Sermon on Luke 3:1–6 and Baruch 5:1–9. Proclaimed at Zion Spies Lutheran Church, Oley, PA.
One night in April, I decided I was having a heart attack. The key word here is “decided.” I was perfectly fine. But, you know, there are plenty of people who think that Elvis is still alive, or that the world governments are actually controlled by three people sitting in an underground room in Lisbon, or that aliens will control their mind but for the tin foil they wear under their hat, so in the scheme of things, I don’t think my own momentary insanity is all that bad.
This is what happened: I’ve been plagued by terrible headaches since I was five years old. They’ve been less frequent the last few years, but once in a while I still find myself feeling miserable. This particular morning, it was bad, and as the day went on, it got worse instead of better. My graduate school classes moved along slower than molasses, and I honestly don’t think I learned anything that day. By nine at night, I was on my last nerve, and decided to go to bed early.
The moment I lay down, a wave of nausea came over me, and the pain multiplied ten times. I rolled over, and prayed for death—uh, I mean, for sleep—to come. So of course my mind leapt into action instead, trying desperately to figure out what might be wrong. “No, no, no,” I thought. “I’m not a doctor. I’m not going to figure it out. There’s nothing wrong with me. Just go to bed.” And naturally, my brain responded to this sensible advice by digging up every horrible disease it had ever heard of.
Cancer? Maybe it’s cancer! Except that cancer usually doesn’t hurt, until it’s too late. This doesn’t feel like cancer. So maybe it’s a stroke? Is my speech slurred? Is my face drooping? Let me get up and look in the mirror. No. Okay. Parkinson’s? Would that make my head hurt? I still have a full range of motion and everything. Eventually, I settled on meningitis. It was supposed to have something to do with your brain, and it was known to circulate around higher education institutions, and I had gotten vaccine but I suppose they could fail sometimes. Very good. Meningitis. I’ve got a diagnosis. Now I need a second opinion. So I did what nobody should ever, ever do when they’re worried about their health. I went on the Internet.
A simple search for meningitis proved that I did not, in fact, have meningitis. My symptoms were wrong. But Google said they did fit the profile of a heart attack very well. And it told me that you can be having a heart attack for hours while still conscious. This was obviously what was happening to me; heart disease runs in my family, after all. I could drop dead at any moment. Clearly I need to get to the hospital. But if I drove myself, I could die behind the wheel, and cause a terrible accident. {panicky} Should I call an ambulance? Am I being ridiculous? If I did drop dead, would the pain in my head go away? Or would I be stuck with it for the rest of eternity? Is this panic making it worse? Will I ever be able to relax again for the rest of my now-shortened life?
I think maybe instead of searching the Internet, I should have read my Bible. I’d have calmed down and dropped off to sleep. Because, while there are lots of exciting things going on in this book, we also find boring bits, things we tend to just skip over when we read. Like the first verse or so of our Gospel reading. “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea…” Luke’s Gospel does this from time time. The beginning is even kind of uninteresting, with four whole verses telling us that he’s writing just because others have written, and he wants to cut through all that fake news and set the record straight.
We’ll hear at Christmas how the birth of Jesus took place when Emperor Augustus called for a census while Quirinius was governor of Syria. Later in the story, after Jesus is Baptized, Luke gives us a long list of his human ancestors, all the way back to Adam and Eve. Luke gives us some of the most beloved stories the Bible has to offer, but it also has moments where we have to keep asking, “Why is he even telling us this?” And, any time the Bible makes us go, “Huh, weird,” we definitely should be asking questions. So why does Luke give us this list of rulers today?
In the ancient world, people told stories about gods that were fantastical and imaginative. Zeus impregnating human women as a beam of golden light. Persephone taken captive by the powers of death and wedded to the King of Hades. Ba’al causing the earth to grow by raining down his life energy, and Queen Inanna shining like the magic moon. These are the kind of gods people believed in. Self-centered nonsense.
And Luke is about to tell us some pretty fantastic things, too. A child born to a virgin woman. Calming a storm and feeding a crowd. Transfiguration on the mountaintop. Post-resurrection appearance on the road to Emmaus. This sounds like we might be in for a wild ride.
Except the story Luke tells isn’t some unbelievable myth. It happened, and happened here, and matters to us, here, in the world. It happened, not in some ancient time in prehistory when only the imaginary gods lived, but now, with politically corrupt leaders like Emperor Tiberius, and Governor Pilate, and Herod the King. It was while the High Priesthood was a mess, Annas having been deposed by the Roman proconsul, but still ruling through his son-in-law Caiaphas, and the whole family being denounced as illegitimate by the people whom they supposedly served. Jesus was born in the middle of conflicts between religious groups and conflicts between nations. God didn’t come to be with us in the middle of an otherworldly paradise. John proclaimed Baptism here; Jesus was born here; God saved us here, in the world, the real world, with all its stress and despair.
After all, if God promises to make the rough places smooth, it means there are clearly rough places that need to be made smooth. The mountains and valleys must be leveled and filled, because they stand in the way of our travel back home. And if salvation will come to all flesh, then we know all flesh is desperately in need of peace.
When we hear the word “peace,” we think of quiet, calm, simplicity, emptiness. But the peace that God promises to bring is one of great power, a peace that is active, a peace that reconciles and brings joy. The language the apocryphal writer Baruch uses describing this peace is extravagant and grand. It’s not just the removal of “the garment of sorrow and affliction,” but also “putting on the beauty of the glory of God, forever,” the robe of righteousness and the crown of glory. Where Israel was once destroyed in war and carried off into exile, it now returns in peace to Jerusalem on a royal throne. This is why the mountains and valleys are made into level ground: so that God’s people may return safely, gloriously, to the place where God dwells. The conflict between the nations is over. The distress has come to an end. And there in God’s presence, there is only joy.
So I’m in my dorm room in Princeton, and I’m panicking, because I know very well I am NOT having a heart attack but I can’t convince my brain. So while I’m usually a staunchly independent person, I decided the best thing was to start calling for help. Ella picked up the phone. She’s the rare kind of person who, at the same time, embodies both quiet peace and powerful joy. Ella had me sit in her dorm room with a cup of blueberry tea, chatting about classes and projects and all. It took some time—and a needless trip to the ER, where she sat with me for three hours, an enormous gift on a school night—but my panic returned to normal. Through this blessed person in the community of faith, God brought a powerful peace to my heart. Simply through her being there. Simply through presence. And that is what Jesus brings us: God present in the world.
In 2018th year after the turn of the age and the 243rd year of the United States of America, when Miroslav Lajčák was president of the United Nations General Assembly, during the papacy of Francis the First and the Lutheran World Federation presidency of the Rev. Dr. Panti Filibus Musa, when nations and people drew in on themselves in fear, when disease and intolerance grew, when environmental disasters seemed to come one after another, when the whole world held its breath in worry and fear…
Then, the word of God came to God’s people in this wilderness of anxiety, as it is written in the book of the words of the Prophet Isaiah: “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.”
This is the promise that is coming. When it is sometimes hard to see a hopeful future, God is our hope. When it is sometimes hard to breathe for want of peace, God is our peace. And God is always faithful to his promises.