The Word of God Comes to You

The word of God came to John in the wilderness.

The Rev. Kathi Johnson

Advent 2, Year C – 6 December 2015

Text: Luke 3:1-6

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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Pull up in your mind for a moment the busiest place you’ve ever been - the place with the most going on. Maybe it’s a place that has “everything” – all the stores you like, all the activities you want to do, all the people you want to see.

Hold that place in your mind and then add the most famous people you can think of to that picture – maybe they are movie or tv actors, or famous musicians or authors, or politicians. Think of the people who grab the headlines day in and day out – the ones who appear on the covers of magazines and newspapers or those whose names are trending online.

So now, I want you to get a different image in your head. Think of the most remote place you’ve ever been. Maybe it’s a place you visited and thought, “How on earth do people who live here survive?” In this remote place, maybe there are no stores, no restaurants, there are hardly any other people, and the cell phone service is non-existent.

Hold that place in your mind and then imagine yourself there again. You aren’t famous (at least, not that I know of!). You aren’t in headlines day in and day out. You are…you.

This type of contrast is how Luke begins chapter 3 of his gospel – first, by telling us about the famous people, starting with the highest-up person he can think of, the Roman Emperor Tiberius. This emperor lived near it all – the busy highways and by-ways of the Roman Empire were his to travel and his to command. His soldiers would travel ahead of him, preparing the way so that he could travel with relative ease. They would level out the roads and make the rough places smooth.

It would’ve seemed to most of the ancient people that Emperor Tiberius had it all: fame, power, and presumably the wealth that comes with fame and power.

So Luke goes through all these names of the powerful politicians of the day: Emperor Tiberius, the governor Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias and then the powerful Jewish religious leaders: Annas and Caiaphas. Luke builds up a grand and glorious vision, only to burst his own bubble in his next phrase: “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

The word of God came to John in the wilderness. Not to one of the rich and famous people. Not to one of the powerful people. And not to someone close to the action, like someone who lived in Rome. The word of God came to John. In the wilderness. About as far away from the power and glory of the day – that is the place where John received the word of God.

And as we look at this contrast that Luke sets up for us, I think the contrast tells us something quite remarkable about God: that God is less concerned about who is powerful by worldly standards and who is making the headlines. God is more concerned about revealing a message of love and redemption to the world through those who will get that message out there, whomever they will be. In that time, and at that place, John is the one who receives the word from God, and John is so moved by God’s word that he begins to proclaim it, powerfully, everywhere he goes: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!”

Just like those Roman soldiers used to do ahead of the emperor, John is moving people to action. John is preparing the way for the Lord and so he begins to preach about repentance, so that people will turn away from their sinful lives and make all those rough places in their lives smooth. John begins the work that Jesus will continue later on in his earthly ministry, of teaching people the ways of peace: the ways of loving God and loving neighbor.

For those are the rough places in our lives – the places where we do not love God, the places where we do not love neighbor. Those are the places that must get smoothed out with time and intention and, yes, lots of prayer. Those are the places in which we are ruled by anger, ruled by fear, ruled by all of that which threatens to steal our hearts away from the love of God.

But why should we even bother smoothing out those rough places?

It is not simply a matter of smoothing out my life so that I can present it to God, like a perfect polished stone.

It is a matter of calling. It is a matter of being called to smooth out the rough places so that I can better love God and better love my neighbor. “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!” – so that the love of God in Jesus can reach more people. “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!” – so that people who need hope can see my hope in God and maybe find some hope for themselves. We do not prepare the way of the Lord simply for our own sakes, but for the sake of the whole world.

If I were to write a gospel today, maybe I would begin a chapter with: In the year 2015, in the midst of a huge mess of political candidates for the Presidency of the United States, in the midst of violence upon violence around our nation and around the world, in the midst of a frenzied season of shopping and parties and emotion…

The word of God comes to you. The word of God that is redemption and love. But that gift of the word of God is not only for your sake – it is for the sake of the whole world.

Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight. Smooth out the rough places.

Amen.

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