Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
The Second Sunday of Advent, 8^th of December 2024

Luke 1:68-79
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6

I have been reading the Bible for over forty years and it has only just occurred to me that the opening chapters of the Gospel according to Luke are a musical. Such momentous things happen in these chapters that at three different times characters burst into song, as though they are Maria von Trapp or Jean Valjean. After meeting with her relative Elizabeth, Mary sings the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), and after seeing the baby Jesus in the Temple the righteous and devout Simeon sings the canticle known to Christians as the ‘Nunc dimittis’. (Luke 2:29-32) Today the lectionary gives us the middle of these three canticles, the song sung by Zechariah at the circumcision and naming of his son John. Zechariah had been forced to remain silent for nine months after his disbelief when the angel Gabriel told him that he and his wife would have a son despite ‘getting on in years’. (Luke 1:5-20) His muteness ends after he and Elizabeth name their newborn son ‘John’ or ‘God is gracious’. Now Zechariah breaks into song.

Zechariah rejoices, praising ‘the tender mercy of our God’ which will enable God’s people to ‘serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.’ But despite all his joy Zechariah’s vision of what God is doing is too small. Zechariah is a priest, a religious professional, someone serving at the centre of national life, and he praises a national God, the One he calls ‘Lord God of Israel’. Zechariah is looking forward to God’s redemption of the Israelites; they are the ones Zechariah believes will be saved from their enemies and from all those who hate them by the saviour descended from King David. The Lord God of Israel will remember the covenant that he made with our ancestor Abraham, sings Zechariah, and will rescue us from the hands of our enemies so that we can serve God without fear. The subtext of the song of this priest is, it seems to me, that the God of Israel is going to save the people of Israel from the Romans. Zechariah’s song is full of hope, but nationalistic hope.

In his song, Zechariah remembers what God had promised ‘through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old’. The Gospel according to Luke then presents Zechariah’s son John as the last in the long line of these prophets. Today’s reading from the Gospel begins with a lengthy setting of the historical scene. Luke is imitating the books of prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures that begin with the same sort of scene-setting: In the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, or in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign, or in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, the word of God came to Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel. By beginning his story of the adult John in the same way, Luke is reminding his Jewish audience that John the Baptist is a prophet just like the prophets of old.

But John, this Jewish prophet like the prophets of old, does not have the same priorities as his father. He is not concerned only with the people of Israel or the wellbeing of that nation. We do not hear it this week, but one of the things he says to the crowds who come to see him is, ‘Do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.’ (Luke 3:8) John’s vision is both much wider and more personal. It is a vision for everyone, not just the people of Israel: ‘all flesh shall see the salvation of God’. And it is a vision that demands more from those addressed than claiming that they have been born into the right nation and so that nation’s God will protect them; they are to repent, turn away from their sins, and show their repentance and humility by allowing themselves to be baptised by someone else rather than simply washing themselves. John is prophesying while Rome occupies his ancestral lands, ‘when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,’ but he is not looking forward to the ‘Lord God of Israel’ saving his people from their enemies. Instead John calls his people to a vision of peace in which 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.

We also hear today from the beginning of Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, one of his warmest letters, full of kindness and appreciation. But Paul knows that the Philippians are at risk from people who have the same limited vision that Zechariah had, who believe that their nationality and religion are things of which to boast, things that will save them. Paul is extremely rude about such people, even calling them dogs, (Philippians 3:2) and pointing out that, ‘If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless’. (Philippians 3:4-6) It is not membership of a people or a tribe that will enable people to be pure and blameless on the day of Christ, Paul argues, but overflowing love.

The love that Paul commends is not mere sentimentality. He is aware that for people to love fully they must also love with the knowledge and insight that will enable them to determine what is best. Often the accusation made against ‘love first’ Christianity is that it accepts everything, fails to put boundaries where boundaries need to be placed, and so can be dangerous. Over the past couple of weeks I have been working my way through the Uniting Church’s Safe Church online training, so I know that ‘love’ does not mean that anything goes. That was the accusation that Paul’s detractors made; that if he did not teach Gentiles to live by the Law they would do anything they wanted, and we know from Paul’s letters to the Corinthians that some of them did. But still Paul was firm; it is living in relationship with God and learning to love with the compassion of Christ Jesus that leads to righteousness.

Today, the second Sunday of Advent, is known as ‘Peace’ Sunday. In the canticle of Zechariah, John’s father sings to his baby son: ‘By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace’. The church believes that God’s peace came to earth when the Prince of Peace was born. In a few weeks we will hear angels sing to shepherds: ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’ (Luke 2:14) But every single Advent we are faced with the same question: we may have peace in our own hearts, but how can we possibly look at the world around us and say that peace has come? We live in a world of war, a world in which people who claim to be the descendants of Abraham are killing each other, a world in which violence against women and children is endemic, even in our own country: how can we say that peace has come?

As I have said so many times before, we live in the tension between the already and the not-yet, between the time of Christ’s life on earth and the time of his second coming, the Parousia for which Advent is preparing us. So we proclaim that peace has come, just as Zechariah in his canticle proclaims that God has already ‘raised up a mighty saviour for us,’ because we are certain that peace is God’s gift to us. And since we know that peace is God’s intention, we know that nothing can justify violence and oppression. We proclaim that peace has come to remind ourselves never to simply accept actions and ideologies that are antagonistic to God’s gift of peace.

We also celebrate this Sunday as the Sunday of Peace to remind ourselves that peace is not just God’s gift to us. It is our calling. Blessed are the peacemakers, Jesus said, for they will be called children of God. We are the children of God, and peace-making is our vocation. There is a reason that the international humanitarian agency of the National Council of Churches in Australia is called ‘Act for Peace’.

In a world of violence, we are called to walk in the ways of peace, allowing our love to overflow as we seek to imitate the compassion of Jesus Christ that will one day enable all flesh to see the salvation of God. Amen.