A People Prepared

We prepared for the birth of our first child during Advent of 1984. We were living in a parsonage, and we got permission to redo an upstairs bedroom as the nursery. While I was too distracted to wax theological at the time, I have often reflected in the succeeding years about what it meant to prepare for our baby as a window into what it means to prepare for The Baby.

One of the most vivid memories I have of that time is removing wallpaper. We wanted to paint the walls with soothing colors and cute stencils. We – well, I’m using the royal “we” here, since I was clueless as to how our nursery should look. In any event, the walls were covered with seven layers of wallpaper, the earliest layer dating from some time in the 1930’s. While at the time I missed the mystical significance of the number of layers on the walls, it is clear now that this was a perfectly horrid task that needed to be done.

We rented a steamer for a week in order to move the work along. The paper was so thick and the gluing so generous that I need to hold the steamer pad on an eight-inch by twelve-inch section of the wall for up to a minute. Then we had to let the heat and moisture do their work for a time before we could begin to scrape of the old stuff. Of course, there were places where we could tear away larger pieces. At those points we could see the changing fashions in wallpaper over the decades and could marvel at the things other people found attractive.

Preparing for the baby required, first of all, removing the remnants of older ways of life. To be fair, those older wallpaper choices weren’t bad. They were, however, no longer useful. This is one of the actions that John, through Second Isaiah, proclaims in his preaching. Mountains and hills will be leveled, and the slag will be used to fill up the valleys. That leveling is a prelude to straightening out the roads that formerly snaked around the geography. The bumps and ridges will be smoothed to allow for trouble-free transportation.

Neither Second Isaiah nor John the Baptist is really talking about physical road construction here. What is at stake is the renovation of human hearts, human relationships, political structures, and social boundaries. That is what’s at stake in our own Advent journeys as well.

I do recall being at least somewhat reflective as I stood holding the wallpaper steamer. I was noticing that my internal “wallpaper” (and overall architecture) was being refashioned to a degree as we prepared for parenting. I was aware of the obvious changes upcoming – financial demands, limits on personal freedom and social life, changes in alcohol consumption and time-wasting behaviors. I found that, whether I wanted it or not, I was moving into “adulting.”

It’s not that these changes were bothersome or burdensome. They were simply part of the deal. They were signs to me (and to the world, I hope) that the baby was coming, and we were getting ready. And they were changes which, taxing as they might have been, were making me into a better person for the long haul.

The prophet Malachi describes this personal, spiritual, communal, and social renovation as a “refiner’s fire” and “fuller’s soap.” Margaret Odell offers an excellent commentary on Malachi three on the workingpreacher.org site (did you make your contribution to the fundraiser?). In addition, the focus of Malachi’s proclamation is on the Levitical priesthood, rather than on the whole covenant community. Thus, Odell writes that “Malachi 3:1-4 challenges preachers to consider their own preparation for this particular season of the Lord’s coming. What,” she asks, “does Malachi envision as a necessary first condition for being ready to meet God?” For the Levitical priests, that first condition is apparently the burning and scrubbing which will render them transformed to a condition that makes their faithful ministry once again possible.

“This little text suggests that the first order of business as we prepare for the Lord’s coming is not endless discussion—no more endless questions, please, about how we came to be in the mess we are in—of who is right and who is wrong, or, for that matter, whether God sees these things as we do,” Odell writes. “Rather, the first order of preparation,” she continues, “is to establish the conditions for reconciliation—to consider how this God who desires life and peace may once again be encountered in ordinary human communities of conflict and tension.”

Odell reads Malachi as urging this “first order of preparation” as the more fundamental problem, prior to but not excluding issues of justice in the community. I’m not so sure that either the Malachi text or the trajectory of the Lukan reading support this as clearly as Odell presents. As she notes, Malachi 3:5-6, refers to some heavy-duty reforms in the community.

Even though the NRSV begins Malachi 3:5 with “then,” the Hebrew text has a simple “and” at the beginning of the sentence (the same is true in the LXX). It seems as likely to me that concerns for purity and justice are concurrent in the text as that they are consecutive. My Hebrew is far too rudimentary to get into the niceties of the vav-consecutive and its impact on verb tenses here. In any event, the burning and scrubbing will go hard on those who engage in idolatry (perhaps for money) and those who oppress and exclude the hirelings, the widows, the orphans, and the resident aliens. If this is addressed to the Levitical priesthood, there are some damning accusations here.

