I<\/em>n 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. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,<\/em><\/p>\n „The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:<\/em><\/p>\n ‚Prepare the way of the Lord, Every valley shall be filled, and the crooked shall be made straight, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'“\u00a0 [Luke 3.1-6 NRSV]<\/em><\/p>\n Once again, on this second Sunday of Advent, we turn to John the Baptist. He is, Luke tells us, \u201cthe voice of one crying out in the wilderness.\u201d The 8th<\/sup> century bishop and theologian Rabanus reads this passage and wonders why it is necessary to \u201ccry out.\u201d The word literally means \u201cshout.\u201d Rabanus suggests there are three reasons that people shout: one is if the person they want to reach is at a distance; another is if that person is deaf; a third is if the one shouting is angry. And all three of these, Rabanus says, are characteristic of the human race.<\/p>\n Far away from God<\/strong><\/p>\n First, we are far away from God. That\u2019s an image that the Bible uses time and again. We human beings have wandered far from God. Jesus used the image in the beloved parable of the prodigal son, the boy who goes away into a far country. And it often appears in our hymns: Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.<\/em> It appears sometimes in our prayers; I remember one of the standard prayers of confession when I was growing up had us pray that \u201cwe have erred and strayed from thy paths like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s the nub of it, isn\u2019t it? We follow our own hearts, and our own hearts often lead us astray until one day we wake up and realize we just don\u2019t know where we are anymore, but wherever it is, we are far from God.<\/p>\n And that, of course, is just what this season is about. \u201cHis name shall be called \u2018Emmanuel,\u2019 God with us<\/em>.\u201d When we hear the voice of John the Baptist shouting out in the wilderness, the message is, \u201cGet ready! You\u2019ve gotten yourself hopelessly lost, but help is on the way! God is coming! He will be with you, to guide you and bring you home.\u201d<\/p>\n Deaf to the Word of God<\/strong><\/p>\n We also shout, Rabanus says, when someone is deaf\u2014and we human beings are often so very deaf to the word of God. Of course our deafness is often by our own choice; it is more a refusal to listen. But the effect is the same: we do not hear.<\/p>\n I did a Biblical word search once on the phrase \u201cnot listen.\u201d It appears some hundred times in the Bible, and almost every instance refers to human beings \u201cnot listening\u201d to God. Is it any wonder that God might need to shout at us?<\/p>\n And yet the wonderful thing, the amazing thing about God is that he can shout with great tenderness! Several years ago, then Pope Benedict wrote a book on the birth of Jesus. As they so often are prone to do, the press totally screwed things up. CNN\u2019s headline was \u201cPope\u2019s book on Jesus challenges Christmas traditions.\u201d Benedict, the story said, \u201cdebunks the claim that angels sang at the birth\u201d of Jesus. Most of the news accounts made Benedict to be like the Grinch who stole Christmas. The Pope had noted that Luke\u2019s gospel says that the angels said<\/em>, \u201cGlory to God in the highest,\u201d not that they sang<\/em> it\u2014and for the press, that meant Benedict was \u201cdebunking the claim that angels sang.\u201d In fact, Benedict went on to say, in the very next sentence, that \u201cChristianity has always understood that the speech of angels is actually song\u201d\u2014quite the opposite from what the press claimed he said!<\/p>\n When God speaks to humankind\u2014whether through angels or more directly\u2014it is like music! It is joyful, beautiful, tender. St. John puts it this way: \u201cThe Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth!\u201d So John the Baptist shouts out in the wilderness\u2014but that cry, for all its superficial harshness, is in the end a tender word, a beautiful song. One of the loveliest of Lutheran Christmas hymns puts it this way:<\/p>\n Hark! A voice from yonder manger<\/em><\/p>\n Soft and sweet, doth entreat,<\/em><\/p>\n Flee from woe and danger.<\/em><\/p>\n Come and see; from all that grieves you<\/em><\/p>\n You are freed; all you need I will surely give you.<\/em><\/p>\n Angry at God<\/strong><\/p>\n And then, Rabanus tells us, people shout when they are angry. Anger, of course, is one of the seven deadly sins. It has been with us since Cain and Abel, when Cain was angry that God accepted Abel\u2019s sacrifice but not his own. And just as God warned Cain that in his anger, sin was crouching at his door, so it is with us. Anger will lead us away from God faster than almost anything else.<\/p>\n Indeed, our anger is often directed at God. \u201cWhy did God let this happen?\u201d \u201cWhy doesn\u2019t God change this?\u201d Who among us has not entertained those questions, nursed those questions?<\/p>\n William Willimon tells about the year his congregation was asked to set up a \u201choliday display\u201d at a shopping mall. A committee went to work and developed a display that focused on a line from \u201cGood Christian Friends, Rejoice\u201d: Christ was born for this, Christ was born for this<\/em>. In this display, the hymn was played over and over, while a movie screen showed scenes of contemporary life\u2014some of them traditional holiday scenes, with a family decorating a Christmas tree or building a snowman; others more sober, scenes of hungry children, of riots and violence. But all of it under the rubric, \u201cChrist was born for this.\u201d<\/p>\n After two days, the mall management asked them to take it down. It was, they said, too depressing and bad for business, because people don\u2019t want to think about things like that at Christmas. [Pulpit Resource<\/em>, 21:4 (1993), 52-53].<\/p>\n But it is because of \u201cthings like that\u201d that Christ came! The anger, the violence, the despair that is so much a part of this world\u2014that\u2019s why Christ came.<\/p>\n Did you pick up the fact that Paul\u2019s letter to the Philippians was written from prison? If ever there was someone who might have been angry at God, it was Paul. God had turned his life around, set him on this great missionary endeavor, and now here he is in prison, no doubt sensing that this is not going to end well for him.<\/p>\n But what does he say? \u201cI thank my God . . . I am confident . . . This is my prayer, that your love may overflow.\u201d Where there might well be anger, there is calm. Where there might well be tumult, there is peace. What has happened in Paul\u2019s life, you see, is just what John the Baptist has promised: the crooked made straight, the rough places plain. It is just what Malachi, the messenger of God, has promised: to \u201crefine them like gold and silver.\u201d In Paul, the anger and all that goes with it has been purged away, and he is at peace.<\/p>\n The promise of Christ<\/strong><\/p>\n And that\u2019s how it is with us, as we prepare the way of the Lord. Don\u2019t you hear the promise in John\u2019s cry in the wilderness? No more let sin and sorrow grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found . . .<\/em><\/p>\n That is the promise: Christ comes to us, in the midst of all our faults and failings, our anger, our despair, our selfishness. He comes to you and me\u2014and he is the light that the darkness cannot overcome.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Pastor Richard O. Johnson<\/p>\n Webster, NY<\/p>\n roj@nccn.net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Advent 2 2021 | Luke 3.1-6 | by Richard O. Johnson | 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,157,108,110,824,3,109,285],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-6331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lukas","category-beitragende","category-current","category-engl","category-kapitel-03-chapter-03-lukas","category-nt","category-predigten","category-richard-o-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6331"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6333,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6331\/revisions\/6333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6331"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=6331"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=6331"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=6331"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=6331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nmake his paths straight.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nand every mountain and hill shall be made low,<\/em><\/p>\n
\nand the rough ways made smooth;<\/em><\/p>\n