Out of the Puddle

Text: Luke 3:1-6
Other texts: Luke 1:68-79

In the middle of today’s psalm there is a hinge. On one side, the song looks back at God’s promises to God’s people. A reminder to us and to God. A quoting of past prophets. On the other side, it looks forward to the fulfillment of that promise. A new prophet. A new way.

The psalm connects the past to the future. The psalm sits in the middle of the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth and their new son John. In the verses before it, the mood is dark. There is sadness in Israel, occupied by Rome, living under a repressive power. There is sadness in the family of Zechariah and Elizabeth, who wish to have a child but cannot. The story is seamed with national and personal doubt, disappointment, and discouragement.

Into this mood steps an angel, Gabriel. Gabriel announces that Zechariah and Elizabeth will have a son, even though they are old. Gabriel announces that their child will restore Israel, even though it is defeated. Zechariah does not believe the angel on either count, and for this he is rendered mute. He cannot speak.

Yet things change. Elizabeth becomes pregnant, and gives birth to a son, and Zechariah, now both humble and joyful, is freed to speak, and he sings the song that is the psalm.

Zechariah sings a song both of memory and of restoration. In the first half, he gently reminds God in our hearing that God had promised to protect Israel and keep it safe from its enemies. He mentions Abraham and great King David. He recalls God’s oath to free Israel so that it might worship in freedom.

Yet, by the time Luke’s Gospel was written, it was pretty clear that things had to change, were changing. Conditions that had prevailed for centuries no longer did. Things that had once worked no longer did. Trying to do the same things over and over and expecting different results had proved fruitless. The Temple in Jerusalem, God’s house, had been destroyed twice, and for good this time. The land which once was Israel’s was occupied by someone else. Jerusalem, the city of David, no longer ruled. Israel was bullied and oppressed. This was not how it was supposed to be.

So in the second half of Zechariah’s song, he explains that the promise of God is to be renewed. His son, John, will be a prophet to the people. Teaching them how—giving them the knowledge, it says—how to restore God’s people. And John does teach them.

John, after he grows up a bit, preaches, it says, a baptism of repentance. It is the right message for the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth and for the times. Repentance means to change direction. To change one’s thinking, or to discover a new way of thinking.

It was no surprise that John was out in the wilderness. For Israel, the wilderness was a fertile ground for transformation. The wilderness was the stage on which the exodus from Egypt was played. In the wilderness the Law was given to Moses and the people. In the wilderness the people of Israel were transformed from a enslaved, nomadic people into a nation with a permanent home. The home the Romans now occupied.

For Israel, the wilderness represented both a reminder of Israel’s beginnings and a reminder that when God steps in, the world can be transformed.

John preaches about transformation—a baptism for the repentance of sins. For us today, and for the people who heard John, the word repentance has many meanings.

It could mean, for one, personal regret—that you were sorry for something you did or didn’t do. Or it could mean that you changed your mind about something, based on new knowledge. Or it could mean (though not so much these days) that you’ve taken part in a rite of penance. A lot of John’s audience would have heard it in theses ways.

But its unlikely that that’s what John meant.

The word that we translate repentance means a change of mind, a change of thinking. But not just the intellectual mind, also the emotional mind and the spiritual mind. For John, the word means a change in the whole being of a person. To repent means to see things in a whole new way. It means conversion. To repent is to be more than fixed up; it means to be transformed.

In trying to explain what John is doing, Luke quotes Isaiah about road building, about trying to get across valleys and over mountains.

We can fall into places as dark and depressed as a ravine. There we find ourselves with all the trash that gathers around us in our lives. Bits of envy and hatred. Pieces of greed and self righteousness. Tangles of worry and obsession.

And we can be flummoxed by obstacles as tall as mountains. Things that once seemed easy seem difficult. Things that were once challenging seem impossible. We are afraid to move ahead, fearful of the beasts that might lie ahead, imaging what will happen. What if we take a risk and get into trouble? We are not so sure we can find a way through.

It happens, to institutions, to systems, to nations as easily as it happens to us.

It is tempting at times like these to fix things with minor adjustments to the way we have always done things. To make improvements. Or to deny the need for repentance.

For John, and for Jesus following him, repentance is not business as usual, only in a better, nicer way. For John, and for Jesus, to repent means to change what is important to you. To turn your back on those things which so far have demanded your loyalty. It is to turn to God unconditionally and to turn away from all that is against God. Not just things that are evil, but all things that make it impossible to turn to God.

Luke was right to quote Isaiah here. For John, trying to change your life in the ways we usually do is like building trestle bridges over the ravines, constructing hairpin switchbacks on mountain roads, and putting better signs at the confusing intersections. What John preaches is a world in which the ravines are all filled up, the mountains all made low, the crooked roads made straight. It is a world transformed.

What makes Zechariah so joyful is not that his son John will berate people about their past evil—although he does, as we’ll hear next week. The song is joyful because the repentance that John will preach promises—as to Zechariah sings at the end—promises to bring light to those those who live in darkness and despair, and to put our feet on the path of peace.

There is a purpose to John’s preaching, and it is not to make us feel bad. It is to encourage us not to sit in a puddle of discouragement and defeat. It is to remind us that we are not condemned to live out everlasting disfunction.

God visits us, it says in the psalm. We can take God seriously. When God comes to visit, the world cannot remain unchanged.