Telling a Very Particular Story – Luke 3

A text – Luke 3:1-6

3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 

2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 

3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 

4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
    make his paths straight.
5 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,
6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ”

A reflection:

The Gospel writer Luke tells us a lot in chapter 3, verse 1, about when and where the story of Jesus takes place. This chapter follows the familiar Christmas story in Luke 2, the one we have heard for years read aloud at Christmas time. And its action takes place about 30 years later. Luke wants us to know who was king, who was emperor, who were the high priests, and so on. Why? Because the story of John and the story of Jesus, though tiny and specific in real places and times, will impact everything in the whole world. And most of the characters named in verse 1 have roles to play in John’s and Jesus’s stories as time passes. Luke has given us a glimpse in this verse of who will be important coming up in Jesus’s and John’s life and death stories.

Luke describes John as a prophet – perhaps the final great prophet of the Old Testament – bridging into the age of the New Testament and Jesus’s ministry. So Luke includes the famous verses from Isaiah, which we already know as a great description of John: “the voice crying out in the wilderness.” Luke wants us to know that all the prophets of old culminate in John the Baptist. John paves the way for the most important emissary God ever sent to earth: God’s son Jesus, who will be “the salvation of (from) God.” Jesus has been sent to pave the way for us, through death and into eternal life in the Kingdom of God. Jesus will break the chains that death has always had on human beings. Once Jesus is raised, those chains only hold us if we let them. Believing that Jesus has broken them allows us to NOT be held in chains anymore ourselves.

Luke is telling us, “This story is real. It happened on earth at a very particular time and place. Some of us first century people knew the people on the ground who saw it happen, who participated in that ministry. And we are telling you about it so that you, too, can believe it and NOT be held in the chains of death anymore. What a glorious mission Luke and the other gospel writers had – to tell the story so that we could believe!

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for the Gospel writers Luke, Mark, Matthew, and John. Thank you for preserving their stories so that we could read them and believe in Jesus, your son. Help us to be like them. Help us witness to people we know who might not yet believe but who you love. Amen.