Pastor
McCarty's Sunday Sermon
Christ
Lutheran Church, Staunton, VA
December
6, 2015 Luke 3: 1-6
2nd
Sunday of Advent
Tags:
Luke 3
The
world is messy, you understand that reality. In the midst of this
messy world, God has provided this worship service to remind you of
his affection for you. I will return to that point.
First,
I encourage you during this advent
season to sit down and read the gospel of Luke from beginning to end.
You probably can read it in two to three hours.
You know the best way to
start studying the Bible?
This is a joke by the way.
I tell you that so that when I give you the punch line you know you
have permission to laugh.
My younger son brought
home from school a random acts of kindness calendar for the month of
December. Wednesday was “Tell a person a joke and make them
laugh.” So we sat around the table for breakfast Wednesday morning
and told a bunch of light bulb jokes. (How many charismatic
pentecostal missionary children does it take to change a light bulb?)
I will save those for Epiphany.
This joke is appropriate
for today. What is the best way to start studying the Bible?
You Luke into it? You
(Look) into it?
So again (anyhow, I will
work on my delivery) I encourage you to break open your Bible during
your preparations for Christmas and read the Gospel of Luke in the
next two weeks. As you read the Gospel of Luke, you will get this
sense that even as God works in the world, something bigger is about
to happen.
God is at work setting
something up and building anticipation.
The first chapter of Luke
begins with the Angel Gabriel appearing in the temple to Zechariah
and telling Zechariah that his and Elizabeth's prayers have been
answered and they will have a son, who they will name John, and John
will be great in the sight of the Lord. And then next Gabriel goes
to Mary and calls her blessed by God, and she to will conceive a
child. Then the pregnant Mary and the very pregnant Elizabeth get
together and the child in Elizabeth leaps at the arrival of the
mother of our Lord. And Chapter 1 of Luke ends with the birth of
John and Zechariah's song of praise that we read in the place of our
Psalm this morning.
A lot happens in Chapter 1
of Luke, 80 verses, 4 different scenes, three ordinary people that
God chooses to work through—Mary, Elizabeth and Zechariah. One
extraordinary person, John the Baptist who leaps in the womb upon the
arrival of Mary. And even this extraordinary prophet, pales in
comparison to the one who is to come. A lot happens in Chapter 1 of
Luke, but we have this anticipation that something even bigger is
about to happen.
This brings us to Chapter
3, the beginning of John the Baptist's ministry. Chapter 3 begins
with a litany of names of almost extraordinary people, almost
extraordinary except for the fact that they behave in less than
ordinary ways. And behaving in less than ordinary ways, they have
made a bit of a mess of the world in which this story takes place.
Almost like the start of a joke: an emperor and four governors were
lost in the dessert. Or a father and a son went to church one day.
(Annas and Caiaphas, the two high priests were father and son in-law.
The story is that Annas was forced into retirement by Tiberius.) If
this is the start of a joke, it is the start of a bad joke. The
Emperor of Rome, the Governors, the high priest of the temple and the
former high priest had the power and position to do something
incredible. They had power to save lives. Instead the word of God
comes to John in the wilderness, in the middle of nowhere and that
gives start to something incredible. His words and the prophet's
Isaiah words prepare the world to receive the Messiah.
And you and I know if the
word of God is active in someone, something great is about to happen.
When I set up the joke at the beginning of the message, you may
have had this sensation, anticipation, that you were going to be
either mildly disappointed or somewhat amused. When God sets things
up, when you see God active, when God is active in someone and you
know something great is about to happen, we call that hope. The hope
of God acts as a powerful force in the world.
The world even two
thousand years after Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, Philip, Annas, and
Caiaphas, (the world) is still messy. We can no longer blame that on
them anymore. We find ourselves waiting for the next explosion or
gunshots or frightening medical diagnosis. In this world God acts
for good. His word is on the lips and in the hearts of thousands and
millions of men and women. They gather for worship because they know
God cares, and we refuse to live in a messy world without hope. This
worship is a reminder that hope is for you as well. His holiness,
his affection is for you. The coming Savior is for you. With
everything going on in the world, be reassured that God is there
sharing his love and offering his hope. And yet still, God is here
with his hope and his affection for you today and always.
Amen.
