There is a wonderful poem written by Catherine Alder called Advent Hands that includes this verse:
I see the hands of John, worn
from desert raging storms
and plucking locusts from
sand ripped rocks beneath the
remnant of a Bethlehem star.
A howling wind like some lost
wolf cries out beneath the
moon, or was that John?
This loneliness, enough to make
a grown man mad. He’s waiting
for this, God’s whisper.
“Go now. He is coming. You
have prepared your hands
enough. Go.
He needs your servant hands,
your cupping hands to lift the
water, and place his feet upon
the path to service and to
death.
Go now, John, and open your
hands to him. It is time.”
I love the story of John the Baptist because he connects the dots for us as we transition from the prophets of old to the beautiful gospel story. He reminds us both of what is and what is to be. John is so important to the story of Jesus that the author of the Book of Luke shares the story of his elderly parents Zechariah and Elizabeth with us. An angel comes to them and promises that a child will be born to them who will change the course of history.
Luke loves to connect the characters of his story with the important historical figures of the day, and so, when John the Baptist begins his ministry, Luke writes, “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.” (Luke 3: 1-4a)
Wow, he drops names faster than Sid Hartman! According to Luke, if you want to know when the word of God came to John the Baptist, you can simply look it up. But he’s doing something else here that I love, something that is quite remarkable in just how audacious it is.
Luke names all of these important people because he wants us to see that the events that happened in the wilderness, and along the Jordan River, and in a humble stable in Bethlehem, and out in the Galilean countryside, and on a bleak hillside called Golgotha, are every bit as important as anything that ever happened in Jerusalem or in Rome. What an amazing thing to proclaim! Who would ever believe that this crazy sounding preacher, who ate locust and wild honey and called on people to repent and be baptized, could be as important as Emperor Tiberius, who ruled the known world? Who could ever imagine that Jesus, who was executed alongside two criminals, could be more important in the scheme of things than Pontius Pilate or King Herod?
To Luke’s very first readers, the lives of John and Jesus must have seemed insignificant next to Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, and Philip. And so he declares that God’s mercy and forgiveness don’t enter into this world through the powerful, but rather through the powerless. His gospel begins with an elderly couple who learn that they will bear a child. Soon an unmarried teenager is told that she is pregnant, and the carpenter to whom she is promised chooses to stay and love her rather than bending to social norms and abandoning her. When their child is born the news is first shared with shepherds, of all people. He is reared in obscurity and then ministers to the sick, the poor and the despised.
It is both wonderful and disconcerting to be reminded that this gospel narrative is playing itself out today through the very people whom this world still deems to be unimportant … irrelevant … insignificant. God still enters into our lives through the elderly, and through teenage mothers, and through those who are caught between love and the social norms of the day. God still comes to us, often through the unlikeliest of people, to announce the wonderful news of forgiveness and new life to all who believe.
What I love about Advent is that the story just keeps getting better and better, week by week, until we gather on Christmas Eve to hear the best news of all. God has come. Not in strength, but as a helpless and vulnerable child. Not to reign over us from above, but to die for us so that we might find forgiveness and eternal life in his name.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Pastor Tom Murray of Lutsen and Zion Lutheran Churches.
Leave a Reply