Lectionary Commentaries for December 8, 2024
Second Sunday of Advent

On the second Sunday of Advent, John the Baptizer gets a little limelight.

By this point in Luke’s Gospel, readers already know a great deal about John: he will be a prophet, filled with the Holy Spirit, “great in the sight of the Lord,” and someone who prepares for the Lord by a message of repentance, salvation, and forgiveness (1:15–17, 76–77). Luke associates John with the “messenger” of Malachi 3:1–4, the first reading for Advent 2 (Luke 1:76; 7:27). Since John’s birth, “the hand of the Lord was with him” (1:66). And from early on, he has remained in the wilderness (1:80). So, as John begins his public ministry in Luke 3, much is already known and expected.

Luke 1–2 focuses on the early years of both John and Jesus in parallel fashion. The shift in chapter 3 to John’s public ministry as an adult, then, only suggests a focus on Jesus’ public ministry is very soon to come.

The significance of history

Luke begins 3:1–6 with the voice of a historian. He has done this before (1:5; 2:1–2). But this list of rulers is much longer. It contextualizes the ensuing story of John and Jesus within the geopolitical landscape of the early first century.

Luke 3:1–2 identifies the most prominent rulers of Galilee and Judea at this time (circa 28–29 CE). Tiberius ruled as emperor in 14–37 CE. While Tiberius was never associated with persecuting Christians, many in Luke’s day thought him cruel, perverse, and self-indulgent.¹ His rule was a stark contrast to the kingdom Jesus proclaimed. Pontius Pilate was governor of the Roman province of Judea in 26/27–36/37 CE. His role put him in charge of Jesus’ trial and death.

Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, and the “Herod” who engages Jesus most in the Gospels. Only Luke includes Herod Antipas in Jesus’ trial (23:6–12).

Annas was high priest in 6–15 CE (until deposed) and his son-in-law Caiaphas, in 18–36/37 CE. Although Caiaphas was high priest at this time, Annas’s presence still loomed large.

This historical grounding resonates with a larger theme in Luke-Acts: salvation history. That is, God brings about salvation not in the abstract or in theory, but through concrete events, real people, in actual places of history—with Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension being the quintessential example. God saves not in Neverland or “somewhere over the rainbow,” but in history. Corrupt, messy, and complicated as historical events and situations are, that is where God saves.

A prophetic messenger of salvation

Luke portrays John as a prophet, using language from the Old Testament prophets: “The word of God came to …” (Isaiah 38:4; Jeremiah 1:1–4, 11; Hosea 1:1). Josephus reports there were many leaders at this time who gathered people in wilderness areas, mostly for militaristic causes.² But John’s ministry of social renewal and transformation was not militant—and his legacy was more historically enduring.³

John’s ministry takes place in the wilderness (erēmos) at the Jordan River. Both places were heavily associated with the exodus story of freedom from slavery, wilderness wanderings, and crossing the Jordan to the promised land. His baptism resonates with Jewish water rituals associated with cleansing (Leviticus 14–15; Zechariah 13:1) as well as initiation rites used at Qumran.⁴ In Luke 3 it is a “baptism of repentance,” clearly associated with demonstrative life changes to align with God’s purpose.

That John’s message is summarized by Isaiah 40:3–5 (Luke 3:4–6) is no coincidence. It taps into traditional hopes for Israel’s restoration among the nations, implying a new restoration for God’s people. The phrase “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (verse 6) uses distinctive wording (to sōtērion tou theou) that appears only in Luke 3:6 and Acts 28:28 (“this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles/nations”), creating a bookend structure around Luke-Acts.

For today: Contrasting allegiances

Luke’s list of rulers not only anchors his story in history—it also sets up a contrast between their rule and the way of Jesus. To varying degrees, these leaders represented power, influence, and widespread practices of dominance and avarice. Much in contrast is John: a strangely clothed prophet who arises from the wilderness, abrasively calling people to divest their resources and act justly, redirecting their allegiance to a “Lord” utterly different from those in power. John’s ministry exemplifies the stark contrast that Jesus’ life, message, and ministry will have with the powers of their day.

We are invited to imagine the cultural norms and objects of devotion from which John would call us to repent today: overconsumption, materialistic accumulation, indifference to inequities, ungenerosity, superficial spirituality, arrogant judgmentalism, and characterizing our neighbors in the worst possible light. Where would John’s prophetic critiques focus today? The practices in which we engage are ultimately acts of allegiance to cultural and ethical norms, however unspiritual they may appear. John had the gall to call such things out.

