The Beginning is Near (Luke 1 & 3)

"Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness" ©2013 Kehinde Wiley | Seattle Art Museum

This sermon was originally preached at on December 8, 2024 at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN.
The service may be viewed in full here. The sermon may be viewed below. The Gospel texts for the Second Sunday in Advent are Luke 1:67-79 and Luke 3:1-6.

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Good morning Gethsemane and welcome to the second week of Advent. Having just closed a year in Mark’s gospel, and coming now to the beginning of a new one, I want to begin by orienting us within the framework of Luke, because each gospel is written a particular way for a particular audience in a particular place. Matthew, we know, was written by and for Christian Jews who’d broken communion with Pharisee-led Judaism; and Mark’s addressed a community of readers within the Roman Empire but beyond Palestine and the reach of Jewish Customs.

In contrast to both of those, the Physician Luke is a highly-cultured, well-traveled Gentile convert, educated in classical Greek philosophy, literature, language, and logic whose general audience are Greco-Roman Gentiles. More specifically, though, according to the opening dedication of his gospel, he writes to and for the Most Excellent Theophilus, a high-ranking man of considerable wealth and status — possibly a governor or other political leader — who’d been financially supporting Luke’s dear friend the Apostle Paul, and who had learned a little about Jesus, but needed some assurances from a trusted source. And having himself investigated everything carefully from start to finish, Luke sets out to provide an orderly account of Jesus’s life and ministry, with a literary elegance and artistry his highborn friend and wider Greco Roman audience would appreciate. It is, in equal measure:

• A masterfully poetic Hellenistic Biography of Jesus Christ;
• A captivating narrative that transports readers into the dire divisions between conquered peoples who are pitted against each other, amidst increasingly dangerous conflicts of power between the occupied and their religious and political rulers; And
• Scriptural commentary and Theological treatise “attesting to the fulfillment of ‘everything written about [Jesus] in the Law, Prophets, and Psalms’” (Tiede, HarperCollins Study Bible: Introduction to Luke, p.1945).

It is an Epic True Story about the collision of human, divine, and demonic forces within the body of One very real person who walked this earth in place and time. 

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