prepare the way of the Lord….”
In the Greek the word for repent is metanoia which literally means “to change one’s mind, turn around, reorient oneself.” And the preparation to which John calls us is what this season of Advent is all about – we are preparing ourselves, and preparing the world around us, making room for Emmanuel – God with us – to come.
This is a different kind of preparation than what we see and experience right now in the world. Stores are decorating and having sales so that people to come in and spend money. Our neighbors are hanging lights from their houses and putting out big blow-up Santas and reindeers in their yards. We are hosting or attending holiday parties. Filling our houses with ornamented trees and nutcrackers and the smell of cookies baking. But this isn’t the kind of preparation John the Baptist comes to us this morning to proclaim.
He comes on the scene and rather abruptly interrupts our schedules and our frivolity and demands that we get ready for Jesus. Which means that before we can bask in our Christmas joy and the birth of this special baby, we have to spend some time examining ourselves and our world. Our lives, our values, our priorities.
“Fill the valleys, make the mountains and hills low, straighten the crooked, and smooth out the rough ways!” cries John the Baptist. The preparation will look different for each of us; we all have to find our own ways to make, open and clear the way to God. As John makes clear, the work we have ahead of us is absolutely urgent. And yet, it is slow and challenging and at times, seemingly impossible.
Last weekend Holden and I somehow ended up watching CNN’s Hero Awards. I was afraid it was going to be lauding already overexposed people who happened to be in the right place at the right time, but I was pleasantly surprised. None of the ten people to win were folks I’d heard of, but they all were doing amazing work in very particular fields. There was someone from the Phillipines who had grown up in the slums and who now spends his Saturdays pushing a mobile schoolhouse through the city, educating kids unable to attend school so that they have an alternative to gang life. A woman from Zimbabwe who had been raped as a child during the war in her country and so is now helping other women and girls who had experienced similar trauma. A Vietnam veteran who had returned from the war with mental and physical injuries and experienced homelessness who is now helping other veterans to get off the street. A teenager who lost his legs in a boating accident who started a foundation to help other kids get the prosthetics they need but can’t afford.
It was interesting how most of the ten profiled on the show were working to fix something they’d experienced themselves. They’d found a particular need that they knew something about in their particular lives and were inspired to try to fix. And they were making a difference, ever-so-slowly, just like a glacier changing the shape of a mountain.
The one that inspired me most was a bartender who took a break from college to travel the world and was shocked by the poor conditions he found in the places he visited. He ended up starting an organization called Wine to Water to bring clean water to developing countries around the world through money raised at wine tastings in the United States. Someone asked him, “Isn’t what you’re doing just a drop in the bucket?” He thought about it and concluded that it is just a drop, a small drop in a huge bucket. But combined with everyone else’s drop, he had hope that one day that bucket would be filled. As he put it: “You can be a bartender in Raleigh, North Carolina; you can be just a regular anybody. And you really, really can change the world. You can touch thousands of lives. I'm walking truth of that."
What is the preparatory work God is calling you – you in particular – to begin this Advent? What piece of the valley of hunger or homelessness or need might you fill? Or how might you help to shave low the mountains of violence and cruelty? Or help to straighten the crookedness of oppression and injustice? Or smooth out the rough ways for those broken in body, mind or spirit?
It’s time for our particular hands to do the slow, hard work of preparing the way for God. For our particular voices to join John the Baptist’s in crying out in the wilderness until “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Amen.
Luke 3:1-6
At the 8:30 service, we only have two readings, so the given lay reader for the week reads either the Old Testament or the Epistle reading, depending on what is being preached. If we’re preaching on the Gospel, the reader can choose which reading he or she would like to do. Invariably the decision boils down to either the length of the readings or the number of names that are hard to pronounce. When I was reading this morning’s Gospel during our staff meeting this week, I started feeling sorry for the poor sucker who would have to end up reading this one. The length is fine, but oh the names! Tiberias, Ituraea, Trachonitis, Lysanias, Abilene, Annas, Caiaphas, and Zechariah. Of course, I soon realized that since it’s the Gospel reading, that poor sucker would be either John or I. I was joking that you could pretty much just skip that whole first sentence where all the hard names show up. After all, what do we care who all the rulers were in all these random places? The real meat of the story isn’t there anyway.
Or is it?
Luke is constantly throwing in little intros like this just before he starts talking about a new piece of the story.
Right before the angel appears to Mary to tell her about her pregnancy, we hear: “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David….”
Just before Mary and Joseph set out for Bethlehem, we are told: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria….”
After Jesus’ baptism and just before he is tempted in the wilderness, we get his entire ancestry, all the way from “He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph” until we reach Seth, “the son of Adam, the son of God.” With, would you believe, 73 names in between, some of which are familiar (like David and Abraham) and some of which are total mysteries (like Shealtiel and Arphaxad).
