a nothing son of a nobody

Advent 2-C
Dec. 6, 2009
Baruch 5:1-9
Luke 1: 1:68-79
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6

“The Word of God came to a nothing son of a nobody in a god-forsaken place.” *

That is really what St. Luke means in this passage about John the Baptist. The first few sentences of our gospel passage for today are all about the rich and famous people of the day, the important and powerful people, the beautiful people, people with a lot to lose. It is important to Luke to place this story of John the Baptist, and what he says about the coming of Jesus, in the political and social context of the day. John the Baptist and Jesus lived in a particular time and place, with particular people in charge – a place of empire and military domination and of a powerful religious ruling class: John the Baptist and Jesus lived lives that were subject to these forces and these powerful actors. AND they were nobodies: “The Word of God came to a nothing son of a nobody in a god-forsaken place.”

The Word of God came to this nothing son of a nobody because the “somebodies” could not be trusted with this Good News. The “somebodies” like the Emperor Tiberias and Pontius Pilate and Herod and Philip and Lysanias and Annas and Caiaphas all had a lot to lose if this Word of God entrusted to this unknown wilderness-wanderer ever got out. In this world of “Haves”, the Word of God came to the “Have-Nots.”

The verses we read today in place of the psalm are the verses that John’s father sings when the boy is born. It is a song of hope: it comes from the past, and looks to the future. It comes from the past, because it is full of the imagery of the Jewish people. It is full of how they understand how God acts in the world, in human history, and what God has promised to the people. For the Jewish people, the world is turned upside down. Instead of a world ruled by God’s justice, we live in a world ruled by corrupt or at best flawed leaders. Instead of living the lives God wants us to live – lives of honesty, compassion, prayer, service – we live lives far from God, lives of fear, addiction, selfishness, anger. The world God created, and the world God wants, is turned upside down. As Zechariah’s little baby boy John would eventually say, “Repent! Turn around! Leave those stupid, wicked, death-dealing ways of life behind.”

Zechariah’s song is also a song of the future: “You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High.” That upside-down world is about to be righted. John, this little baby boy now in his father’s arms, will lead the way.

There is a Hebrew word that is very important here: Tikkun. It means “repair,” and it is often used in the phrase, Tikkun olam, to repair the world. Now this Tikkun is a religious concept, a theological word, but it not something that God alone does: it is something in which we participate with God. This upside-down world is in desperate need of repair, and John the Baptist calls out to us from the wilderness that our repentance is the first step to take in that repair. Our repentance – our turning away from things we do that hurt ourselves, or the people we love, or the neighbors we live near, or the city we live in, or the planet we live on – our repentance from all those things that are dark and painful and destructive is the first step toward preparing the Way of the Lord, preparing for the coming of God with us, Emmanuel. Now, I don’t want to imply that Jews are just “closet Christians,” but so much of what we Christians know to be true is right there, embedded in those Hebrew words: Emmanuel means “God with us.” Get ready, John the Baptist says. God is coming to be with us. The world as we know it will be turned upside down: valleys filled, mountains brought down, crooked, bumpy, pot-hole-strewn paths will be made straight and true, and nobodies like you and me will walk in peace on our King’s Highways.

Well now, some people might think. If God is so all-powerful, how come we still have to read about prophecy? How come the descendants of those power-brokers like the Emperor Tiberias, or Pontius Pilate, or Herod, are still making our lives miserable?

You might also ask, why then do we sin? We do we keep getting angry and doing stupid things, or fall off the various wagons of discipline we try to follow in our lives? Probably because sin and greed and fear are as much a part of what it means to be human as is love and generosity and courage. No matter how hard we try, we seem to spend a good chunk of our time in the wilderness.

I think that is what the wilderness symbolizes in the bible, the wilderness as the place that is rough, and hard to live in, the place of struggle and deprivation, the place of testing – and yet also the place where the people of Israel heard the Word of God, drank the water from the rock, ate the manna from heaven, followed the pillar of light in the darkness that led them to the promised land. From the wilderness came that nothing son of a nobody, bringing to us who dwell in darkness this precious Good News: God’s tender compassion will break on us like the dawn, and the world, indeed, will be turned upside down. Come. You will see.

* William Herzog, New Proclamation 2006, as quoted in Reflections by Kate Huey, for Advent 2-C 2009