Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God the Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!
We know that we have arrived at the second Sunday in Advent because we have 2 candles burning on our Advent wreath and, cousin John the Baptizer has emerged from the desert wilderness to preach a Baptism of repentance! As our hymn reminded us: “On Jordan’s Banks the Baptist’s cry, Announces that the Lord is nigh. Awake and hearken for he brings Glad tidings from the King of kings.”
Truly, John is like a tour guide for the Advent season! He’s kind of an odd duck. He was conceived by a couple who had no children, late in life. In fact, they were well beyond child bearing years, making John’s birth quasi-miraculous. The Word of God was spoken by the angel Gabriel to John’s father Zechariah: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John” (LK 1:13). But that’s not all the angel told Zechariah. He also said: “14 And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, 15 for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. 16 And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, 17 and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (LK 1:14-17). This sounds like quite the promising start! It’s like being told your kid is going to grow up and be the quarterback for the Saskatchewan Roughriders … or on you know, a team that actually wins games! You know what I mean. An over achiever. Honour roll, valedictorian, top of the class kind of important person.
But then you ask, “what happened to John?” Matthew and Mark tell us what he looked like, clothed in rough camel’s hair for a robe, leather belt around his waist. A bit of an organic hippy with the eating of locusts and wild honey and such. Did Zechariah and Elizabeth both die and leave John to be raised by the jackals?? Did he get in with a group of desert dwellers like the Essenes, the type of folks who hid the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Qumran caves? It certainly fits the bill. John ends up being pretty rough around the edges, a wild and untamed man of the wilderness, maybe with his own Netflix survival series or what not!
But you quickly come to realize that John is the bridge between the Old and the New, bringing the prophets of old to fulfillment. He came on the scene looking much like the prophet Elijah. He was spoken of by the last of the Old Testament prophets, Malachi, who said “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me” (3:1). He was the voice that the prophet Isaiah spoke about: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’” (LK 3:4). And we see John’s actual purpose. He is sent to prepare the way of the Lord, breaking trail and smoothing out the bumps for the Messiah.
While the other Gospel writers give us the odd-duck details about what John looked like and ate at the potluck dinner, St. Luke takes another avenue. He tells us the history. He tells us the when. When did John show up and don his Advent duties? “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness” (3:1-2). That is pretty darned detailed and quite specific! It’s more evidence that this isn’t some Disney fairy tale that happened long, long ago in a land far, far away, no no.
It’s quite clear that Luke has prepared for us a detailed, well researched, historical and accurate account of these events. It’s a story anchored in the history of the Roman empire and the priesthood of Israel. It happened at just the right time in human history, when God’s promise of salvation was ripe for the pickin’! The Word of God came to John in the wilderness.
Like all the ingredients for Christmas shortbread cookies on the kitchen counter, just waiting to be combined together, St. Luke boldly states that human history is the raw materials of salvation. It’s the canvas on which God paints the glorious picture of our redemption in Christ. John, the son of Zechariah, out in the Judean wilderness - he is out there in the sand and the scorpions preaching. He is urging everyone to be baptized for repentance and forgiveness of sins. He calls for sinners to wear a rough robe of humility before taking the baptismal plunge.
And this is another detail that is quite odd about this whole scenario. Baptism never really existed before John. Oh the Hebrews had washing rituals, like if you came into contact with a corpse and needed to be restored to a ‘ritual purity’ you could take a mikva dip in the pool. But there was nothing like what John was doing - a washing with water and God’s promise that someone else did to you. This was completely unheard of. And yet this is precisely John’s brand. Like the moniker of ‘Doubting Thomas,’ this is what John is known for. John the Baptizer. And this is what ushers in the Kingdom of God.
This wilderness baptism was one rooted in repentance. Turn away from sin. Embrace righteousness. Change your mind. Change your heart. Forgiveness of sins was becoming available in this entirely new way because the long promised Messiah was coming. Get ready! Prepare! Stay awake and alert! God was doing something new. The King was coming. Make the rough places smooth and flatten out the hills! Prepare the way for the Lord.
Perhaps we could have called him John the “bulldozer” rather than the baptizer! Level that dirt. Settle that soil of repentance. The voice was crying to everyone. Whether king, prophet, priest or peasant. Everyone needed to hear the message. Everyone needed to repent and believe the good news. “All flesh shall see the salvation of God” (LK 1:6) the prophet proclaimed. Everyone needed to be warshed clean and made new because the new creation in Christ was coming.
And even here, God takes the initiative. In order for His people to prepare for His arrival, God sends out His messenger to herald it ahead of time. Our response to this heralding is not to clean up our act, as if we were cleaning up the joint before company comes over. God is not just one more person we have to impress at this time of year in addition to our employers, kids or out of town guests. Instead, the nugget of Advent preparation and repentance is a candid and honest admission that the only thing our earthly works can do is further distance us from God! Everything that we need for Advent Peace with God, our God has done for us in Christ. His incarnation, life, death and resurrection. Even our Baptism is a gift of God and a work that God does for us and to us in and in us. Our faith is not just one more thing to do at this busy time of year. Instead it helps us bulldoze the path to our hearts that the promised Messiah may come in.
And now because of this, we as God’s people are called to likewise be heralds of Advent Peace. Find your wilderness and start crying out. ‘Get ready! Prepare the way for the Lord!’ Repent and be baptized! Now is the day of salvation. Your friends might think you are some kind of camel hair wearing weirdo for talking about your faith, but who cares!? Christ is coming! You are the voice in wilderness now.
There is only One in all of human history who died and rose from the dead to give life to the world. There is only One in human history who could do the mighty works of God in the flesh. It is Jesus, the Christ, our Messiah and King. He baptizes us into His death and gives us life. He feeds us with His body and blood. He takes away our sins and gives us Advent Peace that passes all understanding. The news is too good to keep to ourselves. The King is coming. Prepare the way of the Lord! Amen! Come, Lord Jesus. Amen!
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