Michael Chan says it well in his workingpreacher.org article, “A Season for Truth-telling.”

“Whatever Malachi means by ‘refinement,’ it includes identifying and exposing acts of unfaithfulness. Yahweh’s fiery, refining love burns for those who suffer and are mistreated in this world. For those left out in the cold, the divine fire provides warmth. For those who break faithfulness with God and neighbor, the fire singes and purifies. In Malachi, Yahweh’s judgment attacks human indifference, along with its tempting tendency to view oppressed workers and vulnerable people as just another feature of the created order.”

As we prepared the nursery space to welcome our new baby, my heart, mind, spirit, and worldview were being refurbished and refashioned as well. So, it is in this season of Advent. Part of the joyous discipline of this season is the challenge prayerfully to ask myself what valleys need filling, what mountains and hills need leveling, what crooked ways need straightening and what rough roads need smoothing – in me as well as around me.

It became clear as we continued our room preparation that we were making others ready to welcome the baby as well. Through announcements, showers, celebrations, and casual conversation, we were reconfiguring the world around us for the change in our home, our hearts, our relationships, and our priorities. The world was going to be different for grandparents, aunts, uncles, parishioners, co-workers, and neighbors. The world was going to be different because we were going to be different. In fact, we were preparing a community to receive the baby.

That is another dimension of the Advent journey. Zechariah learns that John was going to “turn many of the sons of Israel upon the Lord their God” (John 1:16, my translation). He hears that the ministry of John is “to prepare for the Lord a people purpose-built” (John 1:17c, my translation). Relationships will be remodeled and hearts re-fashioned as part of this preparation. Zechariah affirms that calling in the Benedictus, in John 1:76.

One thing I know about that first nursery-making experience is that no matter how much we prepared, we weren’t prepared. I’m glad we did so much advance work, and it was exciting to do all that preparation in expectation of a great joy. The preparation made it possible for us to not only survive but to flourish in and through everything we didn’t know and didn’t anticipate. Just because we did lots of prep work doesn’t mean that we foreclosed on all the surprises and challenges of being new parents.

We were preparing for a different life, a new life, a transformed life. We could not imagine the extent of the differences, the changes, the transformations. All we could do was to put ourselves in the best place we could to receive whatever was coming. Getting ready for the baby was an exercise in trust and hope. There wouldn’t be much point in preparing if we weren’t pretty sure that someone new was coming.

So, we make changes at our house to get ready for The Baby. We are worshipping face to face in a local congregation weekly for the first time in eighteen months. The coincidence of that personal return to in-person worship and the beginning of a new church year has been refreshing and stimulating. Everything old seems new again. Worship has a fresh edge to it for me, and I find myself anticipating Sunday in ways I haven’t for some years.

We are reading Walter Brueggemann’s Celebrating Abundance as our Advent devotional discipline at the breakfast table. Brueggemann’s bracing readings of Hebrew and Christian scripture perks up my ears and focuses my attention. I find myself being on the alert, as Jesus urged us to be last week in the gospel reading.

I’m still steaming the wallpaper off my spirit – a lifelong task, for certain. But I also find that we are painting Advent blue in our lives and in our devotions, with some sparkles thrown in on the ceiling to make us look ahead to the Holy Night. That, by the way, was the decorative scheme of our first nursery – my only contribution to the aesthetics of the space.

After all, it was Advent.

References and Resources

Burnett, Clint. “Eschatological Prophet of Restoration: Luke’s Theological Portrait of John the Baptist in Luke 3:1-6.” Neotestamentica, vol. 47, no. 1, New Testament Society of Southern Africa, 2013, pp. 1–24, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43048893.

Chan, Michael J. https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/a-season-for-truth-telling.

Hearlson, Adam. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent-3/commentary-on-luke-168-79-5.

