2nd Sunday of Advent Year C
Lord of the Lake Lutheran Church
Web page http://lordofthelake.org
By The Rev. Jerry Morrissey, Esq., Pastor
E-mail pastor@southshore.com
Opening Prayer
Heavenly Father empower each of us here today to be an example of John the Baptist to other people in our lives. Amen.
Title: “Second Coming.”
Luke 3: 1-6
John the Baptist is presented here in the third chapter as though we had not read about him in chapter one. Chapters 1-2, are called the “infancy narratives” because they relate the announcement and birth of John and Jesus. Luke has artfully sewn these chapters into the entire fabric of the gospel. Nonetheless, revealing his dependence on Mark and another source (called “Q” by the scholars), Luke begins with the adult contribution of John to the history of salvation. He sees salvation history composed of three periods: the Period of Israel, from Abraham to John; the Period of Jesus, from John to the Apostles; and the Period of the Church, from the Apostles until the Second Coming. John, then, is a bridge from the old to the new, preparing the way for Jesus’ first coming into the world as its savior. The Apostles provide a similar bridge for the transition to the Period of the Church. Luke’s perspective is the whole world and everybody in it, past, present and future. He takes world history into account as he shows the injection of Jesus into the world, changing, over time, the destructive direction of world history into one having the intention or power to bring about salvation or redemption, ending in a total reversal of reality as humans have come to know it.
In verse 1: in the fifteenth year…: Only this first phrase, “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,” is necessary to give the date of John’s appearance in the desert. The remaining information gives a kind of compressed survey of the political scene at this crucial moment in history. Luke wants to show that the “transcendent presence” of God enters history, so he situates the gospel in its setting within imperial and thereby “world-wide” and local history. The dating of John’s appearance follows the manner of ancient Old Testament prophets like Isaiah (1:1) and Jeremiah (1: 1-3). The scene is now set. The word of God came to John: This is a standard Old Testament way of describing the way prophets got their message. John is “called” by God to be his spokesperson. John is the last of a long line of prophets, heralds of God’s news flashes.
In the desert: There is a very good possibility that John once belonged to a monastic group called the Essenes. They lived in the desert area in the neighborhood of the Jordan River, living a life of extreme asceticism, that is self-denial, studying the scriptures and preparing for the priestly, kingly, prophetic Messiah, who would inaugurate the New Age by destroying the present one. If John did not actually belong to this group, he shows signs of being very influenced by them and their thinking. There is one big difference though. The Essenes kept to themselves and believed salvation was only for them. John preached a salvation open to all who would repent, not just a select few. For him, repentance did not require a monastic life-style, but a life of integrity, no matter what one’s occupation.
In verse 3 proclaiming a baptism of repentance: Unlike Matthew and Mark, Luke says nothing about John’s appearance and dietary habits. He goes straight to the message. “Proclaiming” or preaching a baptism does not mean that John delivered sermons on the theme of baptism; rather he proclaimed a baptism much as a king at his accession might proclaim an amnesty. This means a baptism that follows repentance and is a sign of it, an external expression of an internal event. Thus, baptism is to be understood as a ritual washing having a religious connotation.
The Jews used baptism as a ceremony to cleanse converts, Gentiles, from their defilement. The notion that Jews needed that kind of cleansing was an offense to many of their officials. The Essenes, that Jewish monastic sect, practiced baptism (which they self-administered) on a regular basis as a sign of purification. They understood that this symbolic action was ineffective without the appropriate inward attitude of repentance. John preached along these same lines.
In 3: 16 Luke will make clear that John’s baptism was an effective anticipation of Christian baptism but different from it. Christian baptism causes forgiveness as well as expresses repentance. It stresses what God does in the matter, more than what humans do. Yet, since forgiveness is unthinkable without repentance, John summoned the people to express their repentance in baptism.
Repentance: This translates the Greek word “metanoia,” an “after thought” or “second thoughts.” After a person has thought about something, first thoughts, first impressions, change. Emotion has faded, perspective has risen and a person can think straight and see things better. That’s what is meant by “metanoia.” It means a change of mind, heart, outlook and attitude that expresses itself in a change of behavior. That’s conversion, repentance, reform of life. “Repentance” and “forgiveness of sin” are Luke’s favorite ways of summing up the effects of Christ in a Christian’s life. For Luke it is clear that repentance, metanoia, leads to the forgiveness of sin. Humans can be summoned to a change of heart. They can decide to change. When they do, forgiveness follows. The interest and focus here is not on John as a baptizer but as a herald, a runner, a messenger, a prophet appealing for reform in preparation for the King/Savior’s visit.
In verses 4-6: In all four gospels Is 40:3 (“A voice…prepare…”) is applied to John the Baptist. Only Luke adds verses 4-5.
In verse 4 Voice: All four see John as regarding himself as no more than a voice, his entire life being a sermon, and so preparing the way of the Lord. John’s life and activity is regarded as fulfilling Old Testament prophecy, fulfilling the word of God.