For today: Redirection to God

John’s message was not to repent for repentance’s sake. He redirected hearers to God—with the promise of salvation (the forgiveness of sins). John’s message was not purely negative: he called people to recalculate their lives, turning intentionally to a lasting source of life and reconciliation.

As a word of promise, John’s ministry points beyond itself to a better object of devotion: Jesus. John’s message redirects our focus to a salvation from God that is truly good news for all people: “To you is born this day … a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (2:11).

John’s message calls hearers in his day and ours to prepare for Jesus’ arrival, not by frantic busyness and materialistic generosity, but by a recalculation of our course and an openness to a Savior who comes among us still.

Notes

1. Tacitus, Annals 6.50–51.
2. Jewish Wars 2.13.4–5 §259–63.
3. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.5.2 §116–19.
4. 1QS 5:7–15.

Who can endure the day of his coming?¹

The prophet Malachi raises a disturbing question for all who proclaim God’s arrival with joyful expectation. Are you ready? Do you know what it means? Who can endure it? In the prophetic tradition, the day of the Lord anticipates God’s victorious kingship and a period of righteous judgment. Consequently, the prophets describe the day of the Lord with dramatic language that is both uplifting and fearsome. Depending on the context, it is the promise of deliverance or the threat of judgment. In fact, it is usually both elements at once. In either case, it is the might of God’s power that both comforts and disturbs.

Malachi proclaims that a holy messenger is on the way, and this announcement brings with it both a promise and a word of warning. It is ambiguous whether the messenger in this text is a prophet, an angelic being, or God’s very self. Three different names are mentioned in verse 1—“my messenger” (Hebrew: mal’aki), “the angel/messenger of the covenant,” and “YHWH of Hosts.” Commentators through the centuries have debated whether this refers to three distinct figures, one divine and one human figure, or three different terms for one figure. Some have connected the reference to “my messenger” to the figure for whom the book is named. The term Malachi means “my messenger,” and it may refer either to the proper name of a prophet or to the prophetic function as the bearer of messages.

Regardless of the messenger, the message is clear: The Lord of Hosts is coming. The term “hosts” is a military term. It can be translated as “YHWH, he creates armies” (see also 1 Samuel 17:45). Its use in the postexilic prophetic literature makes a claim about God’s triumph over foreign powers. The restoration of Israel is a signal that YHWH’s might is far superior to the Persian emperor and his armies.

Even as the text uses martial imagery, the day that YHWH of Hosts brings is not a military conquest. Rather, it sparks a period of purification and refinement. It is a necessary process to prepare the people for the worship of God. The book of Malachi is addressed to postexilic Jerusalem after the rebuilding of the temple (circa 516/515 BCE). It speaks to a priestly audience that lacks some confidence in the power and sanctity of the pre-exilic temple rituals (Malachi 1:12–13; 2:13–14) and certainly lacks reverence for their correct observance (Malachi 1:6–8). Yet the prophet does not disparage the Levitical priesthood completely, even as he offers strident criticism of their corruption and lack of obedience. Rather, the messenger of the covenant envisions the renewal of the priesthood that will restore the office to its historic holiness, providing for proper and faithful worship.

This renewal comes through testing and cleansing. It is the refining fire that brings precious metal to light, and it is the washing with strong detergent. The Hebrew term for “soap” (borît) sounds quite similar to the word for “covenant” (berît). Ironically, it is the soap that restores to covenant faithfulness, as the covenant is in some measure a metric of obedience. The purpose of divine judgment is not to punish but to prepare the way of the Lord. It is to bring restoration and renewed life. It is to train the people in obedience to the covenant so that they may offer reverent praise.

Malachi’s proclamation may strike a discordant tone with our Advent expectations. Our preparations are often informed by pastoral images of sweet baby Jesus surrounded by choirs of angels and placid sheep around the manger. Jesus brings serenity, peace on earth, goodwill to all.

But while we can affirm that the coming of Jesus Christ, the prince of peace, is good news of great joy for all people, this does not mean that Christ’s presence demands nothing of us or leaves us unchanged. Like a refiner’s fire and cleansing soap, the arrival of Christ in our midst calls us to reverent obedience and faithful praise. The good news is indeed that we will not be left unchanged but will be reformed and refined to become like Christ.

The prophet raises a challenge for each of us. As we proclaim Christ’s coming with Advent expectation, the promise of Christ’s arrival should prompt us to self-reflection and even make us uncomfortable. Are we ready?

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for December 6, 2015.

This is the second song that is sung in Luke’s story, and that matters.

Zechariah is the singer, and that matters as well, because he is the first person we meet in the story, and we meet him in the Temple. That matters, too.

