Listen to the audio of today’s reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-december-2-2022
Luke 1:5-17
The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold
5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. 6 Both of them were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. 7 But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren; and they were both well along in years.
8 Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. 10 And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
11 Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 13 But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 16 Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
On the Fridays of Advent, we sometimes devote our Reflections to the gospel accounts of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. Our passage for today is the passage in the first chapter of Luke in which an angel foretells the birth of John the Baptist.
The first thing we should say about this reading is that the Holy Spirit seems to want us to understand that the story of Jesus isn’t complete without John the Baptist. (And by the way, our text for this Sunday is the passage about John’s ministry to prepare the way for the Lord.) All four gospels tell us that John’s ministry of baptism played a necessary role in setting the stage for Jesus.
Church tradition says that Luke, as he was doing research for his gospel, interviewed Mary or other members of her family. However he came by the information, Luke was inspired to let us know that John the Baptist went before Jesus in a way we might not always think about: Like Jesus, John arrived in the world by a mysterious and maybe miraculous birth.
When you think about it, Mary would give birth to Jesus ‘before her time’ – before she was married – and Elizabeth would give birth to John the Baptist ‘after her time’ – after she was thought to be past childbearing age. It seems possible that we might be intended to see that as a kind of sign – that John was being born out of the older tradition of the priests and the prophets, while Jesus himself was the firstborn of a new covenant God was establishing through him. The angel tells Zechariah in this passage that John would come “in the spirit and power of Elijah,” which establishes his connection to the prophets of his people.
We might see John the Baptist as a scary sort of guy, wearing weird clothes, calling people to repent and denouncing leaders as “a brood of vipers.” But the angel tells Zechariah that he would be “a joy and delight,” and that many others would “rejoice because of his birth.” Like the angels who would appear to the shepherds, John would come as a herald of great joy.
We might think of him angrily confronting people and demanding that they repent of their sins. But the word translated as “repent” actually means ‘get a new mind.’ So it’s possible that he was offering people a new way to understand what God was doing in the world, and that people could see that they had been going about the life of faith all wrong. So John might have seemed to lots of people like a hopeful figure who had come to offer a better way to relate to God. (The exception seems to be the religious bigshots who came to him with questionable motivations.)
In their encounter, the angel tells Zechariah that his son John was not to consume strong drink, that instead John would be “filled with the Holy Spirit.” As you might remember from the story of Pentecost, being filled with the Holy Spirit could sometimes be confused with being drunk. So maybe that’s why John was to refrain from alcohol – to prevent that kind of confusion.
Then the angel tells Zechariah about the impact John’s ministry would have. According to the angel, John would do three things: First, he would bring people back to the Lord, serving as an instrument of spiritual revival among his people. Second, he would “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children” – he would play a role in God’s work to restore proper relations within the lives of his people. Third, John would turn “the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous” and in doing that, he would “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” By preaching his “baptism of repentance,” by getting people to change their minds about what God wanted from them, John was getting the world ready to receive Jesus.
It seems to me that as we look forward to celebrating the birth of the Messiah, stopping to think a little about the ministry of the John the Baptist offers us some guidance on how we can ‘get ready for Christmas’ in a way that’s more spiritually significant than shopping or baking. First, we can open ourselves to the joy of being in a renewed and deeper relationship with God. Second, we can take advantage of the opportunity the season offers to be renewed in our relationships with those who matter in our lives, and to be intentional about reconciling with those from whom we are estranged. And third, we can examine our lives to see if there’s anything that comes between us and God, anything about our relationship with God that we need to think about differently so we can embrace “the wisdom of the righteous.”
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for your servant John’s role in preparing the world for the coming of Jesus, and we pray that you will use his story as a way of preparing us to celebrate that coming, and as a way of giving us changed minds that are ready to receive him anew in this holy season. Amen.
Have a great weekend, and worship God joyfully on Sunday!
Henry
(The listed readings for today are Psalms 102 and 148; Isaiah 3:1 – 4:1; I Thessalonians 4:1-12 and Luke 20:41 – 21:4. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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