12042021 – Luke 3. 1-6
This passage from Luke for the Second Sunday of Advent points to “competing worldviews.”
It clashes, tussles, grapples, and contends with, the best of the worldviews of the time.
The opening verses are “deceptively subversive.”
Into the “religious reigns” AND into the “Imperial kingdoms” of the first century the WORD OF GOD COMES.
It comes mightily, energetically, explosively, firmly, and forcibly, without apology…
It simply breaks INTO the world. And, as we might imagine, it is met with contempt and rejection.
YEP, it even COMES when Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Annas, and Caiaphas, will have to tend with the rule of the WORD OF GOD, “a rule” that INSISTS on salvation FOR ALL.
Imagine, salvation for everyone…YOURSELF included…
Not salvation for SOME. Not Salvation for ROMANS. Not salvation for some Caesar.
Not salvation for the guys who only wear WHITE HATS. Not for the JEWS alone. Not for just the GENTILE population. But salvation for “ALL.” Yep, for all.
Maybe that’s a misprint. A mistake.
Let’s pull out our Greek Lexicons…and our Hebrew Lexicons…
Let’s do a little research. Yep, that’s what it means to say…In Hebrew or In Greek…
“ALL FLESH … ALL FLESH…SHALL SEE THE SALVATION OF GOD.”
ALL. All flesh. Everyone. Everybody! No exceptions. Subversive. Sneaky. Deceptive. Deceptively subversive. It just slides it in there, as if, WE will NOT even NOTICE. As if, we will not hear it, or read it on our own. As if, no one would ever think of preaching it. The scripture just declares it.
It Comes…Salvation for all people.
That must be why it is called GOOD NEWS – ya think?
Sooner or later, someone is going to have to deal with this. I’m not sure WHO. But someone is going to have to deal with this…
WE don’t like it a bit, nope, not ONE BIT. And not only will OTHERS have to deal with it. But so will WE.
We, who can be so VERY JUDGMENTAL. We who “want to DECIDE” who “GETS,” who “DESERVES,” who “MERITS” salvation, and maybe more importantly, WHO DOES NOT.
We want to DECIDE. Heck, we do it all the time. We want to control “who gets IN” and who is “REJECTED.”
We want to dictate, pontificate, regulate, moralize, and dogmatize. What we think counts! We think we are the determining factor.
We have “our lists” and I guess, we probably always have, of people who DO NOT DESERVE SALVATION.
YOU KNOW THE ONES…
We point our HOLY FINGERS…And look down our HOLY NOSES…
I tell you, this stuff is “deceptively subversive…”
It is no accident that John the Baptizer, whose birth to Elizabeth, old and barren, wrinkled and worn, what was she 30 something or maybe in her forties (?) narrated in the first chapter of Luke, quotes Isaiah, and Jesus will do the same in his sermon in his hometown of Nazareth.
Isaiah was GOD’S WORD to those were exiled in Babylon, separated from life as they knew it because it was separation from THE GOD OF ALL LIFE, the God of the Living…
Those who are separated and were cast out. Those who are and were excluded…
“Those who are oppressed” know the meaning of salvation and WHERE it comes from. Those who are downtrodden know it too! Those on the periphery, on the edge, those in the margins, those who are excluded by the world…
Excluded by us. The hated and the despised…
They know that they cannot wait for a RELIGIOUSLY and POLITICALLY “construed deliverance” because it is not going to happen.
Salvation is not going to come from Washington DC, not now, not ever. Nor sadly is it going to come from ROME.
Salvation can only come from above. From one source. From one place.
Right from the git-go there is an inclusiveness…an inclusiveness that we and others DO NOT LIKE. We do not like it AT ALL.
This was the message of Zachariah’s kid. A guy named John. “Preparing the way” is seeing salvation together and together seeing that salvation was meant for ALL.
“To prepare the way” of the Lord is to see those the world overlooks…and not exclude them.
“To prepare the way of the Lord” is to let others know that there is GOOD NEWS out there…and it is good news for EVERYONE. There are no exceptions.
Amen.