The Collect
Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Scripture
Malachi 3:1-4
See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight-- indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?
For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
Luke 3:1-6
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
'Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"
The Message
Advent is really John the Baptist’s time of year. Think about it. Advent is when we are waiting, in hopeful expectation, for the coming of the Lord. We spend these four weeks in December preparing for the birth of Jesus, and consequently, for the inauguration of the new world his birth foretells. Preparing for Jesus was what John was all about.
Now, we don’t often associate John with Advent, at least not much anymore. Our thoughts are often, rightly, turned to the pregnant Mary, a teen mom who must have been feeling all kinds of fear and trepidation amidst the joy and expectation of this unexpected, and unusual, pregnancy. We think of Elizabeth, and Zechariah, and their share in the anticipation. We think of Herod, and the anxiety this foretold king provoked in him. We don’t think of John, because in the story of Jesus’ birth, well, John was also not born yet.
But, John’s whole ministry later in life was laying the groundwork for Jesus’ world-shaking work in Judea and Galilee. Just like we do during Advent, John was waiting and preparing. He was preaching, calling people to ready themselves, because when Jesus comes on the scene, he’s gonna turn things upside down. John may not be a big figure in our Advent imaginations. But his whole ethos is one we tap into this time of year.
But, as the lectionary for this Sunday makes clear, when we think about John, we should also be thinking about the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, because John was walking in their footsteps. John, like the prophets before him, saw that God’s people were failing in their calling, and that they needed to be called back to their proper inheritance. He wanted them ready, as Isaiah first proclaimed, for the coming Suffering Servant, he who would suffer a grievous wound and through that wound, would redeem all of creation. He wanted them, like Micah, to yearn for justice and to begin walking in a new way. He saw, like Amos, the coming wave of justice, rolling down to upend the unjust social order they lived in. He was filled with lament like Jeremiah, and with anger like Malachi. He called out to God like Habakkuk, proclaimed the coming reckoning the empires of the world would face like Nahum.
This is what Advent is for: we are preparing, not just for a sleeping baby, but for the Messiah who brings to God’s world a whole new way of doing things, a way that emphasizes peace, and justice, and righteousness, and which condemns injustice and takes power away from the power, and strips all value from the wealth and possessions of the rich. We are waiting, and we are ready, for this upside-down kingdom.