Name-dropping
Read Luke 3:1-6
Luke begins his story about John with a whole bunch of name-dropping. In fact, throughout his Gospel, there is a great deal of name-dropping going on. John the Baptist’s ministry happened at the time of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, his brother Philip Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene and during the high priesthood of Annas and his successor Caiaphas; all very important people indeed. What’s up with all the name-dropping?
We all know people who are name-droppers. They use the important names of people they know to bolster their own confidence. We associate name-dropping with poor self-esteem.
In Luke’s case, though, there is a very different reason for all this name-dropping. Once he has paraded the dignitaries he goes on to tell us from whence the Word of God comes… not from any of these luminaries. No, the Word of God comes from scruffy, smelly old John.
“Halford Luccock once noted that Nero was sure that the most important happenings in Rome were the words he said, the laws he enacted, and the things he did. As a matter of fact, the biggest events in Rome at the time were some prayer meetings which were being held secretly in the catacombs. The Medici, he observes, must have seemed the key figures in Renaissance Europe, with their palaces, art galleries, and political power. Yet they are overshadowed by "a little boy playing about on the docks of Genoa," who would eventually open the seaway to the Americans – Christopher Columbus.
So it was in John the Baptiser’s time. One can easily imagine the pomp and circumstance with which Herod trampled about as tetrarch of Galilee. Wherever he went, people scraped and bowed. They waited for a disdaining nod and dreamed of some act of preferment from his hand. Herod was, indeed, a big man in Galilee in the first century. Today, all his pomp is simply pompous, and all his circumstance only circumstantial. But John the Baptiser! - a great human being.”
Luke is also portraying the luminaries in the background of this story because of the importance this story has to the current events of the day: contrast, for instance, this list of dignitaries and the power that they represent with the freedom songs of Mary and Zechariah. Luke is clear that the arrival of Jesus in our world speaks a clear message of warning to power.
In today’s world of televangelism it’s hard to see how John’s message of repentance had any political significance. We know about his criticism of Herod for which he lost his head, but that seems to be all there is and even that seems to have been about Herod’s moral character rather than matters of politics or justice. But John got into trouble not because he preached forgiveness, per se, but because he threatened the power of the Temple establishment that made a living from granting forgiveness through expensive sacrifices. A lucrative industry had grown up around the Temple which exploited people’s need for relationship with God. John’s message of repentance and personal re-commitment to God undermined this system.
To understand John and his relationship with the powers of the day we need to briefly trace the history that precedes John. In the time between Malachi in the Old Testament and Jesus, a very significant period of Israel’s history took place. A Jewish family led a revolt which came to be called the Maccabean Revolt against Roman occupation. The revolt installed the Hasmonean dynasty of priest-kings. But no sooner had the new rulers taken power than they began to betray the hope placed in them by so many people in Palestine. They executed their enemies and operated in contravention of Jewish practice and law. They were not legitimate priests of kings being neither of the line of David or of Zadok. A disillusioned group of people created a series of desert communes. This religious sect came to be called the Essenes. This is the sect that created the Dead Sea Scrolls. They believed in a retreat from the world into a strict piety practiced in virtual isolation in the hopes that God would respond to their holiness and rescue them from the impending destruction of the world.
John was probably an Essene at some stage though he departed from their pessimistic world-view and rejection of the world.
Power and especially the abuse of power were a staple diet for the people of Palestine then as today. John was born into this situation and his message of repentance is one linked to social transformation. Like his Essene background John sees the world’s powers as essentially corrupt but unlike the Essenes he engages with people in the hope that he can call people away from allegiance to such corrupt power.
Jesus, in his turn was a disciple of John but went even further, taking his engagement with the world beyond the wilderness into the streets and homes of the people he met on his epic journey through Palestine.
Sarah asks an interesting question: Do we believe God/Jesus is powerful? We’ve all been raised to affirm that God is “omnipotent” but we behave rather differently. For instance, she points out the question often asked by those who are worrying about getting cremated after they die: “How will God put me back together again come Resurrection?” Or look at the way we pray: with great fervour and anguish we strive to find the correct words in the hope that just the right prayer may move God to action. Some people go so far as to blame a person’s poor faith for God’s failing to act on their behalf.
The Essenes were like that, thinking that if they could get the holiness formula right, then God would come and liberate them from the world. Ironically, the Essenes understood power in much the same way as the world they were trying to escape.
Please the local tax-collector, and he’ll throw a rebate your way. Please the village elder, and he’ll grease your next job application. Please the Roman consul, and you’ll have a get-out-of-jail-free card. Please God and your place in eternity is secure.
This is power based on how the world understands power. If you know the right people, if you can please the right people, then the world is your oyster. We bolster our own power by association with those who already have power. We court power.
Jesus believed in love and the power of love to transform. It’s a simple idea, which flies in the face of our usual power mongering. It is power that we can rejoice in, that is comforting at the same time as it is challenging.
Jesus takes John’s theology a step further and engages people where they are at. He met with people in their homes, conversed and joked with them in their own language. Jesus befriended people who society had relegated to the outskirts. His love sought them out and his love transformed them. It is Jesus (God) who makes the move, who acts decisively. There is no human standard that must be attained first, no human action that is a pre-requisite to Divine action. God’s power is not limited by human ideas of good and bad.
“I don't believe in perfection; I believe in redemption. I believe that God's power to redeem is such that no human misstep or even deliberate human wickedness can have the final word.”
Lord, I believe a rest remains
To all Thy people known,
A rest where pure enjoyment reigns,
And Thou art loved alone.
A rest where all our soul’s desire
Is fixed on things above;
Where fear, and sin, and grief expire,
Cast out by perfect love.
O that I now the rest might know,
Believe, and enter in!
Now, Savior, now the the power bestow,
And let me cease from sin.
Remove this hardness from my heart,
This unbelief remove:
To me the rest of faith impart,
The Sabbath of Thy love.
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