Advent 2, Sunday 5th December 2021

I grew up in a tradition where the pastor would pick whatever Bible passage he wanted (and it was always a he), and preach about that. It was done prayerfully, but nevertheless, it meant that our spiritual diet largely depended on the pastor’s favourite Bible passages.

In contrast, RC, Anglicans and other mainline churches have a three yearly cycle. It means that we have to engage with challenging passages we might prefer had been deleted from the Bible. And each year we focus on a different Gospel: Matthew, Mark and Luke. John’s gospel is used at Easter and some other special times. And the gospel for this year is Luke.

There are some wonderful themes in Luke’s gospel: he’s concerned about the poor, and he holds a special place for women.

The start of Luke’s Gospel is very different from what we had last year, Mark’s Gospel. Mark’s opening gets straight into the action. ‘The beginning of the good news’. He doesn’t even bother to use the word ‘the’. ‘Beginning of the good news’. We don’t get a gentle introduction to Jesus. The good news is here now. And it requires your attention. Now!

Luke doesn’t think the existing accounts of Jesus did a very good job, so he’s crafted his account very carefully to be more precise. He places Jesus in context: socially, politically, and religiously.

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius,” he writes, “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,” John hears God’s word in the wilderness. 

That’s seven seats of wealth, power, and influence in just one sentence.  Seven very important people occupying seven very important positions. 

And yet, to whom does the word of the Lord come? It comes to John the Baptist in the wilderness. Straightaway we have this extraordinary juxtaposition. And it expresses something about power.

God’s word doesn’t come to any of the seven very important people. The story of the Incarnation begins elsewhere.  It begins in obscurity, off the beaten path, far away from the halls of dominion and might.

In Luke’s account, those who wield power – the governors, rulers, and high priests —they don’t hear God. But the outsider from the wilderness does. 

It raises an important question: What is it about power that deafens us to the word of the Lord?  Is it because those with power and wealth feel they don’t need God? Tiberius, Pilate, Caiaphas, and Herod have pomp, money, military might, and the weight of religious tradition at their disposal. Why bother with God?

Instead, the word of the Lord comes to John the Baptist. He gave up his hereditary claim to the priesthood, and instead choose the privations of the desert. 

John preaches a message of repentance and baptism. And crowds streamed into the wilderness to heed his call.  There is something about the possibility of confession and absolution that stirred people to re-evaluate, to re-think their lives. To turn from what harms us and neighbour.

In short, they had a hunger for spiritual things. That spiritual quest is part of the human condition. We are people made in the image and likeness of God, and so the infinite will keep seeping out, despite some people’s best efforts to supress and ignore it.

People hungering for a spiritual reality, flock to the wilderness to John. 

In the fourth century of the church, after the awful persecution, the church became powerful and it became advantageous to be a Christian. Many people felt the church had lost something and they turned to the desert fathers and mothers, who had fled to the desert, fleeing status and dignity and chatter, to be still in contemplation of God.

Today, whilst less people are attending church, and many are disenchanted with institutional religion, there is still a deep, deep hunger for a spiritual reality that is more than consumption and accumulation.

When non-churchgoers look to satisfy their thirst for the divine, where do they turn? Where are the voices in the wilderness speaking truth and wisdom for today? These voices might well not be in the church…. Authors, poets, campaigners, artist… today’s prophets crying in the wilderness. We need ears to listen to these sometimes awkward and angry characters.

And yet, my prayer is that it might also be possible for church be known again to be a place of spiritual depth, of prayer, of divine reality. A place of radical inclusion, of compassion, of sanctuary, of serving the community. These are some of the themes that have recently come from our Mission Action Plan discussion. And to make it a reality will be a mission for all us to embrace – as much or little as we are able.

As we pause for this hour today, what about our spiritual journey.

How close are you to power, and how open are you to risking the wilderness to hear a word from God?  Because the invitation of Advent is to set time to go into the wilderness. To a place of stillness and silence, avoiding the bane of our day, our frenetic busyness that tries to hide our deep anxiety and insecurity and fearfulness.

The word of the Lord came to John in the wilderness.  May it come to us, too.  Like John, may we become hope-filled voices in desolate places, preparing the way of the Lord.

Reference: Debie Thomas, A Voice Crying, 28 November 2021.