Reflection on the Word on the Second Sunday of Advent, December 5, 2021
PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD - Luke 3:1-6
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 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, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. '"
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A few verses we have from the onset of the chapter three in the Gospel of Luke, and they look like the ancient radio signal NASA sent to space in the direction of the stars with a very short message containing an enormous amount of information in 1974. This is the so called Arecibo message, which was an interstellar radio transmission carrying information about humanity and Earth, crafted by such celebrities as Frank Drake from the Cornell University and Carl Sagan. It was meant as a demonstration of the human technological achievement, rather than a real attempt to enter into a conversation with extraterrestrials, assumed to be somewhere in the galaxy.
At the very beginning of the Gospel of Luke created a framework wherein the personal story of Jesus became embedded, to give us coordinates where to find John and Jesus in time and space, in history and culture. What a stormy era and age! Some paid clappers celebrated this era as the establishment of the Peace of Rome, when the empire came into life, however as the Bible calls the empires wicked beasts, so the Peace of Rome was based on butchering millions of people, subduing countries and nations, wiping out indigenous cultures and religions throughout Europe, in the Middle East and North Africa.
The new empire just in a few decades also managed to crucify Jesus, to destroy the Temple in Jerusalem and laid waste the whole city as well.
As Tiberius, whose minted coin phrased his title as Tiberius Cæsar Divi Augusti Filius, which means that Emperor Tiberius, the son of the Divine August. Technically the sonf o a god. He became Emperor in 14 AD, so the year 15th of his rule, mentioned by Luke, must be 29 CE. Giving this information in the beginning of chapter 3 Luke provides a pivotal information of the time, when John and a bit later Jesus began to appear in public with the message of the Gospel, that people listen, you must repent, turn back to God, because the Kingdom of God is near. Prepare the way of the Lord!
Luke’s list also contains Pontius Pilate. He was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, serving under Emperor Tiberius from the year 26 to 36 CE. Some people was frustrated during Christian centuries,that Pilate, the boldly cruel Roman governor, became a part of the Apostle Creed, feeling, that it is a kind of a sacrilegious presence in a holy text. However we can see, that for the space-time coordinates of the Gospel story it was important to mark down his name, especially when the Gospels mostly depicting him as a quite impartial judge sticking to the Roman Laws. Although this depiction is a little bit whitewashing of his deadly role in the crucifixion, and also whitewashing the role of Rome in destroying Judea with an iron fist in recurring wars waged against the rebelling Jews.
Stating, that Herod was the ruler in Galilee, is like a zooming in move of a sensitive camera on the events, especially when Luke notes that he was the brother of Philip. From this, it is easily derived, that this Herod is not the old Herod of Betlehem, but his son, Herod Antipas, who had his own blood stain on himself by having had John the Baptist beheaded, and being complicit in the crucifixion of Jesus.
Galilee is of course is the one of the most important theaters right after Jerusalem. Not only because the Gospel places Nazareth into Galilee, where Jesus allegedly grew up, but also because most of the miracles Jesus performed, as signs of his mission, happened in the cities and towns of Galilee, like in Cana, in Korazin, in Bethshaida, and especially in Kapernaum, where the home of the Apostle Peter became the headquarter of the baptizing movement.
Then Luke arrives at John. The third chapter is mostly filled with John and his baptism movement. In all the Gospels we can see that John is a very significant figure though a fading away one, as John himself is made to say in the Gospel of John regarding Jesus that " He must increase, but I must decrease." However before this time there was only John alone, who baptized people, because the Kingdom was near and people must have repented in order to prepare the way of the Lord. The movement had its leader only in John alone for a long while. It is mentioned in the Gospels, that Jesus himself was baptized by John, Matthew talks about it in details, Luke and John made a side note of it.
However, from the Gospels it is clear, that the preparations before the appearance of the Christ was very important, as it is quoted from the Book of Isaiah that the "The voice of one, who cries, (from Heaven) ‘Prepare you in the wilderness the way of the Lord; make level in the desert a highway for our God.’ ” Not only that John the Baptist fulfilled this role, but he gave his life as well in serving of the preparing the way of the Good News.
It should be also clear, that John was in this world the-this-worldly-teacher of Jesus, at least his mentor.
Even Jesus, the son of God, as a son of man too, had to develop gradually and step by step to reach the spiritual summit of the Heavenly Voice at his Baptism, when the sky was opened and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form, as a dove, on him, and a voice came out of the sky, saying "You are my beloved Son. In you I am well pleased."
Until that his Jewish community, his parents, his teachers and especially John the Baptist as a mentor, all cooperated to help Jesus in his way to proceed and develop.
Nonetheless, the call was made upon not only on John and a few others, that the time has come, you must prepare the way of the Lord, but it was a call upon all. The kingdom has arrived in Jesus himself, who came in the name of the Lord, as it was sung by the crowd on Palm Sunday.
In our new advent, when we are waiting for the return of Jesus from the clouds as a King and Redeemer, we have to feel the urgent call from Heaven, that we have to be not only prepared for his arrival, when he finally comes, but also we have to help prepare the way of the returning Christ, who has been long-awaited to come in the name of the God Almighty, to judge Heaven and Earth. We have to renew our zeal, we have to renew our prayers to get more and more spiritual strength and understanding in order to be able to help ourselves and the world to happily receive the returning King, who is coming in glory and power to establish his visible Kingdom on Earth.
In our new advent, when we are waiting for the return of Jesus from the clouds as a King and Redeemer, we have to feel the urgent call from Heaven, that we have to be not only prepared for his arrival, when he finally comes, but also we have to help prepare the way of the returning Christ, who has been long-awaited to come in the name of the God Almighty, to judge Heaven and Earth. We have to renew our zeal, we have to renew our prayers to get more and more spiritual strength and understanding in order to be able to help ourselves and the world to happily receive the returning King, who is coming in glory and power to establish his visible Kingdom on Earth.
AMEN.
