preparing throughout this season
Advent 2C | Luke 3:1-6
“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,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
Those are some beautiful words, aren’t they? And beautiful sentiment: that we all shall see salvation. Just beautiful.
How the evangelist begins this chapter is far more subtle.
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius …”
This is orienting, isn’t it? To a specific time and place. We have records of this man and when he ruled. But Luke isn’t only tying this story to a moment in time, is he? There is more context being offered in the story here than time and place. Tiberius was an emperor of which empire? Exactly, Rome. And where did Rome rule then? That whole part of the globe.
So the first word about the Jewish savior from Nazareth is that a Roman Emperor named Tiberius is in charge. And then, that his governor, Pilate rules Jerusalem. Notably not a Jewish king. That would be Herod, who Luke describes as “ruler of Galilee”. And here is where I remind us that Herod did not ascend to the throne by family line or by order of the people, but was appointed by Rome. Then we hear about Herod’s brother, Philip, who is also a ruler in the region, then Lysanias, ruler of another part of the region.
Luke begins the announcement of Christ through the coming of John the Baptist by declaring the Roman supremacy over the region and the religious leadership which maintains that dominance.
That is the world into which, it says
“the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”
This is our context.
What a phrase, though: “the word of God came to John … in the wilderness.” Wow. Doesn’t it give goosebumps? It is so epic!
Note, too, that part: Jesus is the Word of God. And that phrase is designed with complimentary meaning to be, himself, the message and messenger, to be the Logos, word, and bear the word, and be the subject of more words to describe the Word. All of this is wrapped up in that phrase “word of God” so that we can hear a gospel proclaimed from Scripture as word of God because it points us to the word of God, which is Jesus. Literalism can’t hang with this! It is, by definition, too limited in capacity and too limiting in scope. But we know what has come to John in the wilderness is Good News. Word has come. Jesus? Yes. Word about Jesus? Yes. Presence came to John as a gift and
“He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”.
In the midst of Roman occupation, its supremacy and culture of death, the word came to John in the wilderness, and he went out, declaring a beautiful message of God’s redeeming grace.
Preparation
So we are today, again in the midst of Advent; a season of preparation and anticipation. A season that so often seems to embody a deep contrast for people of faith with our cultural context and political headwinds. That the Good News of Christ, embodied in “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” for which we might participate, as Isaiah declared, in preparing the way of the Lord, making his pathways straight—that mountains will be brought low and valleys raised so that we might all be at the same point of contact with that grace … it is a deeply countercultural message. Jesus is a countercultural message. And remains so.
And this makes John’s message just as apocalyptic as the one Jesus offered the last few weeks. Because it reveals the way of our world and what God is in the midst of doing—reshaping us, our community, our world toward the redeeming character of joy, hope, and love.
In Advent, then, we are being invited to prepare to welcome Jesus in, not just our beloved friends and family. That our preparation for Christ’s presence informs and runs alongside our seasonal preparations. Our greenings and decorating, baking and giftmaking. That the preparation of the season isn’t characterized merely by shopping lists and busyness, travel plans and tree trimming, but that these kinds of preparations may actually serve this greater preparation. Preparing ourselves, our homes, and our community for the inbreaking grace of God.
The Better Part
Another story from this evangelist may help illustrate the countercultural preparation embodied in our preparing to host Jesus: the story of Martha and Mary, where Martha busies herself in the kitchen, preparing food, to serve as a good host for her houseguest, slaving away and grumbling that her sister, Mary, is loafing rather than helping. And yet, at the end, Jesus remarks, essentially, that Mary was the better host because she was actually with him.
It doesn’t say that Martha was wrong, but that Mary chose the better path. And I suspect that our culture, like so many before it, struggles to see this because it wants Martha’s path to be better. It desires to be busy, to follow and enforce rigid rules and expectations, to maintain traditions, and be the better sibling. And all of the busyness we associate with this season highlights those values—of control.
And yet the preparing we do this season is not about getting the “right” practices just right—it is about opening our hearts to the Good News.
If you watch for it, there is a point in all Christmas movies when the skeptical person, in light of new evidence to the contrary, doubles down on their skepticism. And we, as viewers get to see what it looks like to live in these two worlds at the same time. This is what some theologians call The Two Kingdoms; what I call the Kin-dom of God and the kingdoms of earth. That there exists at once two realities, and the Holy Spirit, what often gets called “the Christmas spirit” reveals the world as it truly is and just how beautiful it can be while the skeptic is trying desperately to hold onto a more cynical, judgemental worldview and keeping it from collapsing.
Openhearted
Preparation in Advent is to be openhearted like Mary. Which means we still have Marthas to contend with, who will muck about in the kitchen and complain about how nobody is helping them—they’re just trying to make it right! But this preparation isn’t about rules and frameworks and rehearsals and order and judgment. It is about attuning ourselves to the Word, that we might hear him when he calls. It means eschewing distraction, perhaps even to the point of boredom! It means, perhaps, asking ourselves if maybe we’re wrong about something we hold dear—and how we might deal with being proved wrong!
This community here gets the need to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, collect toys to save Christmas. We get the works.
And we also get the purpose—love. That our calling is to love because God is love. And we are blessed by God’s love to share that love with our neighbors.
This season, I invite us to prepare our hearts by observing our hearts. By slowing down so we can listen for Jesus and see why we get so busy, why we so want to get the right gifts or make all of the things we have to get done in the next two weeks!
One of the lessons I’ve learned from my Dad, and I’m not the best at this, but he loves giving gifts and he doesn’t really care about receiving them. He loves gift giving. The funny thing is that, when I was young, he rarely went out early. I am 98% certain he doesn’t keep a list anywhere. And he would routinely go out on Christmas Eve—one year family-famously, he went out after every place was closed save a local gift-shop, so we all got the weirdest gifts that year. But in all of this is a simple truth: he loves giving gifts. There are no rules to the gifts. There are no guidelines to the preparation. There is no right way.
There is only love.
And he loves it. He loves us. And so he will go looking in weird shops for things that delight his eye and he gets so giddy about it. He’ll wrap the thing himself and delight in giving it to you.
There is no anxiety around it. No worries about reciprocation. No rules or expectations. Just giving with delight.
This is what I think of when I think of being openhearted, friends. An image of love and delight. Preparing for the transforming love to heal us and guide us and renew us. And every one of us is capable, every one of us is gifted, to open our hearts to love and be loved by Christ, to be filled with such hope and joy—to delight in all that this season, and the next, will bring us.