Tag: Luke 3:1-14

A Thrilling Voice is Sounding?

Biblical Text: Luke 3:1-14

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Advent 2 is John the Baptist week.  (Advent 3 would be as well, but that week typically gets taken up by the Children’s program.)  And I think that both the Baptist and his message are a little tough for us to understand, although I think we are probably approaching the time and place where they shouldn’t be.  They used to require imagination, but the sermon will attempt such imagination is becoming reality.  My opening question for you would be: What might make you listen to a street preacher?  For I think that is akin to what John is, except that he is wildly popular.  That is the space you have to get into to understand the Baptist – where a street preacher is popular.  This sermon attempts to paint that picture.  It also attempts help us grasp that it isn’t the street preacher antics that make John unique, but the place and the message.  Come ponder just what it might the way straight, to raise up the valleys and level the hills, to do so from the desert, to do so with a Word.

Recording Note: The Choice sounded great this morning and I got a good recording, so their piece is in the recording between the OT lesson and the Epistle.

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Bear the Fruits of Repentance

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Biblical Text: Luke 3:1-14
Full Sermon Draft

John the Baptist is always an interesting week (or two if you follow the lectionary. Due to the kids program on Advent 4 we usually move Advent 4 which is Mary’s week up). Luke incudes Isaiah’s words about the work of the forerunner which I can’t help but hear in the strains of Handel. Every valley shall be exalted, and the mountains and hills made plain. You see this work in how rough John is “You brood of vipers! Who warned you.” Bringing the mountains of our pride low. But you also see John building up. When the tax collectors and soldiers, hated and excluded members of society respond to his calls to baptism and ask “what do we do?”, John’s answer is not give up you immoral jobs but do them honorably and without corruption. The Word of God that came to John in the desert leveled and built up. The Word of God still does that today. It calls us to repent. It levels our grand visions and petty desires, and it builds us up through the fruits of repentance into the people of God.

That might be the general story of John, but the way Luke tells it is masterful. This sermon attempts to give Luke his due specifically looking at how he situates John. I’m hoping that the analogies to the world we live in are plain. If they are not, the sermon doesn’t work. But it is just that juxtaposition of the prophet John so clear, and the social reality that Luke brings home. And that gives rise to the hope of the Word of God in the wilderness.

Music Note: I left in the Hymn of Day. Lutheran Service Book 345, Hark a Thrilling Voice is Sounding. Of all the John the Baptist Hymns, and he has many, this one interestingly comes at his preaching from a direct hearer’s standpoint. John’s prophetic clearness and immediacy is thrilling, progresses through startling and then moves on to expectation and praise. It moves from bringing down our mountains to filling up the valleys.

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