Second Sunday of Advent

In the 15^th year of Tiberius Caesar

Luke 3:1-6

It was a bad time for everybody, not that people were unhappy with the occupation forces. The invaders had brought all kinds of entertainment and revelry to the land. They’d even established equitable laws. What made it bad was that the fabric of moral behavior was steadily wearing down.  Lurid lifestyles of corrupt Caesars like Tiberius, and the examples of promiscuous governors like Agrippa and his brother Philip upped the statistics on premarital sex, multiple partnerships, and divorce. Killing of unborn and unwanted infants became the norm. Even temple high priests like Annas and Caiphas merely looked out for themselves. They’d wormed themselves into high positions with appointments approved by the Roman prefects. God fearing folks prayed for a change. Their prayers were answered.

An angel came to Zacharia’s boy, John, while he was in the desert adjacent to his home. He’d been living in the dusty outback for years relishing its purity, its silence, its emptiness. Except for some fellow hermits nearby, the sandy tracks were devoid of crowds. John avoided the crowds that came searching for a spiritual leader. They were too quick to canonize any new prophet who came their way, and he fit their conception of a holy man, what with his scruffy half-starved bony appearance. They came to him in droves.  Their incessant hunger for religion drew him to answer the call to reshape God’s people, to snatch them from the clutches of the evil one and the pervasive immorality of the day. He stood at the banks of the muddy trickle of water called the Jordan where women were slapping the dirt out of their clothing on the rocks. Downstream, a caravan’s camels were slurping up the precious fluid. Upstream, children were throwing pebbles into the stream.

The children reminded him of the angel, pure and innocent. John mulled over the words the angel had impressed on his psyche. They were straight from the prophet Isaiah:  Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight his paths.

            Raising his eyes to the motley folks who had heard of him and had come out to meet him, he began to teach.