Second Sunday of Advent
Malachi 3:1-4 Luke 1:68-79 Philippians 1:3-11 Luke 3:1-6 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who sends a messenger to prepare the way. Amen Growing up my parents liked to take my brother and I hiking, usually in the Columbia River Gorge or up at Mt. Hood, more often than not these hikes were to a waterfall and they always involved a change in elevation, usually up on the way into the forest and down on the way back to the car. Sometimes my brother and I did not share our parents’ overwhelming (it seemed) enthusiasm for hiking and had to be cajoled along with these trails with something other than the promise of seeing a beautiful waterfall, chocolate usually worked or the promise of the rare treat of a soda when we got back to the car, and many times my parents had done these hikes before so they had a good gage of when to leverage this external motivation so that we could all have a mostly pleasant time together in the beauty of nature. But sometimes we tried new trails, and then they had to make educated guesses on how the hike would go and sometimes they guessed wrong. One hike in particular goes down in family memory, Dad had heard about this great waterfall that we just had to go see so we decided to try the trail, after what seemed like a long time of hiking we began to wonder just how much farther it was to the falls, Dad insisted they were “just around the next corner” several corners later we asked again and again Dad insisted it was “just around the next corner” and again several corners with no waterfalls later we inquired again and again Dad insisted it was “just around the next corner” I think it was at this point we began to wonder out loud about the possibility of turning around without seeing these waterfalls because we were clearly misinformed about the length of the hike but Dad insisted that we’d come this far and that- you guessed it- they were just around the next corner. I don’t know how many corners later we did eventually reach the falls, and they were nice enough as far as waterfalls go but it was definitely a longer hike than we were anticipating, and we’ve never let dad forget about his repeated insistence that the waterfalls were just around the next corner. Sometimes, waiting for Jesus can feel like that hike, the way includes many curves and it starts to feel like the wait is far longer than we anticipated, on our own it is all too easy to give up before the end, shrug our shoulders and say I’m sure it’ll be great but I’m turning around and getting on with my life, which is why we need people to encourage us along the way, people who insist with vigor that it really is just around the next corner and that we should keep going, in the Bible, these people are called prophets, in the wait for Jesus this person is called John the Baptist. Luke tells us in our gospel for today that in a particular time and place “God came to John son of Zechariah” Luke emphasizes the particular time and place all those names at the beginning of the gospel for a couple of reasons, Luke approaches his gospel as a historian, he’s investigated everything and sets out to write an orderly account, and listing the names of the rulers and the high priests locates this story in historical time, sometimes it can feel like the story of Jesus is a bit of a fairy tale, out of time, no Luke says, this happened at a particular time and place, a time and place a long time after God’s promise to David that there would always be a descendant of his on the throne, in that time many people had given up on waiting, they’d given up hope of seeing the waterfall and turned back down the trail and gotten on with their lives being ruled by the Babylonians, and Persians and finally the Romans the people needed some encouragement, and that came in the form of John the Baptist, whose miraculous beginnings parallel Jesus’ an angel announces his birth and his name, his father has some doubts and because of those doubts is rendered mute for the length of his wife Elizabeth’s pregnancy and is only able to speak when he confirms John’s name, and in response to the loosening of his tongue Zechariah sings a song of praise, the song we had as our psalm for today, praising God who has acted in the past on behalf of the people of Israel and who will act again, through his son who is the one to prepare the way by “giving people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of sins” and then we are told that John “the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel.” (Luke 1:80) proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Repent- literally to turn around, ‘hey,’ John calls to the people, ‘the messiah is just around the next corner, turn back to God, you’re going to want to see this.’ And people flock to John and mark their repentance by being baptized, a bath signifying a fresh start and all this happens in the wilderness. Why the wilderness? We think of the wilderness as a place of scarcity, and it is, but it also is consistently a place where God is at work, a place of safety and divine provision. God brought the people out of slavery in Egypt to the wilderness, where God provided food and instruction on how to live in freedom, many prophets escaped to the desert when their message from God caused rulers to seek their lives, the wilderness, harsh though it may be is where God provides us with what we need, even if we can’t see around the next corner, or it feels like we’ve been walking up hill forever, or over boulders constantly twisting our ankles. God, through John promises salvation- and what that will feel like is the hills and valleys being leveled, and the path made straight so we can see where we’re going, and it’ll be smooth too, no twisted ankles. In the wilderness John prepares the people for the salvation of God, Jesus, who comes and teaches a simple way of life- love of God and love of neighbor- who lives out that way of life all the way to the cross, for the love of us, for our salvation, to give us life everlasting. Jesus came, in a particular time and place, but what he did stretches beyond that time and place and now We are waiting again, for Jesus to come again and once again the wait has become long and the promise of around the next corner seems laughable, sometimes during this wait we end up in the wilderness going up endless hills or around corner after corner and yet in Advent each year John calls out to us to repent, to turn back to the path toward God, and Zechariah sings of how God has acted and God will act again and in his letter to the Philippians Paul adds his two cents “I am confident of this, the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ...and this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you determine what is best” The messengers of God preparing the way Pointing to Christ, and the wait becomes easier to bear, for we have seen the salvation of God. Amen
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AboutPastor Emily Johnson preaches weekly at Christ Lutheran. These are manuscripts of her sermons given at Christ Lutheran. Feel free to engage with them in the comments section of the blog. Archives
March 2022
Categories
All
|