Christin and I were on vacation in Des Moines last weekend, so I don’t have an Advent 1 sermon. Then this weekend, the Sunday School Christmas program was on Saturday night, so this sermon was only for the two Sunday worship services.
The texts for this week 2 of Advent, RCL Year C, are Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 3:1-6. Karoline Lewis’ reflection “What’s in a Name?” at Dear Working Preacher helped me with direction for this sermon.
I’m a week late in saying this, but welcome to the season of Advent. Welcome to the season of waiting and watching and preparing. We start this season of preparing for the birth of Jesus in a strange place, with the beginning of the ministry of Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist.
The timeline for today’s readings is all over the place. We have a prophecy from Malachi from four or five hundred years before Jesus’ birth.
The Psalm we read today from Luke 1—lower case “p” psalm. Psalms are a genre, a type of literature, and they’re not all found in the capitol “p” book of Psalms—is spoken by Zechariah when John is 8 days old, just before Jesus is born.
And our Gospel reading comes about 30 years after the Christmas story. John is preparing the way for the adult Jesus to start his public ministry. Turn your bulletin over and look at the first few words of the Gospel reading (and be glad you don’t have to pronounce these names).
Luke is a physician by trade, but much more importantly for us and for his place in history, Luke is a thorough historian. He wants to establish when these events are taking place, to make sure that we reading his story of Jesus thousands of years later will know this is not just a fairy tale, but a real story of real flesh and blood people.
History is often about human accomplishments, about great people who do great things, or invent new machines to change the world. It’s about people who have great ideas, or—perhaps most often—history is about wars and the people and nations who fight in great battles.
Luke anchors his story within human history, but this is God’s story. This is all God’s doing. The human history we think is so important, the human recitation of empires and governors and rulers and even high priests, none of that is as important as the fact that the word of God is coming. None of the human accomplishments, none of the human markers or boundaries or ways of understanding the world are as important as the fact that God is doing something. The word of God came.
And who did the word of God come to? Not to the Emperor Tiberius reigning in Rome over the largest human empire the world had ever seen.
Not to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor ruling with an iron fist over the rebellious colony of Israel, with his word backed up by the power of the mighty Roman legions.
The word of God does not come to Herod the Jewish king obsessed with power and buildings or his brother Philip, or Lysanias the ruler of Abilene, or even to the high priests Annas and Caiaphas
Luke tells us the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. The word of God came to a nobody. The word of God came to a strange, wild man on the outskirts of society, a man who could not be farther from the halls of power in Rome or even Jerusalem, the faithful son of an elderly back-country priest.
And the word of God that comes to John is a word of hope. It’s a proclamation: The Lord is coming. Prepare the way.
As we’ve talked about a lot this year, God is on the move. John is God’s messenger, the herald letting the people know the king will be here soon. Get ready.
Part of the challenge of the Advent season is that this is such a familiar story. We know Jesus’ birth comes at Christmas; we know Christmas is coming whether we’re ready or not.
I watched a video the other day of a little girl who was practically jumping up and down, singing at the top of her lungs that Jesus Christ is born. That’s the appropriate excitement, but it’s hard for most of us to stir up that same level of energy every single year. We hear the story anew each year, yet the world seems the same. There is still violence, there is still poverty, there is still cancer, and premature babies, and abuse and tragedy. It’s easy to see the darkness around us.
For the people listening to John, this message has been a long time coming. They’ve grown up hearing that the Messiah will come. They’ve heard all the stories of God’s faithfulness throughout history, stories like we heard John’s father Zechariah proclaim in our Psalm from Luke.
Imagine their excitement when they hear it’s actually happening in their lifetime. The Lord is coming, not just sometime in the distant future, but here, now. Imagine their excitement!
And yet, I also wonder if they had trouble believing it. Maybe God was faithful in the past, but what about now? What about now when our nation is just a province of a foreign empire? What about now when the pews/chairs around us seem emptier than they should be? What about when so many people no longer seem to care about faith?
There are and have always been plenty of reasons to doubt, plenty of reasons to not get caught up in excitement about some old prophecies.
But the Lord is coming whether we believe it or not, whether our neighbors accept it or not. I think it’s fascinating that the passage John quotes from Isaiah says first, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” You do it. You get ready. But then it goes on, “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.” Ready or not, the Lord is coming.
Even those who are excited for the coming of the Messiah, even those who have no trouble believing it, they don’t know exactly what to expect. Go back to the Malachi reading.
The people of God have been longing for a savior, for a Messiah. Malachi assures them that the messiah is coming. God will act. A messenger will come to prepare the way, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. God will act. But the way God acts will not look like what they expect.
The coming of the Messiah will not immediately put everything right, because the obstacles to God’s kingdom are not only found in their enemies around them, but in the sin within them.
It’s not just others who will be changed by the coming of the Messiah, it’s them. It’s us. Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?
The people long for God to come save them, and that’s what God’s going to do, but it’s going to be on God’s terms, not on their terms. Malachi describes it as like a refiner’s fire, a flame hot enough to melt silver so the impurities can be strained out. The result is something beautiful and pure, but getting there is not easy.
Malachi talks about fuller’s soap. That’s a caustic, alkali compound made with ash, used for bleaching cloth. Again, the result is good, but the process of removing stains is pretty rough.
Filling in our valleys, smoothing in our hills, having the crooked parts of our lives made straight is not necessarily easy or pleasant. Having our hearts prepared for God’s kingdom means having our hearts changed, and that’s often painful.
The word of God that comes to John is a word of hope, but it’s not a simple “everything is all better now” kind of shallow hope. There’s some tough love called for.
Next week, we’ll hear more of John’s message, and as a sneak peek, it begins, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
God’s kingdom is coming, and it will bring peace, but this broken, violent world is putting up a good fight. But in the midst of the violence, in the midst of the darkness of our world and the darkness within our own hearts, John’s message is good news. The message of Advent is a promise of hope.
Today’s Gospel reading ends with the promise, “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” The hope of Advent is not just for the emperors and governors and high priests. It’s also for the ones in the wilderness. It’s for the ones who most need a message of hope to cling to, for the rich and the poor, for the young and the old, for the included and the outcasts.
It’s for those of us 2,000 years later, still waiting and longing for the fulfillment of God’s kingdom. All flesh shall see the salvation of God. The King is coming. Happy Advent!