The Scarlet Letter
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
back to Weekly Archives
Here’s Luke 3:1-3: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his bother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanius tetrarch of Abilene—during the priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of the Lord came to John son of Zechariah in the desert.”
Luke writes for someone called Theophilus who must have had his foot on the rungs of the ladder of power and offers him assurance that what he had been taught was dependable (1:1-4). Luke is certainly interested in the historical accuracy of what he writes but if we think he isn’t “preaching” we’re dreaming.
There’s something very deliberate about the way he lists the name above. It sounds like a massive steel spike is being driven into the ground by a series of thumps from some huge machine and attached to the spike is a huge chain and linked to chain is the planet. This was the world—defined by the powerful at many levels; a world that the nations and Israel hated but since nothing was going to change they adjusted and learned to make the best of it. Life became a familiar and mostly a dull plod. The central story that tamed and shaped that world was this: ROME RULES—OKAY!
There’s also something like sarcasm in the way Luke uses the names. Each of them must have seen himself at some point as some big wheel but Luke uses them to mark the day when a nobody came to town from the desert; John, the only child of an old priest and his old wife. He came because God spoke to him—not to Tiberius or his lackeys, not to the law-makers in the centres of power but to a strange, waiting, untamed young man.
The stranger had a message for the world and for Israel in particular. He called for an entire new way of thinking (repentance) that was to express itself in a baptism that committed them to a coming one (see Acts 19:4). Luke says this newcomer was preparing the way for “the Lord” and he wasn’t talking about the emperor who wore that title (3:4-6). Luke said that John’s essential message was that humanity would see God’s saving purpose and power at work in this coming one.
John dealt with individuals of course but his message had cosmic ramifications. It meant they were not to settle for the world as they now saw it and such preaching was subversion; it was more than an offer of personal forgiveness of personal sins; it was about the salvation of the watching, chained, tamed, think-what-you-are-told-to-think, accept-things-as-they-are world. It was about the personal forgiveness of sins of course but to reduce it to that is to miss Luke’s point altogether. John’s message was about the arrival of a new “Lord” and about his nation’s getting ready to receive him and about the world coming under new management so that God would be able to say it was now reconciled to him (see 2 Corinthians 5:19 with Colossians 1:20 and Ephesians 1:10).
John knew much but didn’t know it all and he himself would feel disappointed with how things would develop (see Luke 7:16-23). Why do the world structures still stand, why are the Tiberuses, Pilates, Herods and Caiaphases still around calling the shots? It wasn’t only John that felt disappointed (see the book of Hebrews) and even now we wonder how it is that nothing has changed despite two-thousand years of Jesus’ lordship and why it is that sickness and death are all too visible.
It’s distressing today, particularly for those who haven’t come to a negotiated settlement with Tiberius’ world but who feel that the “new Lord” has made little difference in their experience. [How can that be hard to understand?] If they could only turn away from Jesus it might not make their lives better but would it not ease the strain of “hoping against hope”? Would it not be better to accept what is as all there is? But they can’t! They know in their bones that the word that comes out of the corridors of power is the word of the moment and that the word that came to John in the desert was/is the word of God and that’s why they keep coming back for more. [God help those of us who substitute for the gospel a cascade of “interesting textual/historical points,” ceaseless calls to “niceness,” perpetual assurances of personal assurance, divine commands that people should support our ministries if they want to prosper or an ever-flowing stream of inter-personal relationship skills and problem-resolution.]
Like John, we know much but we don’t know it all and while our longing for better is fully understandable—something we shouldn’t apologize for and something we should further by Christ-imitating justice and compassion—we’ll remain assured of what we’ve been taught until the ever-present and presently absent Lord comes in keeping with the proclamation that occurs in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
These ordinances and their place in the life of a Community of faith are not just for believers and they aren’t just about believers. They are a judgment in Jesus’ name on the “world’s” story and the proclamation of living and vibrant hope based on the commitment of the God in Jesus.
