Cry out.

Luke 3:1-6

We have a good long list of names today. These are names of real people and real places, some of them very well- known and remembered as significant by history. Tiberius, Pontius, Philip, Lysanias, Annas, Caiaphas. Despite the familiarity of certain names and titles in this list, we are not meant to linger on them. Their wealth and their power and their influence are not meant to impress us. These powerful men of history are meant only as place markers, as signs of our location in time and space, to show that this is not only a story but a history. Put another way, it could read like this: At a time when a man commanded armies across the known world and called it an Empire, when some other men were governing occupied lands on behalf of that Empire, when representatives of power and authority hoarded wealth and ignored the cries of the outcast and the needy, the Word of God came to John. The Word of God did not come to the Emperor, or the governors, or the judges, or the rulers, or even the religious elite in Jerusalem. The Word of God came to John in the wilderness. John, son of Zechariah, who had been born of a miracle to aged parents and leapt in the womb of his mother at the approaching of the unborn Lord. John who’s birthright was the authority and security of the Temple priesthood, but who left behind that life to walk with God in the wilderness and the riverbank. Until John had become infamous for criticizing them, the famous and powerful men of his day did not know him. His name was not synonymous with power or privilege, in fact the name John wasn’t even a family name, and his parents were met with confusion when they chose it for him. Of the nine names given in these two verses of Luke’s Gospel, John is the one we are meant to pay attention to. The Word of God came to John in the wilderness.

For the author of the Gospel of Luke, there are no accidents. The lineage of every character is named, and every experience of the Holy Spirit’s power is carefully documented. The Holy Spirit fills Elizabeth when she sees her cousin Mary from afar, and the child in her own womb leaps for joy at the proximity to the unborn Savior. Mary responds with a song echoing the prophets of old, a jubilant proclamation of the saving power of God that is being made manifest in her son Jesus. The Holy Spirit fills Zechariah at the birth of his son John, and the first words he speaks after 9 months of silence are a prophecy of salvation. And the Word of the Lord comes to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness he has chosen and in a region far from the halls of power and privilege. The Evangelist who collected these stories and recorded these events, and the people who have preserved them and translated them, understood that the incarnation has confirmed something our ancestors knew- God shows up, not in generalities or in abstractions, but in the particularities of real lives and people and places. History books may prioritize great rulers and kings and wealth and power and status. But Luke wants us to know that God speaks to individuals and communities in the wilderness, in the isolated and passed over and forgotten places. No matter what the world might insist, there is no one and nowhere that is outside the reach of the Kingdom of God.

God called John to be a voice crying out in the wilderness, as God had called Isaiah and many other prophets before him to raise their voices against evil and call the people of God back to righteousness. That call is taken up again and again throughout scripture and throughout the history of the people of God. Those we call saints were flawed human beings who chose to follow that call with their whole selves, and each heard and answered that call in a particular way. Whole communities continue to hear and answer the call that John took up, to be a voice raising up the possibilities of a life in God. The ancestors who came together to found these churches where we worship each week were answering the call of God when they bound themselves to one another in Baptism, in the breaking of bread and the studying of scripture, in praying together and serving the communities in which they lived. When we gather here for worship now, when we come onto these campuses to study or pray or sing or cook or pass out food or create beautiful objects, when we mourn together and raise up children together and miss one another when we are parted, we are the legacy of the Word of the Lord that came to those who built these communities. As John became steward of the Word that was imparted to him in the wilderness and shared that word with all he met, we have become stewards of what has been imparted to us. Not just our buildings or our land or our portfolio, but the Gospel which these things are meant to serve. John went away from the city, away from the big flashy temple and the crowded synagogues, away from the halls of wealth and power and privilege. He went out to prepare a way, so that those who heard his voice would recognize their salvation when He came among them. He was isolated, and yet his voice was loud enough and his message was true enough that the multitudes sought him out and followed in his footsteps. He did not have the beautiful gathering places that we have, and I’ll own that we do not have as compelling a preacher as he was, but our message is the same. We are the ones now crying out in the wilderness. We are the ones who must prepare the way, and invite others to follow us on it.

This is the challenge we are issued by John the Baptizer every Advent, one that often gets lost in the harried preparations for Christmas. The Christ child, and the loving teacher, and the cross, and the resurrection do not belong to us. The birth of Christ and his second coming do not only belong to the Church. They are the Good News of God, the Word of the Lord handed down to us and the calling placed upon us from our baptism. We must prepare ourselves, yes. And we must always be crying out with our voices and with our bodies and with our lives that there is Good News to be heard in the wilderness, in the county, in the mountains, in the valley. There is Good News here, and the multitudes deserve a chance to hear it. The Word of the Lord has come to you. The Word of the Lord has come to you, here in this place. That is no accident. You have been given so many gifts for ministry, and the greatest of these is your voice.  Do not be afraid to use it.