Levine, Amy-Jill, and Witherington, Ben. The Gospel of Luke. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Norton, Yolanda. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent-3/commentary-on-luke-168-79-7.

Odell, Margaret. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent-3/commentary-on-malachi-31-4-6.

Swanson, Richard. Provoking the Gospel of Luke: A Storyteller’s Commentary, Year C. Cleveland, OH.: Pilgrim Press, 2006.

The Word that Works

“The word of God,” the Lukan author declares, “came upon John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness” (Luke 3:2b, my translation). This is the way of beginning for all the prophets of the God of Israel. While the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, renders “word” in “the word of the Lord” most often with the word logos, there is a difference in Isaiah 40. That matters because the Lukan author uses an extended quotation from that passage to undergird John’s ministry of preaching and baptizing.

On the one hand, what is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet is “words” (logon). On the other hand, what comes upon John is the word of God (rhema). These Greek terms come out the same in the English translation, but they are not the same in the rendering by the Lukan author. The work of the Markan composer is of no help here since these phrases don’t appear in the Markan composition. This is all on Luke.

We might simply say that this doesn’t matter. The Lukan author may have changed up the words for aesthetic or stylistic reasons. That’s certainly possible, but I find it neither interesting nor likely. The Lukan author uses better than average Greek grammar and style. It doesn’t seem likely that the vocabulary at such an important point in the document would be left to the whims of personal preference.

On the one hand, this change in vocabulary can distinguish between John and the great prophets of old. John is not Elijah. Nor is John Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel. The “word” that is quoted in Luke 3 comes from one of those great prophets and deserves the designation that later the Gospel of John will reserve for the Incarnate Messiah himself. The “word” that came to John is different. At least that’s one way of looking at it.

On the other hand, there is the fuller context of Isaiah 40 to consider. The Lukan author expands the quotation in the Markan composition. But that expansion is also selective when it comes to verse 5. The Hebrew of Isaiah 40:5 as reflected in the NRSV declares, “Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

The Septuagint rendering is a bit different, and it renders the Hebrew in more literal terms. “And the glory of the Lord shall be seen, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God because the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 40:5 LXX, my translation). To be fair, the Hebrew of the verse says, “all flesh,” but often this phrase means, in fact, “all human beings.” The Lukan author exploits the multivalence of the term to support the author’s agenda of universal inclusion.

What does the mouth of the Lord have to say? In Isaiah 40:1-2, the Lord speaks words of comfort to the people of God. Those words of comfort come to Jerusalem announcing the end of the consequences for previous unfaithfulness. In verses three through five, the speaking is regarded as an accomplished event – the Lord has spoken, and therefore it is done.

The prophet hears the command to declare the limits of creaturely existence and the unending faithfulness of God’s promises. In Isaiah 40:8, the prophet is reminded that, despite the mortality of flesh, “the word of our God remains into the ages” (my translation). The word for “word” here is rhema. This is the word that comes to John as the prophetic call. The word of God that outlasts the ages of mortal life is the word of comfort in the face of chaos, of hope in the face of helplessness, of life in the face of death.

The rulers listed in Luke 3:1-2 are not there to serve as mere markers on the divine timeline. They are the guarantors for and beneficiaries of the status quo. This is the status quo that demands domination, despair, and death as the price of existence. They are the forces of power masquerading as peace, of violence pretending to be virtue, of enslavement under the cover of extravagance. They are the ones who want to determine the content of the “word” – to declare what is true and good and beautiful and to punish all who might disagree.

It is to that historical place and structure that the undying word comes upon and then through John. I am running ahead of the text a bit at this moment, but we should notice that John’s actual preaching is, on the surface, anything but comforting (more on that next week). In my experience, such “prophetic” sermons have not produced much of anything except for complaining calls and anonymous emails in the week following the sermon.

John’s call reminds me of the call of another odd prophet, Jonah, the son of Amittai. Jonah hears the word (logos) of the Lord to go and proclaim against Nineveh, archenemy of Israel. On the first go-round Jonah flees in the opposite direction, and we get the ship, the storm, the fish, the psalm, and the unceremonious puking of the prophet back on the shore. But the Lord is not so easily deterred.