There are more examples, but I think you get my drift.
But this is more than just some show-offy writer demonstrating his knowledge of history and geography and genealogy. This are more than just a way of letting us know when and where each of these incidents took place. This attention to detail anchors these pieces of the story in the concrete, tangible history of the world. Luke wants us to know that this story of God preparing to come, and then coming, to dwell among us as one of us is firmly rooted in real, live history with all of its wild and unpredictable twists and turns.
Take this strange man, John the Baptist with his rough ways and his hard message of repentance for sins. This odd bird who dresses in animal fur and eats locusts was chosen in particular to be the direct forerunner of Jesus, sent to help prepare Jesus’ way and make people ready for Jesus’ ministry. And of course, Jesus himself is God becoming incarnate in a particular time and place, a particular child born in very strange and unlikely circumstances to a particular woman Mary.
And now it’s our turn. Here comes this piece of the story into our particular time and place. This hard piece of the Gospel where John the Baptist is crying out to us to prepare ourselves, along with the people gathered around him in the region by the Jordan. In Luke’s language it might sound something like this:
In the first year of the reign of President Obama, when Tim Kaine was still governor of Virginia, and John Baker, son of Samuel, was the rector of St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, the word of God spread into the region around the Potomac and came to the people of St. Aidan’s through John the Baptist, son of Zechariah: “Repent and prepare the way of the Lord….”
In the Greek the word for repent is metanoia which literally means “to change one’s mind, turn around, reorient oneself.” And the preparation to which John calls us is what this season of Advent is all about – we are preparing ourselves, and preparing the world around us, making room for Emmanuel – God with us – to come.
This is a different kind of preparation than what we see and experience right now in the world. Stores are decorating and having sales so that people to come in and spend money. Our neighbors are hanging lights from their houses and putting out big blow-up Santas and reindeers in their yards. We are hosting or attending holiday parties. Filling our houses with ornamented trees and nutcrackers and the smell of cookies baking. But this isn’t the kind of preparation John the Baptist comes to us this morning to proclaim.
He comes on the scene and rather abruptly interrupts our schedules and our frivolity and demands that we get ready for Jesus. Which means that before we can bask in our Christmas joy and the birth of this special baby, we have to spend some time examining ourselves and our world. Our lives, our values, our priorities.
“Fill the valleys, make the mountains and hills low, straighten the crooked, and smooth out the rough ways!” cries John the Baptist. The preparation will look different for each of us; we all have to find our own ways to make, open and clear the way to God. As John makes clear, the work we have ahead of us is absolutely urgent. And yet, it is slow and challenging and at times, seemingly impossible.
Last weekend Holden and I somehow ended up watching CNN’s Hero Awards. I was afraid it was going to be lauding already overexposed people who happened to be in the right place at the right time, but I was pleasantly surprised. None of the ten people to win were folks I’d heard of, but they all were doing amazing work in very particular fields. There was someone from the Phillipines who had grown up in the slums and who now spends his Saturdays pushing a mobile schoolhouse through the city, educating kids unable to attend school so that they have an alternative to gang life. A woman from Zimbabwe who had been raped as a child during the war in her country and so is now helping other women and girls who had experienced similar trauma. A Vietnam veteran who had returned from the war with mental and physical injuries and experienced homelessness who is now helping other veterans to get off the street. A teenager who lost his legs in a boating accident who started a foundation to help other kids get the prosthetics they need but can’t afford.
It was interesting how most of the ten profiled on the show were working to fix something they’d experienced themselves. They’d found a particular need that they knew something about in their particular lives and were inspired to try to fix. And they were making a difference, ever-so-slowly, just like a glacier changing the shape of a mountain.
The one that inspired me most was a bartender who took a break from college to travel the world and was shocked by the poor conditions he found in the places he visited. He ended up starting an organization called Wine to Water to bring clean water to developing countries around the world through money raised at wine tastings in the United States. Someone asked him, “Isn’t what you’re doing just a drop in the bucket?” He thought about it and concluded that it is just a drop, a small drop in a huge bucket. But combined with everyone else’s drop, he had hope that one day that bucket would be filled. As he put it: “You can be a bartender in Raleigh, North Carolina; you can be just a regular anybody. And you really, really can change the world. You can touch thousands of lives. I'm walking truth of that."
What is the preparatory work God is calling you – you in particular – to begin this Advent? What piece of the valley of hunger or homelessness or need might you fill? Or how might you help to shave low the mountains of violence and cruelty? Or help to straighten the crookedness of oppression and injustice? Or smooth out the rough ways for those broken in body, mind or spirit?
It’s time for our particular hands to do the slow, hard work of preparing the way for God. For our particular voices to join John the Baptist’s in crying out in the wilderness until “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Amen.
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