8 December 2024 Advent 2

Malachi 3.1-4    The Song of Zechariah (Benedictus, Luke 1.68–79)    Philippians 1.1-11    Luke 3.1-6

I wonder if you have ever thought about why God’s word came to John ‘in the wilderness’.  The wilderness is barren, there is almost nothing there, John is totally isolated and away from any hint of power or authority and it was ‘here’ that God’s word came????

Luke starts this section of his gospel by situating it in ‘time and place’.  He names all the power-brokers of the time, and tells us where each of them held power, and then he focuses on this ‘nobody’ living in a ‘nowhere place’ and tells us God’s word came here to this nobody in this nowhere place.  WHY????  We usually associate God with power, we usually associate God’s word with people holding power, we usually …..  But, it appears, we don’t really know what God is up to or why.

And perhaps, that is the first lesson this section of Gospel can teach us, a lesson about power.  Luke highlights for us the juxtaposition between those who experience power and those who don’t.  All these emperors, governors, rulers and high priests – all these Very Important People who hold power – don’t hear God, but the outsider in the wilderness does.  So, the question is, what is it about power that can deafen us to hearing God’s word.  Might it be that when we have all that we need - power, authority, prestige, - we are tempted to think that we don’t actually need God.  In the time of John, those in power were presumed to have that power because God had given it to them, if you were rich it was because God had blessed you, if you held power it was because God had given you that power, so ‘what more do they need’, they already have all they want so they don’t need God.

But if you are in the wilderness, there is no one to help you, there is no ‘back up’, you are ‘on your own’.  In the wilderness life is risky, and any illusion of self-sufficiency disappears very quickly.  In the wilderness we have no choice but to sit and wait and watch as if our lives depend on God showing up.  And actually, they really do.  And it is into this environment, an environment so far removed from power and pomp and privilege, that the word of God comes.

And Luke continues on this theme.  Not only is the wilderness a place that reveals and shows us our need for God; it is also a place that calls us to repentance.  We find many places in our Gospels telling us that ‘crowds streamed into the wilderness’ in response to John’s call to repentance.  Something about the wilderness brought these people to their knees.

But, we often don’t like thinking about or talking about ‘sin’ or ‘repentance’.  These words have massive ‘baggage’ that induces fear, self-loathing, guilt, eternal hellfire.  We distrust these words because we know how easily they can be manipulated to justify one moralistic agenda or another.  Yet, Advent begins with an honest, wilderness-style reckoning with sin.  We can’t get to the manger unless we go through John and this John is all about repentance.  But, maybe, if we can get past our baggage and follow John into the wilderness, we will find comfort in the fact that something more profound and deep is at stake than ‘I make mistakes’ or ‘I have a few issues’.  Luke suggests that the wilderness is a place where we can see the whole landscape and participate in God’s work of leveling the playing field, leveling inequality and oppression.  Using what he knows of Isaiah, Luke predicts a day will come when ‘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.’  This does not mean that massive graders have come in and flattened, and filled in, everything on the earth, it means that our injustices will be overcome, our inequalities will be levelled, our prejudices and biases will be exposed and eliminated.  The world will become a ‘level playing field’ for all participants.

As we conclude these 16 Days of Activism, the offertory hymn we will sing today is a new one, although the tune is familiar.  The lyrics are powerful in speaking about ‘leveling’ the playing field, about ‘unbending and unbinding’ and ‘filling the void’ in the way our society deals with gender and family violence; and how we can be part of the change in not ‘hiding’ the truth when we see it in our lives or the lives of others in our communities, how we can work to restore the world, or our part of it, to reflect Christ’s compassion, care, respect and grace so all may be ‘protected, valued, safe and free’.

John was a ‘nobody’ in his community, an ‘oddball’ who lived an oddball life in a nowhere place, but God’s word still came to him.  God chose this nobody to prepare the way for God’s Son to come amongst us.  And that is something we shouldn’t dismiss.  God chooses ‘unlikely’ people for lots of roles that they, and the world, may think they are ‘unqualified’ for.  A couple of weeks ago, we all filled out our ministry offers.  You may have offered for ‘what you have always done’, but you may also have offered for something different.  There are many people in this parish who ‘do things’ that are outside their ‘comfort zone’ or ‘sphere of expertise’, but they do them well and those who benefit from what they do are blessed by their actions.  You are probably one of those people who do those things, and you may also be one of the people who benefit from what someone else has done.  Again and again, Luke tells us, God chooses people the world can easily ignore or overlook to participate in God’s world-changing, world-saving activity.  God is eager, ready and willing to use my talents, your gifts, to change the world, even in what seems like very small or insignificant ways, but they are not small or insignificant to those who receive them.

So let us all be a local ‘John the Baptist’, a veritable nobody to whom the Word of the Lord comes and through whom God prepared the way for the coming Christ so that all people might see and receive God’s salvation.