The same word comes to Jonah a second time. He is, apparently, trainable. So, this time he goes a day’s journey into the great city and gives the worst and shortest sermon in human history. “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be turned upside down!” (Jonah 3:4b LXX, my translation). The verb I translated as to “turn upside down” is the same root as our English word, “catastrophe.” Jonah declares that in less than six weeks the Lord is going to “catastrophize” Nineveh unless things change radically.

The story, of course, is that things do change radically in Nineveh, things are turned upside down, from the humblest home to the highest palace. Even the livestock wear sackcloth and ashes and engage in repentance. It is the Gentile king who is the best theologian in the book. “Who knows,” the king wonders, “perhaps this Lord will turn around and not carry out the catastrophization.” That is precisely what happens and is precisely the outcome Jonah had hoped to avoid.

Jonah is the anti-prophet by which all other prophets are to be measured. John’s call comes in the midst of regimes that make old Nineveh look like a social ministry organization. In the midst of that setting, John proclaims (just like Jonah) that, in light of the new Reality coming into being, things have to change.

I have wrestled with how much of Luke three to read this week and how much to save for next week. I am not often a fan of repeating verses from one week to the next, but I think that preaching will be served by some repetition this time. I would suggest that we might read through verse nine this week rather than through verse six. I think it would be best to get the whole sermon from John rather than just the first half. I think it’s fine to repeat verses seven through nine next week to make the connection in the text.

If we think Jonah’s sermon was a homiletical train wreck, John’s is not much better. He, too, calls for repentance. He includes an insult to the ancestry of his audience and the threat of Gehenna thrown in to boot. I don’t think John’s preaching is likely to be held up as a model in most of our “nice” mainline shops where people expect to go home feeling better than when they arrived (a presumption of privilege, of course).

The real similarity between Jonah and John is in the outcome. People begin to change! I, for one, need to hear this part of the message over and over again. I have so little confidence in the possibility that people might be changed by the word that comes through me that I usually don’t even bother to try. Of course, I’m really assuming that it is my word rather than the word of the Lord which comes from my lips. If that’s the case, then my pessimism is well-founded.

I know from experience, however, that I underestimate the impact of the authentic word of the Lord far too often. I give God’s people far too little credit for listening with open minds and hungry hearts to the message the Lord is sending. I am therefore too often surprised when behaviors actually change, when priorities alter, when hearts are transformed.

Jonah was not surprised that the word of the Lord has such transformative power. Jonah was so sure of that power that he resisted speaking. And when he did speak, he said as little as possible. “Didn’t I tell you, Lord,” he complains in chapter four, “that this is precisely what would happen?” Jonah is so put out by the effectiveness of the Lord’s word that he wants to die in frustration.

Nor is John surprised by this power. Next week we will examine the ways that John urges people to change in preparation for the Big Event. He doesn’t appear surprised when folks ask what they should do. He’s ready with specific answers and advice. I’ve rarely found myself in that position and would have had to scramble to come up with helpful answers to the question.

But this is part of the Good News of Advent, at least for me. The word of the Lord remains when the ages have all ended. That word is effective in bringing about change, in spite of my jaded cynicism. People hunger for that word, even if it means judgment on the current state of affairs. Many of us know that things cannot continue as they are, and we long for a way forward into a different age.

Stir up our hearts, O Lord – we pray this in many liturgical traditions in this Advent season. I hear the call to trust that the stirring will happen and will bear fruit worthy of repentance.

References and Resources

Burnett, Clint. “Eschatological Prophet of Restoration: Luke’s Theological Portrait of John the Baptist in Luke 3:1-6.” Neotestamentica, vol. 47, no. 1, New Testament Society of Southern Africa, 2013, pp. 1–24, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43048893.

Hearlson, Adam. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent-3/commentary-on-luke-168-79-5.

Levine, Amy-Jill, and Witherington, Ben. The Gospel of Luke. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Norton, Yolanda. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent-3/commentary-on-luke-168-79-7.

Swanson, Richard. Provoking the Gospel of Luke: A Storyteller’s Commentary, Year C. Cleveland, OH.: Pilgrim Press, 2006.

