Small
That’s quite a list of persons in the reading from Luke this morning. Tiberius was the second Emperor of Rome, the adopted stepson of Augustus, the first emperor and the successor to Julius Caesar. Tiberius’ mother, Livia, schemed, plotted and murdered to elevate her son to the throne. Tiberius was a person of great importance.Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great, the ruler of Judea who threatened Jesus’ life just after He was born in Bethlehem. Herod Antipas and his brother Philip were part of a family that held on to its power by any means necessary. Herod the Great is known in history for killing his own sons to maintain his power. Antipas was a person of great importance.
Lysanias was supposedly the grandson of Ptolemy, one of several men who fought for power after the death of Julius Caesar. Lysanias was the ruler of Abilene, a district between Damascus and Galilee. Lysanias was a person of great importance.
Annas and Caiaphas were high priests of the Jewish faith, the leaders of their religion and responsible for the well-being of their people and the care and maintenance of the Jerusalem Temple. Annas was the father of Caiaphas and several other men who served as high priests. Annas and Caiaphas were people of great importance.
Yet after listing all of these great and important people, God says to us, “my word came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.” God started small by starting with John.
Listing all of those people of great importance was indeed important. In the time Luke was writing, history was recorded in reference to the people of great importance and their rule. So identifying the time as the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius was necessary – it tells us what time Luke was describing and what was going on in the world. You do this yourselves in this community: this church building was built when Art Wickstrom was the pastor.
But in the gospel of Luke, God used the great as a reference for the small, who are the main actors in God’s story. God used Tiberius, Pilate, Antipas, Lysanias, Annas and Caiaphas to frame a picture of what God was doing – and in the center of that frame was God’s small-time hero, John the son of Zechariah. Zechariah, a priest from a town so small that history can’t remember its name. Zechariah, whose name means “the Lord remembers.” John, whose name means “the Lord shows favor.” In the time of great emperors, governors, tyrants and priests, God remembered God’s people, and God showed favor to them. God’s word came to the small, the forgotten, a man dedicated to God from his birth and living in the wilderness. God did not forget the great and mighty; far from it. God simply chose to speak to the great and mighty through the voice of those who are not. God started small.
PainfuL
But the message was not one that was easily heard. The message John the son of Zechariah brought was one of pain and sorrow. For years the people, great and small alike, delighted in knowing that they were the covenant people, those whom God had chosen. But the people were confused and mistaken. The people, great and small alike, thought that the covenant was the thing which would be their salvation. The people had forgotten that GOD was the one who made the covenant with them, and the people forgot that God Himself would be their salvation. Instead of clinging to God, the people clung to the covenant, and so they thought that if they offered the right sacrifices and avoided the wrong kind of people, the covenant would save them. The people were painfully wrong.The people lived in this pain for generation upon generation. The people brought this pain upon themselves by mistaking the covenant for God Himself. God reminded the people that the covenant was indeed important and a source of great delight – but God wanted the people to love God, not the covenant God had made. The people thought that with the covenant, they could work hard and make themselves holy in the eyes of God through their righteousness and holiness. God wanted the people to be righteous and holy, of course, but the people made their righteousness and holiness more important than their neighbors or their friends. The people made their righteousness and holiness more important than God. The painful truth was that the people had become their own worst enemies. When John the son of Zechariah came to speak God’s word to the people, he came like one who refined and purified silver: he brought a word from God that burned the people and all of their hope in righteousness and holiness. John the son of Zechariah came preaching words that rescued the people from their worst enemy: themselves. Every time God had sent prophets to the people, their words had painfully burned in the people’s hearts. Now John had come, the last of God’s prophets, and John’s words painfully burned them again.
Good
But some pains serve a good purpose, and some words burn in order to purify. When God told the people to be ready, to repent and believe and look for the coming of God’s anointed, the world began to change. This small prophet, this John son of Zechariah, who came baptizing in repentance, brought good to the people through his painful words. Some heard God speaking through John and repented: they turned away from their never-ending pursuit of ritual and sacrifice and turned toward a living relationship with God.The small change that started in a few people here and there began to infect the world, and in a few short years many had heard the good news that God was among the people in Jesus of Nazareth. He was Emmanuel – God with us – and He was God’s own Son, living and walking among the people and teaching what it truly meant to be God’s covenant people. Jesus also started small; he was raised in Nazareth, an unremarkable town far from the seats of power in Jerusalem or Rome. Jesus also spoke painful words: he taught that the covenant was nothing unless its author, God the Creator, was everything.
Jesus taught the people that holiness was worthless if the people around suffered. Jesus taught that righteousness was worthless if the people around you lived in poverty and fear. Jesus taught that the covenant was a thing God had kept even when the people had broken it. Jesus taught that the key element of the covenant was not power or strength or might or revenge or justice or even holiness: it was love – overwhelming, steadfast, unending love. These words and these teachings were small – given in personal conversation or private moments. These words and these teachings were painful – they showed the people how long they had lived apart from God. But most of all, these words and these teachings were good.
Long after Jesus’ time, a man named Paul who followed Jesus wrote a letter to a church in Philippi. In this letter Paul said, “the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” Paul knew that the beginning of that good work among those people had been small: Paul had started it himself with just a few people listening and learning about Jesus. Paul knew that the beginning of that good work had been painful: whenever people heard of Jesus and what He had done, their hearts burned within them and they knew that their sins were many. But Paul knew that the good news, which often starts small and causes pain, would bring about a good work in the end. Paul knew, as Jesus had known and John had known, that God’s word is always a call to a people living in darkness to step into the light and begin a new journey. Paul knew, as Jesus and John had known, that the refining and purifying word of God is worth the pain it causes and much greater than it may seem at the start. Paul knew, as Jesus and John had known, that all people, the great and mighty and the small and insignificant alike, were God’s people, children of the same heavenly Father and continually being refined, purified and changed by the small, painful, good word of God. So Paul told his beloved community that God was still beginning a good work in them, and Paul prayed that their “love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight.” Paul prayed that what God had started would continue in the people until the day when Jesus would come again.
So here we are today, the covenant people of God. Many think that we come together to impress God with our deeds of righteousness and holiness – that we wait for God to come again so that we will be vindicated and sinners will be condemned. But we know better. We know that the power of God within us started small: a word, maybe a song, a friend holding out a hand in a time of sorrow or an enemy offering forgiveness when we did not deserve it. We know that the power of God within us has caused pain at times: realizing we have sinned, feeling as if we were unworthy of life itself, wondering if we could ever be what God wants us to be, feeling as if God does nothing but judge and condemn us for our wickedness. Most of all, we know that power of God within us is good. We are God’s covenant people because God’s covenant is love itself, unending and always beginning a good work in us. We know that God’s Advent is love incarnate: Jesus born into frail flesh that can be wounded but can also bear the burden of love on the cross. This is God’s word from the wilderness: make your hearts and lives ready for the small, painful, good word of God to begin a good work in you.” Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment