Prepare the way of the LORD; make His paths straight

 

 Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.

* * *

Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests, the word of God came to John the Baptist son of Zacharias in the wilderness.  And he went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying:

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness:

'Prepare the way of the LORD;

Make His paths straight. 

Every valley shall be filled 

And every mountain and hill brought low;

The crooked places shall be made straight

And the rough ways smooth;

And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"

Then he said to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him, "Brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.'  For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.  And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees.  Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."  So the people asked him, saying, "What shall we do then?"  He answered and said to them, "He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise."  Then tax collectors also came to be baptized, and said to him, "Teacher, what shall we do?"  And he said to them, "Collect no more than what is appointed for you."  Likewise the soldiers asked him, saying, "And what shall we do?"  So he said to them, "Do not intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages."

- Luke (1:1–4) 3:1–14 

 

On Saturday, we read Jesus' final words addressed to the crowds in the temple during Holy Week. He cried out and said, "He who believes in Me, believes not in Me but in Him who sent Me.  And he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me.  I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness.  And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.  He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him -- the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.  For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak.  And I know that His command is everlasting life.  Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak."

 

Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.  Today the lectionary transitions from readings in John's Gospel to the Gospel of Luke.  Here is the dedication of Luke's Gospel, to the disciple Theophilus.  My study Bible comments on this passage to remind us that Luke was not a disciple from the beginning, and yet he has a perfect understanding of the Gospel, because his sources were the apostles themselves.  Those apostles are the eyewitnesses of Christ.  Luke dedicates his gospel to Theophilus, who was a prominent Gentile who had received instruction (see also Acts 1:1).   Theophilus means one who loves or is a friend of God in Greek.  According to St. Ambrose, this name can simply mean any "lover of God."  And so therefore, he says, "If you love God, it was written to you."

 

 Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests, the word of God came to John the Baptist son of Zacharias in the wilderness.  Luke is very careful to be precise in dating the events he reports in his Gospel.  So he first mentions the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, and then those who rule over the territories that constitute Israel.  My study Bible comments that while Caiaphas was the sole high priest, people also recognized the continuing power of his father-in-law Annas, who was  a previous high priest deposed by the Romans.  

 

And he went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins . . .  My study Bible comments that the call to repentance was traditional for prophets.  John's baptism did not grant remission of sins once and for all but prefigured and prepared people for the baptism of Christ which was to come (see Romans 6:3-11).  John the Baptist is a figure of the Law, in the sense that -- like the Law -- he denounced sin but could not remit ("put away") sin.  My study Bible says that John and the Law point to the One who can remit sin.  

 

. . . as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying:  "The voice of one crying in the wilderness:  'Prepare the way of the LORD; make His paths straight.   Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough ways smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"  In John 1:23, John the Baptist declares this role of "the voice" to be his own.  This is a fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah found at Isaiah 40:3-5. 

 

Then he said to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him, "Brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.'  For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.  And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees.  Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."  So the people asked him, saying, "What shall we do then?"  He answered and said to them, "He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise."  Then tax collectors also came to be baptized, and said to him, "Teacher, what shall we do?"  And he said to them, "Collect no more than what is appointed for you."  Likewise the soldiers asked him, saying, "And what shall we do?"  So he said to them, "Do not intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages."  My study Bible comments here that while parents and ancestors help to impart piety and holiness, ancestry itself does not make a person worthy of God.  Each one in every generation must bear fruits worthy of repentance.  Stones are symbolic of the Gentiles who would become children to Abraham through faith in Christ (Romans 4:16-18).  

In a sense, today's reading reports the people coming to John the Baptist as revealing how desperately the people were looking for a redeemer or deliverer for Israel; that is, as eagerly awaiting the Messiah.  All the questions they ask reflect this.  John at first scathingly rebukes the multitudes, calling them "brood of vipers."  In Matthew's Gospel, John uses this term for the Pharisees and Sadducees, and Jesus does so as well (Matthew 3:7, 12:34, 23:33).   But Luke's Gospel then shifts to the people, perhaps bewildered, sincerely asking, "What shall we do then?"  He tells them, "He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise."   The tax collectors, despised by their own people, come to be baptized, and they ask John, "Teacher, what shall we do?"  And he said to them, "Collect no more than what is appointed for you."  Even the soldiers, who of course work for the Romans, ask him, "And what shall we do?"   And he said to them, "Do not intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages."   Each of these responses by John is an important reminder that it's not so much what we call ourselves in life, not what group we belong to, what our ancestors called themselves, or even what we inherit in a conventional sense that makes us who we are in the sight of God.  It's rather what we do that is emphasized in the Scriptures.  The tax collectors are generally shunned as great sinners within their own communities; they are, after all, Jews who work for the Romans and who often use extortion not only to collect Roman taxes but to take some home for themselves.  John tells them to stop extorting the people and to do their jobs in an honest way.  The soldiers (who back up that Roman power that enables the tax collectors to extort their people, by the way) are told also to be content with their wages, and not to extort the people, not to intimidate or accuse falsely.  The people themselves are told something echoing what we'll hear from Jesus in His preaching, "He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise."    This notion of two tunics must have been seen as something perhaps ostentatious or perhaps a kind of minor luxury; at any rate, Jesus will teach his apostles to go out on their first mission with only one tunic so as not to appear anything but humble as they preach (Matthew 10:10; Mark 6:9).  Food they should share with others who are lacking.  These good works emphasize righteous behavior, right-relatedness to neighbor, doing as God would ask.  It is the same with John's advice to the tax collectors and soldiers: they must do what is righteous, good within the community.  This is all by way of preparation for the One who is to come, the Messiah, who can remit or forgive sins (in the Gospels, it is the same word used for the two, meaning to "put away" or to "let go").  Let us note that all of this is meant to be in service to God, not just good works for their own sake, or even purely for the sake of the community -- but all is seen in context of what is pleasing to God, and even in that sense is indistinguishable from building good community.  That God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones is meant to imply that God doesn't just need descendants to Abraham, but what God calls us to is to be like Abraham, to do as Abraham did (as Jesus will also say in John 8:39:  "If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham").  In Saturday's reading, we read Christ's final teaching in the temple during Holy Week, the last week of His earthly life.  There, we discussed the idea of doing good works, abstracted from the teachings of Jesus, and outside of worshiping or loving Creator.  Here we could make the mistake of supposing that simply doing good work for its own sake is what these teachings are all about.  But we would still be in error, for John comes as a prophet and a holy man, not simply a moral scold.  He's preparing people to face the judge, the Messiah, the One who will come to save and to redeem.  These are not merely moral imperatives, and for that matter, neither is righteous behavior.  Righteousness is all about right-relatedness in both a communal and spiritual sense, with God who not only directs our conduct but with whom we are in communion, extended through community.  And this is the foundation for these teachings:  we are meant to be in a Person-to-person relationship, manifest also in our relationships among community.  Let us consider what "doing good" looks like with an eye toward Creator, the One who knows who we truly are, the One whose eye we really want to please.  For this is where John points, and the great concern of how we are saved.  These teachings and actions are meant to "prepare the way of the LORD, and to make His paths straight."  If He were to return today, how would you be prepared in this sense?

 

 

Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father"

Grape harvest detail, 4th century, mosaic.  Nave of Santa Costanza Church, Rome 

 

Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests, the word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.  And he went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying:

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness:

'Prepare the way of the LORD;

Make His paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled

And every mountain and hill brought low;

 The crooked places shall be made straight

And the rough ways smooth;

And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"

Then he said to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him, 'Brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.'  For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.  And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees.  Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."  

 

So the people asked him, saying, "What shall we do them?"  He answered and said to them, "He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise."  Then tax collectors also came to be baptized, and said to him, "Teacher, what shall we do?"  And he said to them, "Collect no more than what is appointed for you."  Likewise the soldiers asked him, saying, "And what shall we do?"  So he said to them, "Do not intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages."

 

- Luke 3:1–14 

 

In our recent readings, we have been covering Jesus' final hours with His disciples.  We read His Farewell Discourse (beginning with this reading) and also His High Priestly Prayer (starting here).  Yesterday, we read the last verses of that prayer:  "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.  And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:  I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.  Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.  O righteous Father!  The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me.  And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."

 

Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene . . ..  Today the lectionary starts readings in Luke's Gospel.    Luke is careful to establish dates, times, places, and the people of the historical setting to the story of Jesus Christ.  Herod the tetrarch of Galilee is Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great who was king of Judea at the time of Christ's birth.  (Herod the Great ruled Judea from 37-4 BC.  My study bible notes that there was an ancient prophecy of Jacob which indicated that the Messiah would come when  king ruled who was not of the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10).  Herod was a non-Jew who called himself the king of Judea, a sign that the coming of Christ was at hand.)  At the time setting of the beginning of Luke chapter 3, both Jesus and John the Baptist are mature adults.

. . . while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests, the word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.  At this time Caiaphas was now the sole high priest, but people also recognized the continuing power of his father-in-law, Annas, a previous high priest who had been deposed by the Romans.  

And he went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins . . ..   My study bible says that the call to repentance was a traditional call of the prophets.  John's baptism does not grant remission of sins once and for all, but was a prefiguring and preparing people for Christ's baptism which was to come (see Romans 6:3-11).   It adds that John is a figure of the Law, in the sense that, like the Law, he denounced sin but he could not remit (literally "put away") sin.  (The word for remit here is the same word found in the Lord's Prayer, when we're told to pray for forgiveness as we offer forgiveness -- see Luke 11:1-4, Matthew 6:8-15.)

