“Salvation for ALL”
December 8, 2024
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
We have crested into the beginning of a new church year—and this is lectionary year C, where we will dive into the gospel of Luke (with some gospel of John thrown in for good measure). So we have left the world of Mark, rushing, “immediately,” towards its conclusion—that this Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. And we have entered into the world of Luke. A world where angels drop in and out. A world where women come out of the shadows. A world where salvation, God’s rescue, seems, from the very beginning, to be offered to all.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Last week, in the first week of Advent, we were catapulted into the end times, when there would be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, and the Son of Man would come on the clouds, and we, the hearers of this gospel, were told at this time to “stand up and raise our heads, for our redemption was drawing near.”
Now this week, the second week of Advent, we boomerang back to the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry (although not the very beginning of the story for Luke. We aren’t quite ready for angels announcing a marvelous and surprising birth. Or the traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem deep in pregnancy. Or the birth of a baby in a manger, among the animals. Or angels announcing that birth to shepherds abiding in the fields. All that will come as we journey towards the end of Advent.
We start today with a detailed list of who was who at this time. We start by orienting ourselves in actual history—history that can be confirmed by other writings of the time. It is the longitude and latitude of this precise time and space. And for anyone who was alive at that time (and for us who live long after) it is a great big X on the spot. This is where we are. This is where we begin.
In the fifteenth year of the emperor Tiberius Ceasar, when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea (he had been appointed to manage this far flung part of the Roman Empire). When Herod was the ruler of Galilee (you can see all the principal people who will figure in the last days of Jesus). And, in case you wanted to know who else had power in that region—when Herod’s brother, Philip, ruled the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis; when Lysanias was ruler of Abilene; when Annas and Caiaphas ruled the temple as high priests. There it is: who is who, and who has power where, at least in a worldly sense.
For notice, that when the word of the Lord comes, it doesn’t come to the priest stationed at the holy of holies in Jerusalem (at least not this word); it doesn’t come to a ruler in Galilee, or in Judea, or even in Rome. No, the word of God comes to John, the son of Zechariah, a strange man who lives out in the wilderness. The last place and the last person the world would expect to be important. But this is the world of Luke. This is the world of the gospels. This is the world that God has made, and the world where God’s reign is beginning to draw nearer.
Luke wants us to be absolutely certain that this is not the story of the rich and famous. This is not the history that will fill annals of this or any empire. This is the word of God, coming as it has always come—from the mouths of outsiders, often called prophets, and often preaching against those rich and powerful people who think they are in charge. Sometimes this word even is spoken by women in prayer—like Hannah lifting up praise for the gift of a child, Samuel, or like Mary, a young woman we have met in the earlier chapters of this gospel, who prays like Hannah, who sees in her life and the life of her child, God making God’s presence known. God seeing the low and despised, and raising them up. God taking God’s true place in history and throwing down those who oppress and make a mockery of what leadership is all about.
And sometimes, oftentimes, God’s voice rings out in what many see as wasteland, as desert, as exile, as wilderness. A place that isn’t tamed, isn’t controlled, isn’t control-able, except by God.
John isn’t a ruler of a specific place—no he travels the whole countryside—all around the region of the Jordan. He is preaching about change, about repentance, about turning one’s self towards God (a message that is as old as the hills). John’s hook is something physical. Get baptized in the Jordan. Go into the water, be submerged, and come up a new person. This was not something original. It was part of the initiation when a Gentile became a Jew (along with the necessity of circumcision!). John was asking everyone—Gentile or Jew, man or woman, slave or free—to come to the water and turn their lives around.
And Luke wants us to know that what John was doing, what John was preaching wasn’t a new message. No, in was preaching in the vein of one of the most beloved prophets, Isaiah. Isaiah had foreseen this change that God would bring. Isaiah even suggested that it would come out of the wilderness (as Moses’ message did during the Exodus, as Isaiah’s message did during the Babylonian exile, and as John’s message did now).
But Luke quoting Isaiah gives us much more information about John’s message than “he was preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” That sounds rather personal. Maybe that this repentance, this change, is between God and you (with John as the catalyst). But Isaiah’s message (and by inference John’s message as well) isn’t just personal. It is political. It is world-changing.
For the voice in the wilderness, the prophet’s call, is to prepare the world for the coming of God. To prepare the landscape, internal and external, for the Advent of the Almighty. And how is this done? By fixing the road, the pathway. By filling in the valleys, and lowering the mountains and the hills. By straightening out the crooked, and smoothing out the rough places. And we aren’t just talking about roadwork here.
No that is just a way of talking about pulling down the mighty, of lifting up the lowly, of tossing out the corrupt, of making the last first and the first last. No wonder John attracts the attention of one of the region’s rulers, Herod (and his second wife, Herodias).
But Luke has saved the best for last. Luke has quoted this passage from Isaiah for exactly this statement: “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” It doesn’t say all righteous people. It doesn’t say all chosen people. It says all people, all flesh. And for those hearing the gospel for the first time, this “all people” would be fresh in their minds. For in just the last chapter, when the angels appear to the shepherds out on the hills (dare we say, in the wilderness), they proclaim “Good news of great joy for all the people.”
So what does this say to us today? First it gives us a clue as to how the writer we know as Luke is going to go about telling the story of Jesus. It is an expansive story. It throws God’s arms open to all. It brings the possibility of salvation to all. But it will focus not on those in power, not those who think they are “all that,” no, Luke sees this story as one that starts with a call coming from the wilderness, coming from a nobody, but speaking the word of the Lord.
I think it is a story that should warm the heart of every small church member. Because we are the forgotten majority. No, we don’t get national publicity. No, we don’t have crowds of people gracing our doors. No, we are lowly servants of God. But God sees us. The good news of great joy comes to us. The angels assure us that we need not be afraid, of anything. Because God is stepping down from heaven onto the earth. God is coming—Immanuel.
This good news always comes with a little “bad news.” Because when you are hosting royalty, you have to do a little cleaning! Cleaning up your act, on the one hand (that’s where the water part comes in). And cleaning up your world (that’s where the “straightening the crooked” comes in). There is a reason that people in power have always tried to contain the gospel.
Like the slave-owners trying to make sure that those they called “slaves” couldn’t read the gospels for themselves. This message is revolutionary. It is dangerous. It is universal. Redemption is coming. Salvation is coming. God is coming. Get as ready as you can. Make your world as ready as you can.
This might be confusing to have this message on the day that we light the candle of peace. Until we remember that in Hebrew “peace” is Shalom—peace and justice intertwined. No justice, no peace. I wonder what our world would be like, if we really prepared for the coming of God, the coming of Christmas. Not with presents and bows. Not with lights and endless music. (And I have to admit, I like all of those things). What would it be like, if Advent asked us to make a change, to turn ourselves towards God again, to add one little thing to our grown-up Christmas list—a step towards true peace in our world.
This year, let us hold fast to the angels’ words—“Be not afraid.” This year, let us listen to that voice in the wilderness asking us to see what needs to be changed in our world. This year, let us not forget what Luke felt was so important about God’s message. That the good news has come to all people. That salvation, a rescue from the evils of this world, and the inner pressures that make us less than we could be, God envisions salvation for all flesh, for all people, for the whole world.
This year, let’s add a song to our Christmas singing—one that would have made the writer of Luke smile. “God’s got the whole world in God’s hands, God’s got the whole, wide world, in God’s hands. God’s got the whole world in God’s hands…May it be so.