The Temple held the Holy of Holies, a quiet, dark space understood to be the place where God’s finger touched the wildly spinning world and held it still. Gabriel meets Zechariah in that place (or at least very near to it), the holy place that functioned as the guarantee of safety in a world full of dangerous enemies. Gabriel meets Zechariah there with a promise: Elizabeth and Zechariah will welcome a son. But not just any son. 

The child that will be born will be full of the breath of God, filled even from his first breath after being born. The child will return the host of Israel to the God whose Name is Mercy. When people see him, they will remember Elijah because he will knit families back together, parents to children, the whole host doing justice, prepared for the God whose Name is Mercy. 

That was Gabriel’s promise. Zechariah pointed out a basic biological fact: Really old people do not beget or bear children. As a result, Zechariah has been held silent since that moment. Until he sings this song. That matters.

It also matters that Mary was the second person to meet Gabriel, who comes to her in the midst of her everyday life. After Zechariah went home, silent, Gabriel came to Mary and acted out the second angelophany in Luke’s story. The basic pattern is the same as it was for Zechariah, the same as it is for all the angelic appearances in Jewish Scripture: 

1. 1. 1. A person is going about their ordinary activities;
      2. An angel suddenly appears;
      3. The person is scared spitless;
      4. The angel speaks their required line: “Be not afraid”;
      5. The angel delivers a message and vanishes.
      6. That’s how it went with Zechariah in the Temple. That’s how it went with Mary. 

Almost.

The storyteller does not say that Mary was afraid. To be sure, Gabriel tells her not to be afraid, but it’s like he’s delivering his line because he has to. The storyteller carefully omits any mention of fear on Mary’s part, describing her actions instead with words that imply careful and competent analytical thought. This matters, perhaps most of all.

After Mary has chosen to take on the task of giving birth to the one who will be given the throne of David (Gabriel’s promise), she runs to the hill country of Judea to her auntie, Elizabeth. Zechariah is still silent, so the scene that plays out involves only Elizabeth and Mary with speaking roles. Mary, in fact, sings, which is always a significant act. Poetry and music deepen the impact of what is said. And that is certainly the result of what Mary sings. 

Gabriel had promised she would give birth to a king. Mary sings that God is acting to turn the world right-side-up: those who are oppressed will be lifted up, and those who are hungry will be filled with good things. Those with power and privilege will get a chance to experience poverty and emptiness, just in case those conditions are as morally instructive as they have always said they were. And Mary ties all of this into the promises made to God’s people, beginning with Abraham. Her song takes Gabriel’s words and expands them, giving them more specificity and greater historical depth.

And then she goes home, pregnant and powerful.

After Elizabeth gives birth, and when it is time for the story to stop so John can be circumcised, when the gathered family won’t accept that Elizabeth knows what to name her son, Zechariah confirms what she has said and recovers his voice. He sings. And his song reveals that during his silence he was listening to Mary as she sang. His song goes far beyond what Gabriel had promised, but his song is clearly aware of what Mary had sung. Mary recognized the enemies surrounding God’s people. So does Zechariah. Mary sang of the God whose Name and actions amount to Mercy. So does Zechariah. Mary links all of this eruption of divine activity to the promises made to God’s people all the way back to Abraham. So does Zechariah. 

All of this matters in the story Luke is telling. It is a story full of memory and promise. It is a story that reminds us that dangerous enemies are real, but that we face them in the company of family. When Mary takes on the task of being untimely pregnant in order to bring the Messiah into the world, she knows there might be members of her family who will see this as an offense against the family’s “honor.” This puts her at risk of being the victim of the loathsome ancient practice (still in evidence in our world, in fact) of “honor-killing.” So she runs to the protection of her auntie Elizabeth, an eminence in the story whom no one would challenge. 

When the threat comes from family members obsessed with “honor,” power, and patriarchy, the auntie in the story turns things right-side-up again. When the people of God are surrounded by enemies, the family finds its courage in memory and promise. And the storyteller emphasizes all this by having Zechariah listen to his young kinswoman Mary and pick up the song that she sang first. Clearly, this is a family in which the hearts of the old are turned to the young, and vice versa. Such families can rise up out of disasters and despair.

This matters because Luke’s story is told in the aftermath of the crushing of the first Jewish revolt against Rome (66–74 CE). The enemies were not imaginary; they were the Roman legions that exercised brutal power in the land of promise.

Twice in this warm and remarkable thanksgiving section Paul mentions the day of Christ. Most of Paul’s letters contain a section where he gives thanks for those to whom he is writing. Close to the start of a letter Paul almost always details his thankful prayers for his addressees. Sometimes, as in Philippians, he will mention the day of Christ (1 Corinthians 1:9) or, alternatively, the return of Christ (1 Thessalonians 1:10). It is only in Philippians, however, that Paul twice mentions the day of Christ as he records his prayer of thanks.  

