Luke 3:1-6
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, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘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 become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
Having heard the mini-apocalypse from the book of Luke last week, and thought about its promise of signs of hope even amidst signs of doom, we now jump back eighteen chapters to John the Baptist heralding the start of Jesus’ ministry, and we will be teasing out some thoughts on peace. The lectionary is still doing funny things with our sense of time, as while this passage is full of anticipation, it is awaiting the beginning of Jesus’ ministry rather than his birth, as we might expect in this season of Advent. It’s as though the story is folding in on itself because we need all of it at once. The passage begins with a lengthy introduction setting the political and religious context, and it’s interesting to note that we find similar historical details at the start of the previous two chapters of Luke as well. Perhaps Luke understood the way in which history can become legend and legend can become myth, and wanted to make sure this gospel was always understood as history. It seems to me that he wanted to root the story of Jesus’ life and work, and ultimately his death and resurrection, in time and place so that we would always know that this really happened.
Luke gets pretty specific about the history, but in some ways the specifics of the incarnation are not important. We don’t need to know what Jesus looked like or what his favourite food was or what he would have chosen for the first-century Palestine equivalent of Desert Island Discs. And yet at the same time, the incarnation matters precisely because it was so specific. That this really happened is the foundation of Christian faith, but it’s still easy to lose sight of that truth, or at least forget the significance of it. At a particular moment in human history, God took on mortal flesh and lived among us. We cannot possibly comprehend all that means, but we must never stop trying, and we must never stop being amazed by it, because wonder is also at the heart of faith.
There are a number of interesting details in Luke’s introduction, which I want to pull out. First of all, the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius would put these events in either 26 or 29 AD, depending on whether Luke was counting from Tiberius assuming power alongside his father in 11 AD or taking on sole authority after his father’s death three years later. It is thought that 26 AD was a jubilee year, when according to Levitical law slaves would be freed and debts would be forgiven, which would seem an appropriate start for Jesus' ministry, especially given that Luke 4 sees Jesus reading from Isaiah to declare that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him to declare the year of the Lord’s favour. Sometimes things happen seemingly at random, but sometimes there is meaning in the timing.
Secondly we have a reference to three tetrarchs and two high priests. The tetrarchs were the three sons of Herod the Great, the Herod who orders the massacre of the innocents and forces the infant Jesus and his family to flee as refugees. He is not so great in that account, but he earned his title through his significant building projects, including the renovation of the Second Temple. On his death, his kingdom was divided between his four sons, although one was deemed incompetent to rule, hence the arrangement we see here. The high priests may seem to be job sharing, but that wasn’t really the case. There was only ever one official high priest, and at this time it was Caiaphas. His father-in-law Annas had previously been high priest but had been deposed, although he still held considerable influence and kept the title as a sign of respect. It’s easy to miss at this distance, but the political and religious context was a bit of a mess. Some things don’t change all that much, and the messages spoken into one context will echo into our own.
This introduction gives us some pretty important names in the realms of politics and religion, several of whom will figure prominently in the Easter narratives, and then we are told that the word of the Lord came to John in the wilderness. God did not speak to the rulers on their seats of political power or to the high priests in the temple that was the focal point of worship, but to a wild man in the desert. God often chooses unlikely people in unlikely places, although of course it is only we who deem them unlikely, and only because of assumptions we make and prejudices we hold. Perhaps if we could let go of those, we would find it easier to realise that God chooses all of us and speaks to all of us.
Because it’s not quite true to say that God did not speak to the rulers or the high priests, it is rather the case that God chose to speak to them through John. He may have started in the wilderness, but he ended with his head on a platter in Herod’s palace, because his words reached the corridors of power, and they troubled those who heard them. As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 1:27, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong”. Or as we shall hear Mary declare in a couple of weeks’ time, “He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble”. We will fall on both sides of those lines at different points. Sometimes we are the ones who are called to speak truth to power, to hold rulers to account even if we know our words will not be received kindly, and sometimes we are the ones who need to be challenged, to recognise the power and the privilege we hold and do not always use well.
