Advent 2 C: Audacious Historians

Luke 3:1-6

Dear Partner in Preaching,

I just love Luke’s audacity!

He is, as you probably know, of all the Evangelists the one who identifies most self-consciously as a historian. (Not a twenty-first century historian, mind you, but a first century one!) For this reason, Luke writes a formal introduction to his Gospel, the only one of the four to do so. This also explains Luke’s concern with naming various political leaders on the scene in Luke 2:1ff. and in today’s reading. As a historian, he wants to anchor the events he describes in the larger political and historical scene of the world.

And that’s where his audacity comes in. Because, quite frankly, most other historians would probably think Luke is crazy. Consider: John the Baptist is an itinerant preacher doing his ministry out in the wilderness – you know, the place nobody goes, at least not by choice. And so the “event” Luke describes would hardly count as an event at all to other historians.

So what’s John doing among Luke’s veritable list of “who’s who” in ancient Palestine? Well, according to Luke, John – a “nobody” by all other historical accounts – just happens to be the one to whom the Word of the Lord came. John. Not the Emperor, or governor, or various rulers, or the high priests of the day, but John.

God chose a nobody, in other words, to prepare the way for God’s own Son to come amongst us. And that happens to be a particular theme of Luke that might be worth identifying for our folks: that God regularly chooses people whom the world sees as insignificant through whom to do marvelous things. John the Baptist, Mary the illiterate unwed mom and teenager, the no account shepherds at the very bottom of the economic ladder who serve as the audience for the heavenly choir. Again and again, Luke confesses, God chooses people the world can easily ignore to participate in God’s world-changing, world-saving activity.

Which gets me thinking. Because I suspect that there are any number of our folks who feel that they don’t hold any particularly important position that would warrant being included in anyone’s “who’s who list” and yet whom God may be eager to use to do wonderful things.

Might we therefore awaken our people to the possibility that we don’t have to be celebrities or rulers or among the rich and powerful to be used by God? Might we remind folks that God is eager to use our talents and abilities and gifts to change the world, if even in what seems like very small ways that are, of course, not small at all to those who receive such gifts? Might we call our people to see God at work through their relationships, jobs, family and civic life and more to make this world more trustworthy and good?

If so, then we are each called, I think, to be audacious historians in the pattern of Luke. We are each called, that is, to remind each other that God is at work in and through our lives for the sake of the world God loves so much.

So perhaps this week you might ask people to write down on a 3×5 card an activity of the past week that, when they think of it, God was using to help care for this world. And perhaps you could put up a board at the back of the sanctuary where people could pin their card and see all the places where the Word and presence of God came.

Or maybe it would be enough, after telling folks that God is in the habit of using ordinary people to do extraordinary things, to read our own recitation of world and regional leaders, placing our congregation at the end of that list. (I’ll use my own context, but feel free to adapt it to your own.)

In the fifteenth year of the twenty-first century, when Barack Obama was President of the United States, and Tom Wolfe was governor of Pennsylvania, and Michael Nutter mayor of Philadelphia, and Elizabeth Eaton was presiding bishop of the ELCA, the world of the Lord came to St. Michael’s in Unionville!

Part of our job, Dear Partner, is to help people see God present in their lives and at work in their activities. And this might be a great week to do that, as each of us has the potential to be a local “John the Baptist,” a veritable nobody to whom the Word of the Lord came and through whom God prepared the way for the coming Christ so that, indeed, all people might see and receive God’s salvation.

Thank you for being such an audacious historian, Dear Partner, sharing the good news not only that God in Christ comes for us, but that God also uses us to care for this world. Blessings on your proclamation.

Yours in Christ,
David