The thanksgiving or prayer report in Philippians is evidently warm (Paul clearly feels deep affection for “the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi” [1:1]), and it is also remarkable. Not only do we notice that Christ’s Parousia is mentioned twice, but it is done so by someone who is chained in prison; Paul writes these words while he is imprisoned (1:13) and has been brought face to face with his mortality (1:19–25). Perhaps this particular circumstance goes some way to explain the intensity of feeling in 1:3–11.

Mention of the day of Christ foreshadows a strong theme of Philippians. Throughout the letter Paul shines a light on his conviction, as he says in 4:4, that the Lord is at hand. He mentions the day of Christ at 2:16 and, in one of his most explicit descriptions of the life of faith in Christ, says, “Our citizenship is in heaven and from it we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (3:20). Paul’s conviction is that the event of Christ’s return will mean that believers will be given transformed bodies like Christ’s glorious body (3:21). The apostle speaks about this elsewhere as obtaining the resurrection from the dead (3:11).

The import of Christ’s return is, however, not only the wondrous expectation of being given glorious resurrection bodies. It is also, and perhaps primarily, the need to focus on the characters and dispositions of those who will inhabit such bodies. Here Paul echoes what he says in 1 Thessalonians. The saints need to focus on abounding in love, which will, by God’s power, allow them to be “pure and blameless for the day of Christ” (1:10; see also 1 Thessalonians 3:12). In his letter to Philippi the apostle fills out this exhortation in ways that go beyond his words to the Thessalonians.  

Paul says that he prays that the Philippians’ love would abound. The Greek word perisseuō  signifies great abundance, overflowingness, extreme richness. Paul emphasizes the idea of growth by adding “more and more” to the word “abound.” This is a call for continual and increasing growth in love. Since such growth is initiated by God—the one who began a good work in them (1:6)—and since such growth is enabled by God (hence Paul’s prayer for them; 1:9), we might best understand this to be a prayer that the believers increasingly reflect God’s love. 

When in the next chapter Paul describes Christ’s self-giving love (2:6–8)—the opposite of selfish ambition and conceit (2:3)—the apostle clarifies that Christ is the perfect reflection of God’s love. Christ’s humility and obedience (2:8) are signs of his love (2:1). It is this quality of love that Paul asks the Philippians to emulate: “If there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love” (2:1–2).

The nature of the love Paul calls for is qualified by its being accompanied by knowledge and all understanding (1:9; the Greek word is aisthēsis, which appears only here in the New Testament, though it occurs frequently in Proverbs denoting moral understanding and discernment). 

Paul calls for love that is discerning and courageous, not simply tolerating everything in everyone; love that has insight and wisdom; love that reflects the moral character of God as reflected in Christ. Love that, as Paul goes on to say, approves what really matters (ta diapheranta; 1:10). Paul prays that his converts would excel in love that is discerning and focused on what is most important, which, in Paul’s mind, is the achievement of purity and blamelessness—nothing less than the holiness of God.

Paul’s expectation that all in heaven and on earth and under the earth shall bend the knee at the name of Jesus and confess that he is Lord (2:10) is rooted in the apostle’s conviction that God mightily approves of Christ’s humble and obedient love. Essentially, Christ’s triumphant return is vindication of the victory of love. It is in love of this nature that Paul hopes the Philippians will abound so that, at Christ’s return, they are all they can be. Paul’s hope is that when the Philippians receive glorious bodies like Christ’s, their characters also will reflect that of Christ.

The reward of lives lived with such love is that they will be “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory of and praise of God” (1:11). Paul expects that he and his converts will flourish in righteousness—not their own righteousness, but that which is sourced in Jesus Christ and is equivalent to the righteousness of God (see also 3:9). The stance of such righteousness on the part of believers is the same as that of Jesus Christ—it is all for the glory of God (1:11; see also 2:11). In other words, Paul expects the Philippians to grow into the likeness of Christ, God’s Son, whose humble and obedient life was entirely focused on doing God’s will.  

This letter illuminates the balance Paul perceives of God working in believers (1:6) and believers themselves working out their salvation (2:12) with athletic rigor (3:12–17). 

In Philippians Paul is realistic about his mortality and convinced of the bodily immortality that he will share with Christ and fellow believers at Christ’s second advent. He exhorts his converts to prepare for this transformation by participating in God’s salvific work in them—the increase of love which equates to flourishing in the righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.