Prophet of the Most High

In Luke 1:5-25, an angel of the Lord tells Zechariah that he and Elizabeth are to have a baby after years of infertility. But not just any baby! “He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God,” the angel declares. “With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:16-17, NRSV).

In his 2013 article in Neotestamentica, Clint Burnett looks closely at the Lukan portrait of John the Baptist as “eschatological prophet of restoration.” It will be worth the time working through that article to explore the details of this description as Burnett identifies them. Burnett begins by noting that the Lukan author is careful to distinguish John from “Elijah reborn.” John will have the spirit and power of Elijah, which is different from being Elijah.

Burnett notes that we might expect the detailed dating offered by the Lukan author to precede the onset of Jesus’ ministry. The fact that it comes before John’s ministry “uniquely highlights the importance of John’s ministry” (page 4). This historical anchoring also identifies John as a prophet, just as prophets in the Hebrew scriptures were often described in terms of the reigns during which the word of the Lord came to them.

In addition, the dating introduces the majority of the antagonists who will be part of the narrative. And this dating, according to Burnett, creates a sense of literary irony. I would observe that this irony comes from the fact that the reader knows the two-level understanding of history upon which the Lukan author relies. Readers are aware, Burnett points out, that God has already begun the Great Reversal described in the Magnificat. “As a result,” he writes, “Luke encourages readers to form a negative opinion of the rulers…and see them as antagonistic forces throughout his work” (page 5).

It is the connection to the spirit and power of Elijah that marks John out as one of the great prophets of old. Burnett notes that the documents of Second Temple Judaism (especially the Wisdom of Sirach 48) connect Elijah to the restoration of Israel. It is helpful to be reminded that this restoration is one of the themes and concerns of the Lukan author.

After all, this is the question the disciples ask just prior to the Ascension – is now the time when you will restore Israel? And this is the hope of the two walkers to Emmaus – that Jesus would have been the one to redeem Israel. The extended attention to John the Baptizer demonstrates that the Restoration of Israel is precisely what is at stake in the Lukan gospel – just not in the way that people expected.

The Lukan author is concerned to make sure that we connect John to and place him “in the wilderness.” We get that notice first in Luke 1:80, and it is then picked up in Luke 3:2. For the Lukan author the wilderness, according to Burnett, is a positive place. It is the place where prophets are called, where a deeper relationship with God can be cultivated, where both Moses and Elijah were called into service, and where Elijah experienced his “second” call while fleeing from the wrath of Ahab and Jezebel (page 9).

In addition, Burnett notes, the wilderness is sometimes the place the prophets see as the location for the eschatological renewal of God’s people. The wilderness motif lends itself to seeing events in the gospel as a sort of new Exodus, the place where Israel would rely solely on the Lord. This is certainly true in the words both of Hosea and Ezekiel. It is also made manifest in the community life and literature of the Qumran community (pages 9-10).

The Lukan author expands the Marcan quotation from Isaiah 40 in describing John’s ministry. Second Isaiah, in the Septuagint translation, depicts a voice crying out in the wilderness and declaring that a New Exodus is about to begin. It appeared to many later readers that this New Exodus had not been fully accomplished. So, many were still waiting for that fulfillment, including any number of the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures.

“According to Luke’s use of Isaiah,” Burnett writes, “the wait is over, and John is the voice that begins the new exodus…” (page 15). The language of preparing the way is particularly filled with meaning for Lukan readers, according to Burnett. It points back to the language in Luke 1:17 about how John will prepare a people for the Lord and to Zechariah’s prophecy in Luke 1:76 that John will prepare the Lord’s ways. Remember that Luke, like all the gospel writers, plays on the ambiguity of the use of “Lord” here and allows it to refer to God and Jesus.

Burnett notes, as do numerous others, that references to the “way” in the Lukan account will always take us to the Book of Acts and the label which the early Jesus followers chose for themselves – “The Way.” This continues in the extended Isaiah quotation, where the “ways” will be made smooth for the coming of the Lord.

The Lukan author extends the quotation primarily, Burnett suggests, to make sure we hear that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” He argues that this supports the universal scope of the Lukan gospel. In the Song of Simeon, Jesus is identified as the salvation of God for all peoples – enlightenment to the Gentiles and glorification for Israel (Luke 2:30-32).

