What is Your Assignment?

Based on Luke 3:1-6

When our kids were younger, we would read them a bedtime story. One of the books they wanted us to read every night was the classic “Good Night, Moon.” Kim and I almost had that story memorized by the time the boys were ready to hear a different story. Night after night, we would read that story, kiss them good night and turn off the light. “Good Night, Moon” was part of the bedtime ritual. We couldn’t change the story.

This time of year, we hear the same stories, again and again. Soon, on Christmas Eve, we will hear again the story read from the gospel of Luke of the birth of Jesus and the shepherds keeping their flocks by night when all of a sudden a host of angels appears in the sky. It would make no sense but read the birth story of Jesus on Christmas Eve.

There is another story that we hear every year during Advent, and that is the story about John the Baptist, the one who was out in the wilderness, wearing a cloak made of camel’s hair, who eats locusts and wild honey. John and Jesus were cousins. And while Jesus was trained by his father Joseph to be a carpenter, we are told that John grew up in the wilderness. It was out in the wilderness where John received a word from the Lord. And he proclaimed that message to prepare the way for the Lord.

Just as it makes sense to tell the birth story of Jesus on Christmas Eve, it makes sense to tell the story of John the Baptist in the weeks leading up to Christmas because John’s message was one of preparation. Advent, these four weeks before Christmas are a time of preparation for us. But what are we preparing for, exactly? It has to be more than just the preparations involved with decorating the house, buying and wrapping presents, and preparing the Christmas Eve service. Advent should be a time when we are doing some inner work, some preparation in our hearts. We want to create some space so that we can ponder and marvel over what Christmas is all about, that God became human, being born as a baby. God became one of us. God can relate to what it means to be human because God became human. We need to take this time to pause, to consider the mystery of the birth of Jesus, and prepare ourselves so that when Christmas Eve comes, and we hear that birth story again we are ready to receive this mystery and delight in it.

How do we prepare our hearts? That’s where John’s story comes in. He tells us to make the paths straight. We are to fill in the valleys and lower the mountains, straighten out the crooked paths and smooth over the rough places. It’s like he is telling us to create a smooth, flat surface. It’s a lot easier to go from one place to another when the surface you are walking on is flat and the road is straight.

The first church I served was in Alva, Oklahoma, home of Northwestern Oklahoma State University. It is located just to the east of where the Oklahoma panhandle is located. Sometimes, I would have to drive from Alva to Guymon, which is located in the middle of the panhandle. I would point my car west and drive along. I could go for miles without passing another car. The road was as straight as an arrow. So, as I flew down the road, I would maybe prop a book up on the steering wheel and read a little bit. When Kim was driving out there, she would also be balancing the checkbook. When the land is flat, there are no cars, no towns, and the road is straight, that’s an easy trip.

What does this have to do with John’s message? John is saying that the Lord is coming, so we need to prepare the way of the Lord. We prepare by making the passage as smooth and easy as possible. We want the Lord to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. We don’t want the path to be weaving back and forth. We don’t want anyone to stumble over a stone. We don’t want to deal with walking down and back out of a valley or have to walk up and back down a mountain. We want it to be straight and smooth for the Lord. We don’t want any obstacles blocking the way of the Lord.

But I want to draw our attention to what is unique about how Luke tells the story of John the Baptist. In his telling, he doesn’t tell about how John wore camel skins and ate locusts and wild honey. Instead, he expands on the quote from Isaiah that the other gospel writers include. And he lists the names of all these institutional leaders: the names of the emperor, the governor, all these tetrarchs, and who were the high priests at the time. All these people, with the exception of Phillip and Lysanias, have roles to play in the story to follow. So, Luke is introducing some characters in the story if you will. But what else may be going on here?

Partly, Luke is locating this event in history. When the word of the Lord came to John in the wilderness, this took place in a specific moment in history. By naming these leaders, Luke is stressing the point that this is not a legend he is describing but is something that happened in real time. We do this today, when we talk about historic events, by naming periods of time based on who was president: the Bush era, the Obama years, the Biden presidency. Naming presidents, those in power, is a handy way to note the time frame we are talking about. So, this is what Luke is doing.

But also, Luke is setting up a tension around power, about who is really in charge. After naming all these officials, the emperor, the governor, the tetrarchs, the high priests, Luke says the word of God came to John in the wilderness. These powerful leaders live in cities. Everyone knows their names. They are “somebodies.” John is a “nobody” who lives in the middle of “nowhere.” Yet, John receives a word from God. Not the emperor, not Pilate, or Herod, or even Annas or Caiaphas. It’s John. How is it that someone who has no institutional power gets a word from God? Who has more power and authority? 

Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas, they all have titles: emperor, governor, tetrarch, high priest. Their titles give them power and authority. And it is significant. No one was more powerful than the emperor. He had the command of an army to back up his power. He had control of the economy. All these other titled people derived their power from the will of the emperor. And it didn’t matter what you or anyone else thought about it. This is the way it was. Love him or hate him, Tiberius was the emperor and if you didn’t fall in line, you would suffer the consequences. Just look at the people who were crucified as a consequence of rebelling against the emperor to see what would happen to you. Clearly the emperor had a lot of power.

Except God has more power. And the word of God has more authority than any word that the emperor or any of these entitled leaders would proclaim. John, a nobody who lived in the middle of nowhere was given a message that had more power and authority than that spoken by the emperor. That’s just bonkers. But here’s the really amazing thing about how God’s power is on display through the words spoken by John. People could ignore John, could pay no attention to the word of God spoken by John, and absolutely nothing would happen to them. I would not be surprised that Tiberius didn’t even know who John was, much less hear what he had to say. And that didn’t impact Tiberius one bit.

Here’s the amazing thing. For the word of God to be effective, to have the impact that God intended, people had to hear the message and believe it. No one held a sword at your throat and demanded you listen to and accept this message from God spoken by John. You had the freedom to decide for yourself if you would listen to, believe, and act on this message. You had to give consent.

Not only do you have to give consent to accept this message, you had to go out of your way to hear it. If the emperor wanted to get out a message, he could send messengers all over the place, to every city, town and hamlet, to declare his message. Not John. Someone had to tell you about John, and then you had to leave your town and go out to the middle of nowhere to find John and hear his message. It took some effort. There was no straight path to where John was. To make that kind of journey you had to at least be open to what John was saying. No one would go into the wilderness to hear John if they didn’t care what he had to say. You couldn’t miss the emperor’s message, whether you cared to hear it or not. But to hear a word from God through John, you had to care. You had to work to get there so you could hear it. You had to contribute to the process of receiving that word. It wasn’t going to be handed to you or delivered by a town crier.

So, let’s say you have decided to make that journey into the wilderness so you could hear a message from God delivered by John. You hear the message. Now what? Do you shrug your shoulders and say to yourself, “Wow, that was a waste of my time.”? I would think that after going all that way, probably on a road that curved, where there was some rough places, and maybe even a valley or mountain to deal with, and having received that message, you would want to respond in some way. John told you what to do. You are to prepare the way of the Lord by making that path straight and easy. You are to repent, change your way of living, and mark that decision by getting baptized. Now, let me quickly say, John’s baptism is different from the baptism that we receive when we come to belief in Jesus. The baptism John offered was like a ritual act of purification that you could do, with anticipation that your sins will be forgiven. But the main thing I’m trying to say is to believe the message of God spoken by John, you have to respond. You have to do something. Or not. Like I said before, no one was going to be able to threaten you if you chose not to do anything or believe what John was saying. John had no army to back up his authority. You are free to take it or leave it. But if you decide to accept the message, then there is a needed response.

Now, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to hear the message, believe it, and then go back home and continue on with your life? The problem is that the message John speaks is not something that you can just believe and then go on like nothing happened. The message includes an assignment. We have to prepare the way of the Lord. We have to fill in the valleys and level the mountains. We have to straighten out the curves and smooth out the rough places. We have work to do. We have to be about the work of removing obstacles out of the way so that the Lord can come through.

Just think about that. What are the obstacles that obstruct the way of the Lord? What gets in the way of the Lord passing through?  Maybe one of the biggest obstacles are the mental blocks. People think they have to go on this long spiritual journey. They have to do certain things, say the right prayers, read the right books, listen to the right preachers, go to the right churches. Some people even get the idea that to find God they have to go to some theological school or be ordained as a minister. Finding God is the business of the professional.

The reality is that the way of the Lord doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to go down valleys and up mountains to find God. As a matter of fact, to find God, all you have to do is look inside your own heart. I think I heard someone say once that the path to God is the distance from your head to your heart. It’s that journey from knowing about God in your head to knowing God in your heart.

What is your assignment? How do you need to prepare the way of the Lord? Maybe your work is to do your own straightening out, to reconnect that path between your head and your heart so that the God you know about can be the God you come to know in your heart. Or maybe your assignment is to work on moving those obstacles for others, to help them see by your own example that the path to God is not complicated. I invite you to consider your assignment. The voice of the one crying in the wilderness says, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight, fill the valleys, level the mountains, straighten the crooked places, smooth over the rough places.” What is your assignment? How will you accomplish this task?