. . . as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying:  "The voice of one crying in the wilderness:  'Prepare the way of the LORD; Make His paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill brought low; The crooked places shall be made straight and the rough ways smooth; And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"  John ascribes himself the role of the voice of one crying in the wilderness in John 1:23.  John quotes from Isaiah 40:3-5.

Then he said to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him, 'Brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.'  For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.  And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees.  Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."   My study bible comments that while parents and ancestors help to impart piety and holiness, ancestry itself doesn't make a person worthy of God.  Each person in every generation needs to bear fruits worthy of repentance.  That is, to come to God in a dynamic living relationship.  Stones in this context are symbols of the Gentiles who would become children to Abraham through faith in Christ (Romans 4:16-18).  

 

 So the people asked him, saying, "What shall we do them?"  He answered and said to them, "He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise."  Then tax collectors also came to be baptized, and said to him, "Teacher, what shall we do?"  And he said to them, "Collect no more than what is appointed for you."  Likewise the soldiers asked him, saying, "And what shall we do?"  So he said to them, "Do not intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages."  Luke, through the responses of John the Baptist, gives us images of fruits of repentance:  to share or give alms to those in need when one has abundance, that tax collectors and soldiers do their work justly, and not commit extortion (a common practice).  

I find it very interesting that John the Baptist does not tell the tax collectors or soldiers to stop doing their jobs, to find other forms of employment.  Instead, he counsels them to be just in doing their work:  the tax collectors to collect no more than what is appointed for them, and the soldiers to refuse to intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and to be content with their wages.   Clearly it was common practice for tax collectors and soldiers to use the power of the Roman state to extort by either claiming someone owed more taxes or by intimidation and false accusation.  We know the tax collectors were Jews appointed to do this job among fellow Jews, and it seems quite clear that the soldiers seeking repentance in preparation for the Messiah are Jews as well.  But John does not tell them they should not be tax collectors, and he does not tell them they should not be soldiers.  What this means is, first of all, he is not separating people along political lines.  He doesn't tell people that repentance consists of refusal to work for the Romans.  Similarly to Jesus, the emphasis here is on the soul and one's place before God, the judgment brought near by the Messiah, and preparation for that reality.  Apparently, nationalist or other politics plays no role in that for John.  This also speaks of John's great faith in the Messiah, for if those issues need be addressed, surely they will be addressed in the coming of the Lord.  We know, however, that this is consistent with Christ, who did not preach politics as salvation.  Neither does John assert that to be a soldier or a tax collector is evil in and of itself.  He does not assert that the violence and power of the Roman state makes those who work for the state automatically ineligible for membership in the kingdom of God or able to prepare for the coming of Messiah.  And in this context, we must remember that tax collectors were despised by the people and seen as sinful, as no doubt were the soldiers who might back them up and do their own predatory practices against the people and prop up the hated occupiers as well.  John the Baptist's focus is redemption, and the preparation for a Messiah who will be capable of offering the remission of sins.  Therefore his preaching is perfect preparation for Christ Himself, who will not be counted with the rebels like Barabbas, but who will offer a different sort of Kingdom for the remission of sin, and a different sense of justice.  What John preaches instead is righteousness, and personal righteousness, the responsibility to do what is just in one's own life.  He preaches a personal responsibility to God, even among tax collectors and soldiers of the Roman state.   He preaches loyalty to God.  To be a child of Abraham is to be like Abraham, loyal and obedient to God, and humble before God, aware of where one is asked to go and what one is asked to do in this dynamic relationship of love.  To be a child of Abraham is to bear fruits worthy of repentance, to take on personal responsibility for our place before God, not a slogan and not a political solution to all evils.  John's baptism is a not a collective effort, but one that recognizes the heart and soul of the individual as the place where the preparation for the kingdom of God must take place.  It is a sense in which justice and righteousness must exist within a person first, a right responsibility to God.  Let us remember that at the time described in the historical setting, there were all kinds of rebels and rebellious sects seeking to overthrow the Roman rule, but this is not John's preparation for the Messiah.  John tells them "do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' "  It is not pride in ancestry that saves, but rather a clear focus on the knowledge that it is God who creates God's children, a living and dynamic communion.  Let us consider in our own hearts, and our own time, what this means for us.  What does it mean to take on righteousness as a personal expression of our place before God?  What would it look like to be a true child of Abraham, one who is prepared to leave all to follow where God asks us to go, and what God asks us to be?  What is it to take full responsibility for righteousness, and not a political side or a slogan?  These questions remain important, in every generation, just as every generation -- as my study bible says -- and each person in it, must consider what it means to bear fruits worthy of repentance.