“It is only as the narrative of Luke-Acts unfolds,” Burnett writes, “that this promise comes to fruition as the gospel is taken to Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles” (page 18). This emphasis shows up at the beginning of the Lukan Gospel account. It makes a final appearance, Burnett notes, In Acts 28:24, where Paul is portrayed as taking the “salvation of God” to the Gentiles in Rome. “Therefore, Luke’s promise of a universal mission to both Jews and Gentiles,” Burnett writes, “forms an inclusio that begins, not with Jesus, but with the eschatological prophet of restoration, John, and his preparation of the way…which results in the salvation of God coming to all flesh” (page 19).

Burnett argues that John’s role as eschatological prophet of the restoration of Israel is not incidental to the Lukan account but rather is essential to that account. John’s work of preparation is indispensable as the bridge from the Hebrew scriptures to the Gospel mission. The Lukan author demonstrates not only a deep concern for that connection but an encyclopedic knowledge of those scriptures and their meaning for God’s plan. In spite of the importance of John as prophet, he is clearly not the Messiah. The way the Lukan author tells the story makes this obvious (page 20).

What can we as preachers do with this close analysis? First, we can seek to imitate the careful way that the Lukan author outlines the relationship between the people of Israel and the Church. The Lukan perspective is not one of replacement or supersession. It is, rather, a hope for the fulfillment of the mission of Israel in and through the life of the Church. While the Lukan author pays close attention to the mission to the Gentiles, the framework for that mission is always the fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel.

Some of us Christian preachers simply don’t believe that and thus regard the Church as the “success” and Israel as the “failure.” The consequences of that theological aberration in the history of the Church have been and continue to be deadly for Jews. In the Lukan view, the mission of the Gentiles is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel – the promise to be a blessing to the entire cosmos.

The historical grounding of John’s ministry reminds us that “the revolutionary kingdom of God will not be buried in a corner of history,” as Fred Danker put it in Jesus and the New Age (page 43). There is no actual division in the Lukan account between “sacred history” and “secular history.” Instead, these are two different lenses on the same reality. The same can be said, by the way, about Martin Luther’s “Two Kingdoms” theology. Again, the two kingdoms are not separate realms but rather simply different ways of describing the one Reality.

Thus, the unfolding of the Gospel occurs within history as well as beyond history. With discerning eyes, we can peer underneath the surface and glimpse the mystery of God’s unfolding plan (once in a while and in a glass dimly). Artificial distinctions, such as that between religion and politics or theology and ideology, have no place in the Lukan understanding of how God operates in and through the cosmos.

And this unfolding is universal in scope as well as action. All flesh shall see the salvation of our God. Here the Lukan author adds to Isaiah 40 with an allusion to Isaiah 52:10 (NRSV) – “The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” The Good News of Jesus shall be proclaimed in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Thus, the Lukan account is radically inclusive. And this radical inclusion is the fulfillment of the mission of Israel. John, as the bridge between the eras, launches this mission of restoration with a call to repentance.

References and Resources

Burnett, Clint. “Eschatological Prophet of Restoration: Luke’s Theological Portrait of John the Baptist in Luke 3:1-6.” Neotestamentica, vol. 47, no. 1, New Testament Society of Southern Africa, 2013, pp. 1–24, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43048893.

Hearlson, Adam. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent-3/commentary-on-luke-168-79-5.

Levine, Amy-Jill, and Witherington, Ben. The Gospel of Luke. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Norton, Yolanda. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent-3/commentary-on-luke-168-79-7.

Swanson, Richard. Provoking the Gospel of Luke: A Storyteller’s Commentary, Year C. Cleveland, OH.: Pilgrim Press, 2006.

Last week we studied Luke’s theology of history – the superficial veneer of power politics overlaying the actual outworking of God’s longing to redeem the world. In the coming of Jesus, those two dimensions are going to collide with violence from the politicians and love from God.

