I feel bad. Last week, Ginger was our worship leader, and she read a short scripture that contained a lot of hard to pronounce names… and I didn't even preach on it.
So today I'd like to start by reminding you what Ginger read last week, a scripture that began like this:
“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.”
Some of those hard-to-pronounce names probably don't mean much to you. But they certainly meant something to people in the first century… Let's see if we can recapture some of that meaning.
Twenty years ago a preacher named Gardner Calvin Taylor wanted to bring out the meaning for modern Christians, so he rewrote that first sentence of Luke Chapter 3, so that it sounded like this:
“During the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, when John Patterson was governor of Alabama, and J. Edgar Hoover the omnipotent autocrat of the FBI, when Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale were the high priests of middle America, the word of God came to Martin Luther King in the wilderness of America.”
For many of you, those names mean something. You recognize the political power of all those names, and you remember how that last name - Martin Luther King - was a preacher whose voice challenged and confronted all those other names.
But perhaps, for some of you, even these names are too far in the past to fully understand the significance of those names used in Luke chapter 3.
So let me share with you another rewrite of this passage, this one by William H. Lamar IV, a pastor in Washington DC, with only minor modification to keep it up-to-date. His version goes like this:
“In the second year of the presidency of Donald J. Trump, when Mathew Whitaker was the attorney general (following the firing of Jeff Sessions), and Rudolph Giuliani the ubiquitous and loquacious defender of the present order, and Franklin Graham, Paula White, and Joel Osteen the priests of American civil religion, the word of God came to …”
Who? Who does the word of God come to, today?
Luke made it very clear that the word of God didn’t come to those in power. It didn’t come to the emperor. It didn’t come to the governor. It didn’t come to the high priests who had sold their soul to the government in exchange for power and freedom from government interference…
Instead, the word of God came to some guy dressed in animal skins, wandering around the wilderness at the very edge of society; a man who called on people to repent, to turn away from the wickedness and evil of the world; a man we know as John the Baptist.
Who is today’s version of John the Baptist? Who is it that the word of God comes to, today?
John was Jesus’s cousin and predecessor, to whom the word of the Lord came, and who preached repentance in the wilderness, and who baptized those who came to him.
Last week’s scripture introduced John the Baptist, and today’s scripture continues right where last week’s left off.
And maybe you wonder why the lectionary spends so much time on John the Baptist at this time of year, when all we really want to hear is Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus, and angels and shepherds and wise men.
Well, we’ll get there. Next week, the focus is on Mary, and the song she sang after the angel told her she would give birth to Jesus.
And then, on Christmas Eve, we’ll hear about the journey she and Joseph took to Bethlehem, and the birth of Jesus.
But today - and last week, if I had preached last week - the focus is John the Baptist, and the word of God that came not to those in power, but to this weird wildman out there in the wilderness.
And clearly, the powers in charge did not like John. He was a rabble-rouser. He was calling people to life in a new kingdom, which of course was a threat to those with power.
The emperor just couldn't allow someone to go around talking about a new kingdom. The governor couldn't allow it. The high priests who got their power from Rome couldn't allow it.
No surprise, then, that John was eventually put in prison, and executed.
Because John is a rabble-rouser.
John’s message upsets the status quo. To those who liked the status quo, John was a disturber of the peace.
But their peace was no peace at all. When people are being oppressed, that's not peace. When the poor are being taken advantage of, that's not peace. When rights are being unfairly denied to masses of people, that's not peace.
But isn’t that happening today? We’re being told that immigrants and Muslims and transgender people are a threat to our peace and a threat to our way of life, so our government is working to take away their rights, take advantage of them, and oppress them.
These groups do not actually pose a greater threat to our society than any other group; they’re just more vulnerable and thus make easy targets for hate and prejudice.
And those who stand up for the vulnerable and oppressed, and who challenge oppressive policies and actions, are seen as rabble-rousers. Just like the hundreds of U.S. pastors who were in Tijuana this week to learn from and stand with migrants seeking asylum. Darn rabble rousers. Just like John the Baptist.
