Advent 2

Sermon preached by the Revd Canon Richard Ames-Lewis

The beginning of a new liturgical year at Advent also marks, in our weekly lectionary, the beginning of readings from a new gospel. We have embarked upon the year of Luke. In the trade we call this Year C. Last year was the year of Mark, Year B, and Matthew, Year A, was the year before. It’s a three-year cycle, so next year we are back with Matthew. There is no year of John, which many people are sorry about, but on the other hand John gets his moment every year at the major festivals.

So, as Year C unfolds, we shall travel with Luke to discover his way of describing the salvation brought us by Jesus Christ. Week by week we shall enjoy Luke’s masterly narrative, his exquisite storytelling, his concern for women and those on the edge, his care for the poor and his interest in healing. Of all four evangelists Luke is the one who writes most appropriately for a gentile and educated audience, people like us. Of all four evangelists, Luke is perhaps the most journalistic, in that he marshals his facts most systematically and tries hardest to order his material in an historical way. As he puts it himself in his introduction, “I decided, after investigating everything carefully, to write an orderly account for you.” So, for example, if you have ever wondered why it is that our church calendar goes the way it does, with Holy Week, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost spaced out as they are, this is because Luke has set it out this way for us.

Luke’s gospel has a beautiful beginning. In chapters I and 2 he writes down for us the stories of the infancy of Christ, focussing on the Virgin Mary, stories of the Annunciation, the Visitation and the Nativity, which we shall enjoy very soon at Christmas. Luke goes on to give us the story of the baby Jesus presented in the Temple and story of the adolescent Jesus, lost and found in the Temple. But in a sense, these infancy stories are a kind of overture to the rest of his gospel. They set the scene for what is to come. You could say that the gospel’s real beginning is chapter 3, the passage we have heard this morning.

In this dramatic piece of writing we have Luke’s description of the historical context of the salvation event about to happen, both of its time and place. It bears reading again:

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, 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, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

Checking this statement with Roman coinage, historians have reckoned that the fifteenth year of the reign of the emperor Tiberius would have been somewhere between 27 and 29AD. But who are all these other names? When Herod the Great died in 4BC, his kingdom was divided between his sons Archelaus, Herod Antipas and Philip. In 6AD Archelaus was deposed for misrule, and his kingdom of Judea was administered by Roman procurators, like our Pontius Pilate who governed from 26-36AD. Herod Antipas ruled Galilee until 39AD and we hear a lot about him later in the gospel story; Philip ruled the territory north of Galilee until his death in 34AD. Of Lysanias nothing is known, except that his name appears on some inscriptions of the period. Strictly speaking there was only one high priest at any time, but it seems the Romans frequently deposed one and appointed another. Annas was high priest from 6-15AD; his son-in-law Caiaphas from 18-36AD. No doubt Caiaphas had his father-in-law looking over his shoulder, rather like a retired archbishop who cannot leave his successor alone.

So Luke’s history is accurate enough for us to date it, even if only approximately, and to place the personages in context. Why did all this matter? It mattered to Luke because he could see that a new chapter in world history was about to begin. The events he is going to describe are momentous, and they deserve to be placed in an appropriate setting, alongside emperors, procurators and high priests. He also wants his reader to be convinced that this was no trifling incident, no fable. It actually happened.

And the first thing he describes is “The Word of God came to John the son of Zechariah”.

Within this simple statement is contained a wealth of theological and historical significance. It was to prophets that the word of God had been given – to Elijah, to Isaiah, to Jeremiah – in a tradition of outspoken holiness out of whose mouths the proclamation of God’s justice was fearlessly made. Now Luke asserts that the tradition of prophecy is still alive, and it is to John son of Zechariah that the word of God has been given.

And then in one simple word Luke describes where this has happened: “in the wilderness”. Not in a royal palace or a government building or a temple, but out in the reedbeds in the buffeting wind, out in the wilderness stripped bare of pretence, pomp or patronage. Not to a celebrity dressed in soft robes or living in luxury in royal palaces, but to a prophet, and more than a prophet, as Luke later recalls Jesus himself saying, “Yes, I tell you, this is the one about whom it is written “See I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.”  

Then Luke describes what John does next. “He went into the region all around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Again, this was a place freighted with significance. For this was the Jordan crossing-place where long ago, led by Joshua under the watchful eye of the dying Moses, the Children of Israel had passed through water to enter the promised land. John calls the people to repent by immersing themselves in just such a way, a baptism of repentance, creating a new people of God. Shortly Jesus himself would come to undergo this very baptism.

Finally Luke reminds us that John is fulfilling ancient prophecy, quoting the prophet Isaiah. John is “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be laid low, and the crooked made straight and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

Thus Luke enters upon his gospel. He is not alone in this. All four gospel writers  approach the ministry of Jesus after inviting us first to reflect upon John the Baptist. All four gospel writers in other words have an Advent message: prepare the way of the Lord. What is our response?

I was ordained priest, back in 1979, on the 24th June. This is the Feast of the birth of John the Baptist, six months before Christmas Day and sometimes called “Christmas in Summer”. I have always felt it a special honour to have John the Baptist as my ordination saint. I think this has given to my priesthood an Advent flavour: to attempt to imitate John the Baptist by calling people to repentance and preparing the way of the Lord.

So, in our sorrowful world of 2021, I ask you, how are we metaphorically straightening the paths, filling the valleys and laying low the mountains? How are we making straight the crooked and smoothing the rough ways?