The intersection of these two dimensions is described in the first verses of Luke 3. First, the Lukan author firmly anchors us in the calendar and geography of Imperial politics and administration. Then we hear John announcing that a new realm is bursting forth, a reign through which “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

The Lukan theology of history is “layered,” as is the case, for example in the Book of Revelation (put into written form in a different location but perhaps relatively close in time to the Lukan account). But this theology of history is also segmented. Hans Conzelmann proposed this segmented schema in his 1960 work on the theology of the Gospel of Luke.

According to Conzelmann, the Lukan author sees history from Creation through the ministry of John the Baptist as the time of Israel. This is followed by the time of Jesus’ ministry, the period covered by the Lukan gospel proper. The comes the period of the Risen Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, which lasts until the Second Coming of Christ. This period is described in the Book of Acts and continues until the End of the Age.

The Lukan author is not, according to Conzelmann, primarily an ancient historian or biographer. Instead, Conzelmann argues, the Lukan author is a theologian of history. The author is presenting the history of salvation, not merely the history of the cosmos. There are exceptions and contradictions to this schema within the Lukan texts, but they are primarily elements which have become fixed in the tradition by the fourth quarter of the first century.

These apparent contradictions (such as Luke 10:9,11; 18:8; 17:20; and 21:32) seem to indicate that the Lukan author expects the Second Coming at any moment. However, in the early church (the time of the Spirit), the New Age is both now and not yet, both present time and future time, thus the “layered” view of historical events. While the End can come at any moment for an individual Jesus follower or community, the End of the Cosmos is still in the future.

In this Lukan Advent, we move toward the Magnificat. We move toward the song that proclaims those “up” as down and those “down” as up. It is a song, as Richard Swanson notes, about the “right-side-uping” (sic) of the world. “John’s entry into the story out of the wordless wilderness,” Swanson writes, “begins with a listing of those powers who hold the world upside down” (page 60).

He notes that this listing is closely connected to the washing which the Baptizer proclaims. He writes that “this change, this preparatory washing, aims to shape faithful Jews for a more thorough living of their identity. All of this prepares them, and all of God’s creation,” Swanson continues, “for the moment when the world will be turned right-side-up” (page 60).

So, John the Baptizer comes on the world stage at an historical inflection point – no, at the historical inflection point. On one hand, the Baptizer is the final and fulfilling voice of Old Testament prophecy regarding the Messiah and the End of the Age. On the other hand, he points to the beginning of the New Regime in the One who is to come after him. “When John appears, he is pointing to that unattainable moment,” Swanson writes, “to the culmination of all things. Those powers that hold the world upside down are listed,” he concludes, “but John represents their limit” (page 61).

We preachers could take this text as an opportunity to look at our own lives in historical and personal context. What are the forces and structures that continue to hold our lives “upside down”? Who are the people and what are the institutions that benefit from an “upside down” world? What factors keep my life and world “upside down” (and what part do I play in that topsy-turvy way of living)?

In other words, if I were to create an historical context to describe the investments in the “upside-downness” of the world as I experience it, how might I construct that description? We would surely do it differently based on our social, economic, and political positioning and privilege. That in itself is instructive, because the Lukan account offers a description developed from the viewpoint of the least, the last, and the lost.

We get two weeks of the Baptizer in the Lukan Advent, so we can go slowly and carefully in reflecting on the details of the account. And we can spend some time on the supporting texts offered to us by the Revised Common Lectionary. The portrait the Lukan author paints of the Baptizer in chapter three demands that we attend to the Benedictus, the Song of Zechariah, that serves as the psalmody for this Sunday. This canticle demonstrates the whole theological sweep of John’s birth, ministry, and even death, in light of the redemption of Israel.

The first part of Zechariah’s song could be a portrayal of John himself as the “mighty savior of Israel,” descended from the house of David. But verse seventy-six makes plain John’s role and his relationship to Jesus. Zechariah announces to the infant that he “will be called the prophet of the Most High.” He will “go before the Lord to prepare his ways…” The Lukan author takes advantage of the ambiguity in the Greek title, “Lord,” here to show that John will prepare the way for the Lord Jesus.