Lord: In Isaiah this meant God. Now, it means Jesus. John’s preparation is helping to remove the sins of the people, the barriers, the gaps, the bumps, before the coming, the official visit, the Second Coming of the Messiah. Isaiah was referring to the “Day of the Lord.” John means the coming of Christ.
Make straight: This is a poetic way of saying that the way of the Lord is made easier by having a people already repentant of their sins and thus prepared to meet him.
In verse 5 valley…mountain…
winding roads…rough ways: These are all poetic images taken form the routine preparations for an official visit of a king. Before the Romans the roads were not kept up, so they had to be repaired and any obstacle removed. This way the king would be in a good mood when he arrived at his destination. He would know that he was wanted, expected and prepared for. It is easy to see in these physical conditions parallels for spiritual and emotional conditions. The author is, of course, referring to relationships with God, people and creation that need to be worked on to fill in gaps, remove barriers, straighten out messes, and smooth wrinkles. In verse 6 all flesh: That is everybody. What Simeon (2:30) previously saw would become a universal experience. This fits in with Luke’s purpose to say that salvation is open to everyone, Jew and Gentile alike.
John stands before us as a model, paradigm, metaphor for our own position compared with the Second Coming of Christ. Just as he prepared for, heralded, was a precursor, that is, one that precedes and indicates, suggests, or announces someone or something to come of the first coming of Christ, so are we to take the same role for the Second Coming of Christ. We are to prepare the way by the life we lead and the sermon that life preaches to others. We are not, in fact, John the Baptist come back to life, any more than he was Elijah come back to life. Yet, what he did, stood for, and stood up for is really no different than we are supposed to be and do. Without the first coming there would be no second one. Nonetheless, the second one is just as important, if not more so. It is not that we are comparing ourselves to the great stature and sanctity of John. Rather, we are taking the Lord at his word when he said that “the least in the kingdom” is greater than John. We have a job to do, just as did he. His sense of urgency must be ours. His integrity must be ours. His willingness to step aside for the Lord must be ours.
Luke is the only one who continues the quote from Isaiah to include the poetic metaphors of the valleys being filled in and the mountains leveled, etc. Here Luke’s own humanity shines through. He could not let generations think of John in one-dimensional terms, as only a strident, ascetic monk. He had to humanize him. He makes us think of John as this reader of desert poetry, a kind of romantic at heart, amidst the sandy, barren desert. Perhaps, Luke felt that, if he was related to Jesus, there had to be some poetry in his soul. Be that as it may, we are to imitate in our day what he did in his. The word of God gives us the most unlikely metaphors for comparing his eternal vision of things with our earth-bound realities. John is yet another metaphor whereby we can look at our lives and discern how God wants us to be and behave. We, too, are harbingers of a new age, declared not by fire-and-brimstones sermons, but by the sermons of our lives. We have changed our entire outlook on reality as a result of Christ and live according to that light. We are a sign of contradiction to the world as was John as we say “no” to its values, priorities, hopes and dreams - all desert stuff. Yet, we live in that same desert. So, we too recite poetry and live it. We imagine the perfect landscape, eternity, and then, instead of merely believing in it, we believe it, into reality, by our behavior modeled after Christ and, in this case, mirrored by John.
John’s baptism is not the same as Christian Baptism. It is presented as a metaphor for better understanding of Christian Baptism. As we look at the reality of Christian Baptism through the picture of John’s baptism we can see similarities and differences. Similar is the idea that repentance precedes forgiveness of sins as a necessary condition. Christian Baptism is not effective unless there is repentance and a decision to change one’s behavior. Similar, too, is that the rite is an external expression of an internal event. Different is that in Christian Baptism the rite causes or effects forgiveness as well as expresses its desire through repentance. Its like the difference between fire and water or, as John puts it in 3:16, water and the Spirit. Later in the Church water baptism and Spirit baptism were so closely associated that forgiveness and the gift of the Spirit became one gift under normal circumstances (Acts 2:38. But see Acts 10:48 and 19: 5-6).
John stood out in the desert because he did not belong there. Nor did the poetry of Isaiah. People came out to see him because he was different from the desert environment; he stood out. He helped many to make their lives different. Though they were attracted at first by his “oddity,” they came to see his integrity and wanted the same for themselves. The example of his life gave them hope that it was not just an unrealizable dream, but a realistic possibility, realizable through trust in God’s word. Every Christian is honored to have the same role in salvation history as the Baptist had, only now it prepares for and hastens the second or final coming of Christ into this world to finally end or complete what the first coming started. The figure of John is all the more attractive because of the unattractive environment in which he lived and functioned. Despite the ugliness and injustice of that environment John (and we) can bring poetry to this matter of fact life and life to this otherwise dead culture. The contrast is sharp and clear in John and should be in us. Amen.
