FINDINGS VII By Harry T. Cook
 
Advent II - C - December 6, 2015
Luke 3: 1-6
(Malachi 3: 1-4; Song of Zechariah (Luke 1: 68-70); Philippians 1: 3-11) 
      
Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook
11/30/15
 
 
Advent, despite the eschatological bent of some of its themes, is generally a season of positive anticipation especially because those who attend upon its observance know the whole story. And inasmuch as only biblical literalists consider the Second Coming as definitely on, though perhaps as yet unscheduled, the general anticipation tends more to the earnest sentiments of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's: 

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on Earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
 
This verse was written by an irenic New Englander during the height of the War Between the States and reveals some of its author's pessimism. Not often heard or read are the fourth and fifth stanzas of the poem, and while not strictly eschatological, they do paint a bleak picture:
 
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound the carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
 
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn, the households born
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
 
Longfellow recovers in the end as he imagined the bells pealing, as he said, "more loud and deep":

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth good will to men.
 
The poet's robust hope was eventually realized in terms of the North's defeat of the South and the supposed end of slavery. Longfellow died in 1882 before the worst consequences of Reconstruction could manifest themselves.

It is in a similar world in which we live now, with much to celebrate, with much to regret, with much to guard against, with much we do not know and with much for which to aspire and to work.
 
Luke accomplished three things in six short verses, clearly meaning to accomplish two of them: 1) the placement of Jesus' public career in an attestable historical context, and 2) the connection between Jesus and the long-anticipated messiah. The third accomplishment may or may not have been intended. It was to connect the monastic sect of the Essenes (who probably gave us some number of what are known as the Dead Sea scrolls) to the arrival of Jesus.
 
Luke's intention in vv. 1-2 seems clearly to be to depict Jesus in an historical setting. Luke has some of the names right. Some of the people he mentioned actually lived and did the things he/she depicts them as doing, e.g., the governor of proconsul of Judea (Pilate), tetrarch of Galilee (Herod). We do not, however, have any idea whence the marker of the "fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius." The best calculations seem to make it 28 or 29 C.E. at about the time the Jesus of the synoptic gospels was said to have begun his public work.
 
The point we think Luke was trying to establish was that his/her Jesus was not a mythical character, but one who had actually lived, who said what he is credited as having said and doing what he is credited as having done. Luke means to say that his/her Jesus was fully human, which is to be of a time and of a place.
 
Luke must have been well aware that the mainstream (what would later be known as rabbinical) Judaism had not accepted the idea that Jesus was messiah. Nevertheless he/she evidently believed that in any event Jesus and the communities that formed around his memory (massaged and amended as it was by the gospel writers) were together the fulfillment of Jewish hopes from the inauguration of the rule of God as personified in "the anointed one." 
 
What's more, Luke knew through the study of the Septuagint that Jewish messianic hopes were pinned on the patrimony of the house of David, hence Luke's fantastic tale of Mary and Joseph's overland trek to Bethlehem to answer a summons to a tribal census -- a deus ex machina device fixing it so that Jesus would be born in "the city of David." Luke strengthened the bond with the Hebraic tradition by connecting Jesus to Isaiah's vision (40: 3-5) of a messianic era when "every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hills shall be brought low," i.e., a social, political and economic level playing field. As had Mark and Matthew before him/her, Luke made John the Baptist the forerunner or herald of the messiah as conceived of by Isaiah.
 
Whether or not Luke meant to connect any of this with the mysterious sect of the Essenes is unclear. Some evidence exists that would tie the bizarre figure of the Baptist to the Essenes or some like separatist group whose members sought purity away from the world in preparation for the battle of the Children of Light v. the Children of Darkness. It is the baptism part (3:3) that makes some scholars think John might have been at least an Essene-sympathizer because the Essenes are known to have made a deal of purification rites using water.
 
Could Luke have been saying that the Essenes and others like them were, to some extent, right about the world -- that it was a nasty place and no venue for those who would be part of any messianic age or enterprise, ritual baptism being an inoculation against the world virus? Probably not, because as Luke's gospel unfolds, it is people who are very much in and of the material world whose lives will show forth the rule of God: e.g., the woman "who was a sinner" (8: 36ff), the Samaritan (10:30ff), the younger son (15: 11ff), the 10 lepers (17:11ff) and Zacchaeus (19: 1ff).
 
Thus is this Lukan passage for Advent II-C an attempt to establish a Jesus as an historical figure in a context of Jewish longing for messianic deliverance. The relevance of the passage for Christians whose thoughts may turn to last things is that the ethic of this Jesus is messianic in that its full implementation could inaugurate and maybe even establish the kingdom of God or, better and more to the point, a rule of "peace on earth, good will to men."
 
The readings from Malachi and Philippians complement the gospel, with Malachi speaking of "the messenger" whose coming is desired. Be careful, though, the prophet says, of what you wish for: "But who can endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears?" G.F. Handel set that text to exceptionally appropriate music.
 
A cleansing of the Augean stables is at hand. Likewise Paul spoke of the "day of Christ" against the coming of which it behooved his audience to cultivate that peculiar intention known as αγαπη or self-giving love, that the way Isaiah (as quoted by Luke) said was to be prepared would be prepared, as it were, a carefully attended field unto a rich harvest.

Christmastime, which almost effaces Advent in the American culture, and indeed in many predominantly Christian cultures, has its genuine gaiety and its forced gaiety. A person is more or less under pressure to appear happy, whether or not he or she is under the influence of alcoholic stimulus, as is often the case. Some fear the coming of the holiday, so redolent is it of both memory and longing. "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas," "I'll be home for Christmas; you can count on that ..." It is not for nothing that the suicide rate increases at this time of year. Does it in the climes where summer is about to begin with longer and sun-drenched days?
 
In any event, the celebration of Christmas with its seasonal excess of gift giving and receiving, consumption of food and drink does have a natural downside to it. That is due, of course, to the nagging cognizance of unrelenting poverty suffered by so many millions of people, who would as soon the assurance of several ordinary meals in a row instead of a once-a-year basket of largesse while living from hand to mouth the other 364 days.
 
That is why the voice still cries in the wilderness -- in the wilderness of huge cities and rural backwaters that for many might as well be arid desert expanses. The church would do well to temper its understandable joy in celebrating the nativity of the one its creeds proclaim was God incarnate by directing a considerable dose of materialism to those at the margin of the kingdom, so making "the crooked straight and the rough places plain."*
 
*Isaiah 40:4 (KJV)
 

Copyright 2015 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 

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