John referred to the leaders of his day and those who collaborated with them as a brood of vipers, because they injected poison into the life of the church and the world. They made religion into something other than what it should be; they made it into a system of belief that supported current corruption, oppression, and injustice. They made a mockery of religion.
But religion that supports corruption, oppression, and injustice is no religion at all. The word religion comes from Latin: re-ligio. And, literally, it means to re-connect.
True religion connects people. True religion connects people to each other. True religion connects people to God. This morning on twitter, one of my favorite authors, Diana Butler Bass mentioned how joy is the experience of connection. If you experience connection, you get joy. If you experience disconnection - joy is missing.
And so any religion that reinforces the divisions of society is - by definition - no religion at all. Any religion that divides people by wealth, keeping some people poor, denying them assistance, while condoning the redistribution of wealth to those who are already wealthy - is no religion at all.
Any religion that divides people by race, calling some people superior and others inferior, is no religion at all.
Any religion that subjects any group of people to a second class status - because of nationality, immigrant status, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, or anything else - is no religion at all.
This is the type of religion dictated to the people by the high priests, on behalf of the Roman government. And this is why John the Baptist called people out away from the cities, away from the centers of power, and proclaimed to them: Repent!
People want to know ‘What’s in it for me?’ How will this new economic policy benefit me? How will our voting laws benefit me? How will defending the rights of others help me? How will addressing climate change help or hurt me?... Every issued is approached this way. It’s all about my rights, and my ability to accumulate wealth.
To this, John says: Repent.
It’s not about you. Or me.
It’s about us. All of us.
When some asked John, “What should we do?” John said: “Share.”
If you have two coats, give one to someone who has none. Don’t take more for yourself than you need. If you have more, help someone who has less.
I remember hearing a story once about some farmers; they all had equal access to a canal to irrigate their crops, and the cost to access that water depended on how much water they used. A wealthy farmer could take as much water as he wanted, because he could afford it. But a poor farmer downstream could not.
Economic supply-and-demand also came into play, so that the more water that was taken, the higher the price went. This didn’t bother the wealthy farmer. He continued taking more water, because he could; he could afford it. But his consumption meant the poor farmer could only buy less and less water as the price got higher and higher.
Now, in the old kingdom, one might say that the wealthy farmer has every right to use his money to buy as much water as he wants. But is that fair to the poor farmer? Because of the way the wealthy farmer consumed water, it became harder and harder for the poor farmer to pay for even a small amount of water.
That’s how our world works. The wealthy can buy all they want, because they can afford it. But that just makes it harder and harder for the poor to buy even a little bit of what they need to survive.
That’s why God - speaking through the prophet Ezekiel - said this: “Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet?”
In our society today, the gap between rich and poor is growing. The rich are treading down the pasture and fouling the water… and the poor and even the middle classes are way poorer than they used to be.
And even when the business page says times are good, and the stock market is up… fewer and fewer people are actually benefiting from a good stock market. Fewer and fewer people are benefiting from a growing economy. For most, the growing economy isn’t helping them at all.
To all this, Ezekiel and all the other Old Testament prophets say: “Repent.”
To all this, John the Baptist says: “Repent.”
To all this, John the Baptist says: “Share.”
Don’t just think about what’s good or right for you; think about what’s good and right for your neighbor.
And it is this message - this message of John the Baptist - that prepares the way for the ministry of Jesus.
It is this message - this message of repentance - that the Bible calls “good news” for all those who are poor and oppressed in our world.
It is this message that is good news for those who live “In the second year of the presidency of Donald J. Trump, when Mathew Whitaker was the attorney general, and Rudolph Giuliani the ubiquitous and loquacious defender of the present order, and Franklin Graham, Paula White, and Joel Osteen the priests of American civil religion.”
It is this message, the message of John the Baptist, that is good news - the word of God - come to us.
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