Luke 3:1-6
Our youngest child, Henry, had
some interesting ways of saying things when he was little. He soaked up
information like a sponge, but sometimes his brain got a little ahead of his
mouth and things came out funny. For example, he would tell you that our town
of Bloomsburg sat along the banks of the Sexy-Hanna River. Also known as the
Susquehanna River.
One day he and I were in the car
driving along a road that was known locally as The Narrows, because it was a
narrow, winding road with railroad tracks on one side and a straight, jagged
rock wall on the other. Henry pointed toward the rocky wall and said to me,
“You know why it’s like that? It’s because they daminated the mountain to make
this road.” It took me a second to translate what he said from daminated to
dynamited. For a moment we both marveled at the industrious nature of
humankind. Then I wondered: maybe damination would be a better word for what
they did to the mountain?
It’s along the same lines, it
seems, as what John the Baptist was proposing. “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.” But John is not talking about laying
to waste the grandeur of God’s creation. I think John had other kinds of
mountains and crooked ways in mind when he spoke these words. What could he
have meant?
Where to begin? Luke nudges us in the
right direction as he sets up this scene in the third chapter. Hear this:
“In the fifteenth year
of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of
Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas
and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”
We
might not know who all these people are – for that we can consult the history
books – but we do know what they stand for: they are the movers and the
shakers of the day. Picture this: Luke, the great first-century
cinematographer; his camera pans over them all – the emperor, the governor, the
rulers, and the high priests – we see them, and then they are gone, the camera
moves on – and stops at last, focusing on a lone figure out in the wilderness,
poorly dressed: John.
Wild and lone the
prophet’s voice echoes through the desert still.
And
here is what John is saying: turn around. Turn around; you have been looking
the wrong way.
For
isn’t it always the case that we look to the strong, the powerful, the
influential ones? It is here we place all our admiration, our honor, our hope. Yet,
Luke tells us, you are looking the wrong way, for God has chosen that
crazy-looking guy out in the wilderness.
It is the way things have always been
with God. God has always made the unexpected choice. Jacob, the quiet one
chosen over the ruddy, outdoorsy Esau to be the father of Israel. David, the
littlest one in a family of big strapping boys was chosen to be the king of
Israel. God is always choosing the second-born over the first-born, the weak
over the powerful, the poor over the wealthy. It is the way it has always been and,
yet, it is a sign of new things to come. God is doing a new thing: God will
come to us as one of us, and it will not be as a prince or a matinee idol: God
will come to us in the midst of poverty and humility. If we are blinded by all
that glitters, we might miss seeing him.
John
has a message for us: He is coming; prepare the way.
He
calls to us as the refiner’s fire, bidding us to come be refined and purified
until we can see the way he sees.
For,
just as God gave the word of repentance to the powerless man who stood at the
margins of society, just as God came to earth as the poor, helpless infant,
child of the oppressed, it is the same today: he is calling to us from the
edges. We will see him in the faces of the least, the last, and the lost.
So
let us turn around, look for our coming Lord, and prepare the way. Let us place
our honor and our hope in the one who is both shepherd and lamb, let us give
praise and glory to his name.
Awake, awake and greet
the new morn, for angels herald its dawning. Sing out your joy, for soon he is
born, behold! the child of our longing.
Photo: The Narrows
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