Sermon: Second Sunday of Advent, Luke 3:1-6

December 8, 2024 
Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church
Pastor Jonathan Linman

We just got flooded with names of ancient leaders and places: The Roman emperor Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Lysanius, Annas and Caiaphas. And then the places: Judea, Galilee, Ituraea, Trachonitis, Abilene (not Texas). Those were a lot of bases to cover this week at Bible Study….

But I’m not going to give you a history lesson now. Suffice it to say that the gospel writer Luke took pains to make the point that God sent John the Baptist as a prophet to prepare the way for the coming of Lord at a very particular time in human history and in a particular place on earth. 

If we fast forward to our own day, here’s what it might sound like for us now: In the fourth year of the presidency of Joe Biden, when Donald Trump was president-elect, and Kaite Hobbs was governor of Arizona, and Kate Gallego was mayor of the city of Phoenix, during the episcopacy of Elizabeth Easton as presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Deborah Hutterer as bishop of the Grand Canyon Synod, the word of God came to prophets in the Valley of the Sun.

Indeed, there are prophetic figures akin to John the Baptist in our own day. And a lot of times these figures can seem like lone voices crying out in the wilderness, the desolate places of our lives. These prophetic figures could be friends, neighbors, family members, co-workers, other members of the church, maybe even a pastor. It could be anybody who one way or another exhorts us to “prepare the way of the Lord.” 

Preparing the way of the Lord is all about turning things upside down, the opposite of the way things are – filling up valleys, making low the heights of mountains and hills, straightening out the crooked, smoothing out the rough places. It’s a call to repentance, to changes of mind and perspective, altering our course in life, even making an about face, turning in opposite directions.

What are those valleys that need to be filled? Think of the pits into which we sink. Those deep, dark places in our lives, personally and communally, which don’t get much sunlight. It could be psychological depression. Addiction. Despair about the state of affairs in nation and world. Spiritually speaking, the dark night of the soul. You can name your own valleys and voids that cry out for being filled.

And then what are those mountains and hills that should be made low, brought back down to a level playing field? It could be our personal arrogance, or our entitled haughtiness and exceptionalism as a nation, or leaders who need to be humbled and brought down maybe several notches. Again, you can name your own heights and flights of fancy that need to brought back to earth. 

And then there are those complicated crooked paths we find ourselves on. Living in a maize of uncertainty, not knowing which direction to turn. Or it could be crookedness in terms of the corruption we increasingly see among those who are to lead us. You name it. 

And our lives certainly have rough edges these days that could use some smoothening. So much public discourse is rough these days, harsh, unpleasant. Isn’t that right? You get the idea. You can fill in your own blanks. The point is: there’s room for improvement, to say the least, for us as individuals, as a church, as a nation, as a species. There are reasons aplenty for us to change our course in holier, healthier directions. 

And, of course, given our sinful and broken nature, we cannot embark on all of these calls to self-improvement as individuals or as a church or as a nation on our own. As ever and as always, we need divine help. 

Thanks be to God that God takes the initiative in goading us into action by sending the messengers we need at the right time and in the right places. As we heard today from the prophet Malachi: “For [the divine messenger] is like a refiner’s fire and like washer’s soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver… Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord…” (Malachi 3:2b-4a) Refinement. Purification. These things begin to take place in our lives in fits and starts when God intervenes, sending us prophetic messengers, the John the Baptists of our lives, giving us the grace-filled kicks in the butt to provoke us to seeking growth, maturation, ripening, conversion of heart and mind. But it’s God who gets us into gear. 

This holy work of purification starts for us in our Christian journey with the bath that is baptism. Like waters washing up on the rough stones on the shore, over time, living out our baptismal life, walking wet, as it were, our rough edges become smoother. Our crooked ways get more straightened out. We come to discover a more level playing field in our hearts and minds and relationships, not fanciful heights nor valleys of despair. In short, we gradually come to know greater humility and being at peace with who we really are.

Moreover, every time we are gathered for confession and receive absolution as a continuation of baptismal living, the refiner’s fire and washer’s soap are doing their works in us, among us, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Every absolution is a new opportunity to be turned around again in God’s direction, God’s intended pathways.

That’s what the ministry of John the Baptist was all about. And our life together in church serves that similar kind of prophetic role with our lives lived centered on our own baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 

In time, in this life centered on the baptismal font and living from those waters, we become an answer to the Apostle Paul’s prayer that we heard from his letter to the church at Philippi: “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians 1:9-11)

Truly, divine love overflows in our midst when we are gathered here each week. Beyond baptism and living baptismally in the torrent of God’s grace, sacred love overflows also in the hearing of the Word of God from scripture. Our liturgies overflow with that divine word. And our cup of holy love runneth over at the sacrament of the altar when we receive all that Christ has to offer for eternity. Love overflows when we offer words of gospel encouragement to one another in our care- taking of each other. Love overflows when, having been forgiven, we forgive each other. Divine love flows out the doors of this place into the streets when we share in the wider church’s ministries of mercy and assistance beyond these walls, here in town, and throughout the world. 

And this overflowing, sacred love opens our eyes and awakens our faith that leads to deeper knowledge and fuller insight along with our capacities to focus on what really matters. And what really matters? To do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. As I’m fond of saying, it’s that simple, that profound.

That’s when Christ working in us, among us, and sometimes, alas, in spite of us, brings in the harvest of righteousness. And what are some of the features of the harvest of righteousness? Mercy to the outcast, the stranger, the excluded, immigrants seeking refuge. Gracious welcome to all regardless of various features of identity that might be rejected by the wider culture. Care for creation. Sustainable growth that all may share in and benefit from the fruits of the earth. And more. 

When we see evidence of the harvests of God’s righteousness, that’s when all flesh also begins to see the salvation of God, right here, right now: in the fourth year of the presidency of Joe Biden, with Donald Trump as president-elect, and Kaite Hobbs as governor of Arizona, and Kate Gallego as mayor of the city of Phoenix…

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Bring in your harvest of righteousness that all may see your salvation. Again I say, amen.