The word of God came to John in the wilderness, and I think the location is important not only because of the contrast with the palaces and temples of the tetrarchs and high priests. The wilderness is an evocative image in the Hebrew scriptures, as a place of struggle and revelation. The Israelites wander in the desert for forty years, and it is hard but they learn much about God and themselves. Elijah flees to the wilderness, and he wishes for death but an angel brings him food and God speaks to him in a whisper. But it is also a place of promise and hope. Isaiah tells us the wilderness will be glad, and there shall be streams in the desert. I can’t think of a better place for John to encounter the word of God, and begin his own ministry of heralding Jesus.
John ultimately gets himself into trouble for criticising Herod’s marriage to his brother’s ex-wife, but the core of his ministry is preaching and performing a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Baptism was already practised within Judaism as a conversion rite for those who had not been born into the faith, but there is nothing to suggest that those coming to him were Gentiles, and it would be noteworthy enough to mention it if they were, so John seems to be doing something different here, giving a familiar practice new meaning. Although not perhaps so different, as repentance is not so far away from conversion. Repentance is all about a change of mind and direction, a complete overhaul of our way of thinking. It is not an inherently religious word, but in this context it would be reasonable to describe it as a reorienting of the head and heart towards God.
It’s not immediately clear in what way this baptism of repentance is for the forgiveness of sins. Does it bring about or represent the forgiveness of the one who has repented and been baptised? Or is that the one who has been baptised has repented in such a way that they are now inclined towards the forgiveness of others? Are they forgiven or do they forgive? Or why not both? The prayer Jesus taught his disciples certainly suggests that the two must come together. But what does that look like in practice? Forgiveness comes from the Greek word for ‘let go’, so there is a sense of release, of not holding on to the wrongs that have been done to us and the hurt they have caused. Like many things, letting go is easier said than done, and it certainly takes a conscious and concerted effort, we might even say a complete overhaul of our way of thinking.
The passage ends with a quote from Isaiah 40, and its placement seems to identify John as the one crying in the wilderness. The words of that voice then become part of the message of John. ‘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 become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ Because we now read these words in the context of the incarnation, it is easy for us to think that this is about preparing a straight way for God to come to us, but Isaiah was speaking in the context of the exile, and so it was more about preparing a straight way for God to lead the people home. The path was for the people, and I wonder if some of that sense should remain. God has come to be with us, but also to lead us, and we are called to prepare the way for our own journey, not out of exile but into the kingdom.
Here we come to draw out some ideas of peace, which is traditionally one of the themes associated with the Second Sunday of Advent. I said last week that our candle lighting liturgy has come from JPIT, and they have also produced a series of podcasts responding to the gospel texts from the lectionary, which we are taking as our own texts in this season. In this week’s edition, Dave Hardman, the Methodist Team Leader at JPIT, reflected on the idea that every valley will be filled and every mountain brought low, reading it through the lens of peace, which though not explicitly named in this passage, is undoubtedly one aspect of the way and salvation of the Lord.
He said that one thing this passage tell us that peace is not passive. If it means filling in valleys and bringing low mountains, then it means active work which requires a complete upheaval of the world around us. He also spoke of valleys being filled and mountains being brought low so that we could look level eyed into the face of God and the faces of one another, because that is what peace requires. We must be able to see one another and reach one another if we are to live at peace with one another. Although he did also caution that we mustn't push the metaphor too far, as levelling the way is about bringing people together but that does not mean bringing people into uniformity. True peace allows for difference to exist in harmony.
I want to end with one final comment, because I think it is interesting that Matthew and Mark both include the quote from Isaiah 40 in their introduction to John, but cut it short before the declaration that all flesh shall see the salvation of God. I wonder if the expansive sense of inclusion in this verse was particularly important to Luke as a Gentile, and it reminds me again of the importance of saying and meaning that all are included. I also love the use of the word flesh rather than people. There is something significant for me about seeing God as our embodied selves, as flesh of every age and colour and gender and ability. It grounds the salvation of God in our experience right here and now, and connects us with the flesh that Jesus took on in Bethlehem.
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