The Benedictus answers the question fueling the gossip network in the entire hill country of Judea. “What then will this child become?” John is the child of promise to an elderly and infertile Jewish couple. He is the culmination of that narrative which drives the book of Genesis from beginning to end and rumbles in the background of all the Hebrew scriptures. John is in the line of the prophets who promise rescue from the hand of all who hate the Chosen people. He will enlighten the people regarding the forgiveness of sins that leads to their salvation.

All of this information comes by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit which equips Zechariah to testify. This theme runs from the Lukan account through Acts. We have a bit of a foreshadowing of Pentecost here, just as we did in the Lukan Apocalyptic Discourse last week. Old people see prophesy here. The “hand of the Lord” is with John, and he will become “strong in spirit.” As he grows, he heads off into the wilderness to await his cue on “the day he appeared publicly to Israel.”

Levine and Witherington point out that the word translated in the NRSV as “looked favorably” (Luke 1:68) is better translated as “visited his people.” Yolanda Norton makes the same observation in her workingpreacher.org commentary. What happens here is more than an approving glance from God. Rather, “Luke gives the impression of direct divine presence,” Levine and Witherington write.” In addition, the verbs in the song are primarily in the past tense, not the future. Zechariah “sees the victor and the redemption as a fact of history, not a promise yet to be fulfilled” (page 45).

Norton connects the verb to the Septuagint report of God’s response to the barrenness of Sarah in Genesis 21. “God’s visit is something more than simple presence,” Norton writes, “it is about more than merely seeing. When God visits God’s people, God makes God’s self manifest in their lives. God shows up,” she continues, “to interrupt misery and lack with an intention to restore and sustain the people.”

Norton’s concluding paragraph is worth quoting in full. “All of this theological reflection in Luke 1:68-79 happens outside of time. Prior to this text and following it there is a narrative chronology. However, in this moment the author breaks time to speak to God’s amazing capacity to operate across and within chronological time. This brief text takes its reader through the exodus, into the monarchy, across the prophetic tradition of ancient Israel and into the hope for a new promise fulfilled first through John the Baptist and then through Jesus. As such, the text reminds us that we live in a cycle of both the declaration and fulfillment of God’s promises in prophetic utterances.”

Zechariah goes from the silence of (temporary) deafness and muteness directly into this prophetic canticle. “The old priest has been unable to speak for months,” Adam Hearlson writes in his workingpreacher.org commentary, “and as he finally fulfills the angel’s demands from earlier in the chapter, he bursts like a dam.” I wonder how much the Lukan author intends Zechariah to be a metaphor for Israel.

The voices of the prophets have been silent, at least in the first-century theological understanding, for nearly five hundred years. The seventy weeks of years prophesied in the Book of Daniel were coming to an end. This is why “the people were filled with expectation” (see Luke 3:15) and were wondering if John the Baptizer was actually the promised Messiah.

In any event, just as the prophetic voices had been silenced, so was Zechariah. But now the announcement burst forth out of his mouth – both about his long-awaited son and about Israel’s long-awaited Messiah and Savior. Just as John was soon to move into the wilderness for his mission, so Israel was to move into the new territory of life with the Savior.

“For Luke’s audience,” Hearlson writes, “the presence of war, the destruction of the temple and the daily indignities of living under occupied rule did not feel as if the promises of God had been fulfilled. Yet, Zechariah’s song announces that God is trustworthy, and the promises of God will be fulfilled. That the fulfillment is coming,” he continues, “is an invitation to live as if it is already here. From this posture, John is given his vocation: prepare people to live into the fulfilled promise. John is responsible for helping people repent,” Hearlson concludes, “so that they might see the breaking dawn of the promise.”

The Advent invitation is to live “as if.” Zechariah’s prophecy, with all of its past tense verbs, is an “as if” song. Sing and dance, live and love, celebrate and serve as if the “not yet” is already “now.”

References and Resources

Hearlson, Adam. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent-3/commentary-on-luke-168-79-5.

Levine, Amy-Jill, and Witherington, Ben. The Gospel of Luke. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Norton, Yolanda. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent-3/commentary-on-luke-168-79-7.

Swanson, Richard. Provoking the Gospel of Luke: A Storyteller’s Commentary, Year C. Cleveland, OH.: Pilgrim Press, 2006.