This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder Luke 3:1-6. The English Standard Version supplies the heading “John the Baptist Prepares the Way” to verses 1-22. No versions treat verses 1-6 as a separate unit.
But there is value in treating them separately, because here Luke names – and shames – the most powerful people at the time of Jesus: People who had died about 40 years before he wrote his gospel. People whom one commentator calls “the rogues gallery of autocrats, large and small.”[1]
Tiberius was the Emperor, called Caesar. The website of PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service of the United States, well summarizes Tiberius:
“His political inability, poor judgment and jealousy led Rome into a dark age of political purges, murder and terror.”
Pilate was the military governor of Judea. Herod (Antipas) was the Rome-appointed ruler of Galilee. His father was Herod the Great. Great as much for his violence as for his construction projects. Caiaphas was the Rome-appointed high priest of the Jews, who said they had no king but Caesar![2]
Pilate, Herod, and Caiaphas conducted grave injustice. Herod mocked and abused Jesus.[3] Pilate and Caiaphas killed Jesus.[4]
Pilate wrote the sign “King of the Jews” which was posted over Jesus as he bled to death on the cross. Jesus who had come to proclaim the worldwide spread of the Kingdom of God, through servant-leadership.
In many churches today, you’ll see the letters INRI inscribed in stone or woven into fabrics or printed. It’s the acronym for the Latin Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum. It means ‘Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews.’
Why did Luke name these men 50 years after they died? What can we say about them 2,000 years after they died? I’ll let Bible scholar and historian Paul Barnett answer:
Justice … overtook injustice. Three years [after Jesus was crucified] (AD 37), Caiaphas the high priest was dead; the emperor Tiberius was dead; and his governor, Pontius Pilate, was recalled in disgrace. After another two years, Herod Antipas was stripped of his tetrarchy, and with Herodias his consort, exiled in Gaul. These men—now minor footnotes in history—passed into their oblivion, whereas the man they killed has 3 billion people who claim to be his followers—a third of humanity.
Luke names two other rulers. Philip and Lysias. Though thousands of their subjects sought out Jesus – and John – these rulers ignored him.
Luke names another “high priest.” Annas was the father-in-law of Caiaphas. He presided over the illegal trial of Jesus.
When we think of Bible people, we often think only of the weak, the healed, the saved, the resurrected. Luke urges us to think also of the powerful.
I’ve focused on Jesus, because the story of John is told only because he was the herald or announcer of Jesus. But the passage is about John.
Luke says, “the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.” For Bible readers, the expressions “the word of God came” and “the son of” immediately signal that the subject, John, is a prophet. This is almost always how prophets are introduced in the Old Testament.
Luke tells us John situated himself in the wilderness. This evokes two thoughts in Bible readers. First, the pathway for the Israelites from misery into the Promised Land was through the wilderness. Second, the wilderness is the location of the Isaiah text which Luke will quote next.
The words “all the region around the Jordan” evoke Genesis 13:8-13, which tells us Lot chose the Jordan valley when he and his uncle Abraham decided to separate. It was the location of Sodom, a city which departed so far from God’s ways that he destroyed it. Sodom signals sin.
John condemned sin and preached a baptism of repentance, of turning away from sin. Baptism was practiced by Jews, but not as a one-time act to signal the start of a new life of right behaviour, acceptable to God.[5]
After setting up the background of sin and calling for repentance, Luke tells us John quoted Isaiah and explained that he was the one Isaiah had spoken of, about 600 years earlier. He had come to announce the coming of the Lord, who would, again, save people from oppression and misery.
Only this time, deliverance from oppression, from Pharoahs and Caesars, would be for “all flesh,” for all mankind.
Jesus would be king not only of Jews. He would be king of all mankind. He would begin the destruction of crookedness and of valleys of sorrow.
Let us not fear rogues. Let us fear the wrath to come. The wrath which comes upon those who act unjustly. Let us bow our knees to King Jesus.
Peace be with you.
[1] Nicholas Perrin.
[3] Herod Antipas also killed John Baptist. See The preacher’s head at the king’s birthday feast.
[5] Jews practiced baptisms as repeated washings.
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