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Text — Luke
3:1-6
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius
Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his
brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and
Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and
Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the
wilderness. 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 the prophet Isaiah,
‘The voice of one crying out 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 be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ’
When you were getting yourself ready to come to church this morning, and
maybe getting others ready too, I know it was because you were dying to
hear who was the ruler of Ituraea. You were filled with eager
anticipation to know what province Lysanias administered under the
emperor Tiberias. Now you know; your prayers are answered.
Of all the gospels, Luke is the one most preoccupied with history. These
details are in there because Luke wants to pinpoint in the historical
record exactly when Jesus appeared on the scene. Before Jesus became a
mythological figure, he was a historical figure, and Luke doesn’t want
his readers to lose sight of that.
History is a concern of all the gospels, for this reason. At the heart
of Christian thought is this conviction that God intervenes in history.
God acts, not only as a silent, invisible, subtle force in nature,
though that is true. Sometimes God is not subtle. There are outward,
sudden, visible acts of God that seem to come out of nowhere and change
history abruptly.
At many points, in various ways, the Bible tells us that God can and
does crash in on history, in disturbing, disruptive, even violent ways.
Think of the stories of Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Samuel, David, the exile
in Babylon, the destruction of the temple. These are all things God did
in history. This is what the traditional faith of the church says.
For Luke and the other gospel writers, God’s main intervention in the
world is the life of Jesus. The world is different because Jesus lived
compared to what it might have looked like if Jesus had never lived. For
Christians, Jesus’ life is the great turning point. It changed the
relationship between God and humans forever.
Of course, not everyone sees it that way. In his own time, some people
saw Jesus as a crackpot, as a trouble-maker. Some said he was possessed
by a demon. In one story, his own family thought he had a demon. (If
anyone in your family has ever misunderstood you, you’re in good
company.) At one point, Jesus’ own townspeople of Nazareth wanted to
throw him off a cliff. Some saw him as a political revolutionary. Some
said he should be put to death. And then he was put to death.
But others saw Jesus as God’s salvation. Some saw him as God’s true
nature, in the flesh. Some experienced Jesus’ presence, before his death
and after his death, as an outpouring of love, hope, and healing from
God.
The point is that not just now but even while Jesus was living on earth,
even people who saw him in the flesh didn’t see the same way.
What do we make of that? If Jesus was so radiant, why didn’t everyone
see that radiance?
How people see Jesus depends on their perspective. It depends on how
they chose to see him. It depends on what they are looking for; it
depends on what they want to see.
Why does all of this matter? What does this have to do with our own
lives and struggles?
It matters because God intervenes, God breaks in on our lives too.
Sometimes we experience God through slow, gradual change. Sometimes God
crashes in. Sometimes we experience that crashing in grace, as a
wonderful surprise, as a blessing that appears out of nowhere.
Sometimes, we experience that crashing in as a breakdown, or a crisis,
or a disaster. We can’t imagine anything good coming out of it.
Sometimes, in fact very often, we experience God’s breaking in first as
disaster, as something we never wanted to happen, and tried to make not
happen, and then later we see the light shining out of that disaster.
(Here came a story about the CNN program on heroes. Jordan Thomas, at
age 16 or so, got his legs into the propeller of a boat and lost both
legs. In the hospital, he was moved by all the other children’s whose
parents didn’t have the insurance or means to provide the high tech
prostheses that his family was able to provide for him. He started a
foundation and by age 20 had raised $400,000 to buy prosthetic limbs for
children whose families can’t afford them).
What struck me most about his very short, 2 minute speech at the awards
ceremony was this. He talked about this whole experience, beginning with
the boating accident, as something wonderful that happened to him. He
didn’t talk about it as a terrible thing that, eventually, later,
something good came out of. He talked about the whole thing as a
blessing. It taught him the meaning of his life. It gave him something
to live for.
This is the sort of thing that the season of Advent tries to get us to
think about.
Here’s a little exercise I have done many times. You can do it. It’s
very simple.
We all want life to go our way. Who doesn’t? But when it doesn’t, when
you’re in pain, or in fear, you can look at it many ways. You can say,
“This proves there is no God.” Or, “This proves that God is useless, or
“This proves that God is out to get me.”
Or, here’s another approach. You can say, when you’re in pain, “God is
blessing me right now.” It may not feel like a blessing. But the
blessing is there, if we we’re on the lookout for it. (There’s that
Advent them, being on the lookout.)
To see the blessing, to receive, we need to trust that it’s there, even
if we can’t feel it, yet. You can pray this way, and I’ve prayed a
version of this prayer many times over many years.
God, this hurts. I’m afraid. I don’t know what to do. But I trust
that, even now, you are blessing me in some way. Help me wait. Open me.
And in the fullness of time help me see the fullness of that blessing.
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