Submitted to Red Rock News for 12/6/24
- Rev. Dona Johnson |December 1, 2024
At the beginning of every Advent season, the four weeks before Christmas Day, we are told about a man who suddenly without warning comes out of
the backcountry, the wilderness announcing the prophetic news that the Messiah was about to enter the world. This man was John the Baptist. He was a raw sort of burley man who wore a camel hair coat and ate locusts and honey. For many, this news was perplexing and at best somewhat skeptical. For others it was the hope they had been long been waiting for.
For about a thousand years, from Moses to Malachi, God spoke to his people by sending them prophets. After Malachi there was a 450-year prophetic silence, a silence that was finally broken with the first prophet of the New Testament period, John the Baptist.
The prophet was chosen and called by God to deliver a message many did not want to hear— repent of your sin. “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight” (Luke 3:3-4)?
At this time the society had grown secure, prosperous and luxurious, yet in imminent danger of perishing from hidden, festering disease; and a religious community which was fused to hopeless perversion and yet still contained the germs or a possible regeneration. Alfred Edersheim author of The Life and Times of Jesus suggests, in the Roman world, there had grown a great need for a savior. With a population of about 2 million, a good half of the people were enslaved in poverty and inflicted with mass cruelty and oppression, while the other half engaged in demonstrative corruption. Religion, philosophy and society had run through every stage into despair. There was a hyper indulgence in astrology, magic, oracles and divination of all sorts of gods (idols).
As society’s aspirations increasingly turned inward, interests in self-achievement and with the hyper-indulgence of every passion, atheism and despair increased. Does anything here sound familiar?
Luke who was a historian, liked to lay out his gospel of the life and times of Jesus Christ in great detail and in chronological order. Like tells us that John the Baptist’s announcement of a new messiah was in the fifteenth reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was ruler of the region of Galilee while the priesthood consisted of Annas and Caiaphas (Luke 3:1-2). Because of Luke’s detailed account, scholars believe this would date John’s ministry 28 to 29 A.D. This makes sense, because Luke speaks of Christ being about thirty years old at the time of his baptism and the start of his public ministry.
John proclaims a baptism of repentance that leads to release from sins. Release (Greek aphesis) is the same word that Jesus uses twice in Luke 4:18 to describe his mission: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me … to proclaim release to the captives and … to let the oppressed go free … ” The release or forgiveness that follows repentance does not undo the consequence of past sins, but it does unbind people from them.
So if were to invite John the Baptist into our living rooms today, what message would he have for us? The prophet might say to us, “Be extremely attentive. Don’t despair. Yes, it’s been a long time. It’s been 2000 years since Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, but don’t be fooled. Don’t give up waiting. Don’t harden your heart with the ways of this world—greed, power and self-centeredness. Stay the course. Christ with all power and glory will come again, he will appear in our neighborhoods unexpectedly and suddenly to set everything right, to bring justice and mercy, to take what is crooked and corrupt in this life, to take our pain and suffering and redeem it for good. God will restore what is broken and make it whole again.”
In the meantime, we are to live in the world but not of the world. We are to live a life of true confession, repentance and forgiveness. We are to be spiritually responsible with our faith—living it out in genuine and authentic ways. John’s voice still echoes and penetrates our culture today— prepare your hearts. Make room for the Messiah— He is coming again to rebuild, redeem and restore his Kingdom. Amen.
- Rev. Dona Johnson |December 1, 2024