“Once upon a time…”
it’s how lots of good stories start. Stories that teach us, that warm our hearts.
But that’s not how Luke starts a story.
No, Luke starts with names and dates:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,…
This didn’t happen once upon a time, Luke is saying, it happened at a very particular time, in a very particular context. In a year and place when Rome ruled the known world; when the country was governed by specific foreign appointees who levied heavy taxes, and even the Temple, the house of God, was managed by men appointed by the emperor.
In that particular setting, the word of God came to the wilderness. To this particular man called John.
Luke is setting us up for a different kind of expectation than “once upon a time”. This isn’t a story to warm our hearts, it’s a news report that affects our lives.
With two thousand years of distance, the details of this story may sound more mythical than journalistic to you and me. And many of Luke’s early readers might have heard the phrases that echo the launch of Ezekiel and other prophets centuries in their own past and thought “yeah, the word of the Lord… it’s a nice metaphor, but that doesn’t really happen these days.”
But Luke wants his readers – wants us – to step away from the comfort of myth and recognize this coming of the word of God, as something that genuinely happens in our world, in our reality. As part of the history we live through that you’re as likely to see on the evening news as a local fire or flood, the latest Covid variant or Supreme Court case, or the launch of a space telescope. As likely to feel as today’s weather, as likely to respond to as an urgent email or call from your boss.
It’s real, this coming of God. Something that’s going to impact our lives, our neighborhood, our government. Something we in fact need to prepare for.
Prepare for with the leveling of mountains and valleys; the actual re-shaping of the earth around us, no less.
Luke’s quote about mountains and valleys from the prophet Isaiah may not help us feel like this is happening to us. You and I are very much out of the habit of expecting the earth to move under our feet. It’s not usual for us to expect that God will actually reshape the earth while we watch.
(We’re more used to the smoothing of the rough and the straightening of the crooked and the finding of ways through mountains and bridging of valleys taking years and years of orange cones blocking off lanes of highways – not to mention half a decade of wrangling to get to an infrastructure bill to pay for all that!)
So Luke anchors us in the calendars and politics that should feel real, so that we’re ready to pay attention to – and actively be part of – the equally real removal of barriers between us and God.
Some of those barriers are less tangible than mountains, but can seem just as insurmountable.
Like the constant pressure of busy-ness and expectations many of us experience, that makes it feel like there’s just no time to be still in the presence of God – or makes it hard to let God claim some of the time on our calendars.
Others might be trapped in uncrossable valleys of isolation because of illness or painful relationships or limits on travel or technology, unable to reach and spend time with the people who help us most naturally experience God’s presence.
Others find that complacency – comfort with the way things are, even when we don’t like the way things are – traps us in detours and byways, needing help to straighten out our path to the closeness with God we deeply desire.
Still others are surrounded by the rough, treacherous, terrain of the modern conditions of poverty or prejudice. Wondering – honestly not knowing – if you’re going to be able to feed your family dinner this week can cut you off from the sense of God’s abundance, just as surely as getting lost in the desert for years did to the people of Israel.
Losing your home to the financial effects of one unfortunate medical expense can disrupt your connection with God just as brutally as when half of Israel was hauled off to exile in Babylon, and cut off from their Temple.
But God is determined to remove those barriers – the order to fill the valleys and level the hills and make level ground that we heard from the prophet Baruch today is God’s preparation to bring those Babylonian exiles home, removing all the barriers that cut them off from God.
Those are the kind of barriers, too, that Episcopal Community Services of New Jersey is created to help remove – the barriers of contemporary life that isolate us from one another and from God.
Across the diocese, today, congregations have been asked to help launch this work of ECS, a project and network that our bishop has called us to build in order to build connections across this diocese of New Jersey.
Connections among those who are working to relieve the pain of hunger, homelessness, violence, and oppression that can make God feel distant. Connections to unite our voices and actions to help reshape the world – to remove the barriers of unjust laws, abuses of power, or harmful structures and habits of society that keep many of us from thriving and all of us from truly experiencing the presence of Christ in all our neighbors. And connections to provide immediate financial grants to ministries working right now to heal and feed, house and help neighbors in immediate need to bring us all closer to God’s abundance in the world.
(you’ll hear more about that in a few minutes from Linda Carson)
You and I, at Trinity, are also already involved in several kinds of work to remove those barriers of immediate need – led by our Outreach committee and by dedicated staff and volunteers to feed hungry people and bring joy to people who struggle.
Many among us – including the racial reconciliation group – are working to learn how to help remove the mountains of habit and culture that separate people from one another today.
Others – including pastoral care volunteers – are working to bridge the valleys of isolation, illness, and loneliness that can make us feel exiled in our own homes.
All of this, so that God’s way to our hearts is wide open, and so that – whatever terrain we find ourselves in – we can see our way straight home to the heart of God.
Because this coming of God that John’s calling out to us about today isn’t a once upon a time story. It’s a news report of something that has happened, will happen, is happening in the same messy, practical, political, noisy reality that you and I wake up to every day.
John’s out in the wilderness, right now – whether that wilderness is the noisy internet or the cell phone dead spots; the noise of partisan wrangling or the silence of exhausted indifference – in that wilderness, right now, John’s talking to real people, you and me, about the urgent, practical coming of God. And how the real, insurmountable barriers you and I and our neighbors experience must be flattened and removed, because God absolutely won’t be kept out of our real lives. And God won’t let us be kept away from our home in the heart of God.
Not once upon a time,
but in the second year of the Covid pandemic, when Phil Murphy was governor of New Jersey, and the legislatures were re-districting, and Jerome Powell was Chair of the Fed, and Facebook was trying to become Meta,
the word of the Lord comes to the people of Trinity in Moorestown: prepare the way for all barriers to fall – and for your own return to the heart of God, for real, here and now.
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