What Time Is It? - Advent2

Second Sunday of Advent

with Luke 3:1-6

www.FirstChurchBville.com    @FirstUMCBville     @kerrfunk  

• “What time is it?” doesn’t have to mean hours and minutes. Can be more general, like “It’s time to go shopping” or “it’s time for dinner…” It’s time to worship, it’s time to pray, it’s time to rest, it’s time to remember… Deep within the forest a little turtle began to climb a tree. After hours of effort he reached the top, jumped into the air waving his front legs… and crashed to the ground. After recovering, he slowly climbed the tree again, jumped, and fell to the ground. The turtle tried again and again while a couple of birds (turtledoves, what else?) sitting on a branch watched his sad efforts. Finally, the female bird turned to her mate. “Dear,” she chirped, “I think it’s time to tell him he’s adopted.”
Two turtledoves, and a turtle climbing a tree…

• Gospel reading begins with a statement of time from before calendars were standardized the way they are today. You might say that I started at First Church in the second year of Bishop Sandra Steiner Ball’s ministry in West Virginia, or in the fifth year Barack Obama was POTUS. Luke was grounding this story in local contexts, but perhaps what’s most interesting and surprising is that Luke names five political leaders and two religious leaders… and to whom does the word of the Lord come?
John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. A nobody.

Let’s face it. John the Baptist is not the guy you’d want your daughter dating. Unshaven, unkempt, wearing camel hair… going to take her to this nice place in the middle of nowhere and eat bugs and honey. You probly wouldn’t want JtB at your Christmas party – he’d be standing on a couch or table preaching at people, or by the punch bowl inviting folks to be baptized… you don’t see JtB hymns or Christmas cards or ornaments, but God’s word comes to JtB.

What time is it? Time to broaden our horizons, check our prejudice. Time to realize that God is moving among people we may not expect God to be moving among. Time to prepare ourselves for God’s actions in the world.

• The word of God came to John in the wilderness, and he went all around the region, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Preaching “Prepare ye the way”. Context: Babylonian kings would have engineers precede them, making it safe and nice. JtB’s message is a little different, though. Instead of the ground being leveled for the king, God is putting everyone on the same playing field and proclaiming that his salvation is available to all. Man woman adult child, beggar king hero loser. Banker soldier senator janitor, no one has an advantage, no one is better than another. Jew, non-Jew, 1^st Century Israeli, 21^st Century Christian…

• However that’s not JtB’s literal message: his is a message of repentance, of getting right with God, everybody, by cleaning house on the inside. John was announcing the coming of the one who would tell the Pharisees that they were like “whitewashed tombs” righteous and lovely looking on the outside but full of all manner of unclean stuff and hypocrisy and wickedness on the inside.”

Bring all your sins to the surface, so that you can get rid of them. The things that thrive in darkness, shed God’s light on them.

• What time is it? Time to prepare for the Lord’s coming, readying ourselves in mind and body, in attitude and in action. Jesus makes such a way…

• into Holy Communion

Luke 3:1-6        (CEB)              12/06/15

3 In the fifteenth year of the rule of the emperor Tiberius—when Pontius Pilate was governor over Judea and Herod was ruler over Galilee, his brother Philip was ruler over Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was ruler over Abilene, ² during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas—God’s word came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. ³ John went throughout the region of the Jordan River, calling for people to be baptized to show that they were changing their hearts and lives and wanted God to forgive their sins. ⁴ This is just as it was written in the scroll of the words of Isaiah the prophet,

A voice crying out in the wilderness:
    “Prepare the way for the Lord;
        make his paths straight.
⁵ Every valley will be filled,
    and every mountain and hill will be leveled.
The crooked will be made straight
    and the rough places made smooth.
⁶ All humanity will see God’s salvation.” ^{[Isaiah 40:3-5]}