We hear this list of names at the beginning of this third chapter of Luke’s account, and we probably don’t think much about it.  There are so many lists of names in the Bible.  This list is doing at least two things: it is putting a fairly precise date on the ministry of John the Baptist, and it is putting the action into a larger context of politics, power, rule, law, and of hope and faith.  Tiberius Caesar, the third emperor, reigned from 14 to 37 AD.  The fifteenth year of Tiberius would be 29, give or take a few months.  Luke is not recording myth or legend.  Luke is recording historical fact.  John the Baptist was an actual, historical person.  So, too, was Jesus.  The further we get from those times, the more important it is to remember that we are dealing with actual people and actual events.

Luke is mapping out the power picture for us, at the time of Jesus.  We get a mental map of those with earthly power: Herod, who ruled the region around the large western arc of the Sea of Galilee, Herod’s brother Philip, who ruled the region to the east and southeast of Galilee, someone named Lysanias, ruling over Abilene—poor soul!—only this Abilene was a region to the north-northeast of Galilee.  Then there is Pilate, Prefect of Judea, of whom we will hear more in about three months.  Pilate was prefect, governor, from 27 to 37, the year Tiberius died.  Like changes of administration in our own times, a new emperor wanted his own people in charge.  Herod died sometime after 39, the year when the new emperor, Caligula, banished Herod to Gaul (France).  Philip had died earlier, in 34 or so.

We don’t know just when Lysanias died.  We do know from coins unearthed in the region that he styled himself High Priest as well as ruler, fusing political and religious power in himself.  The Roman emperor was officially regarded as a god.  This was hardly a new development.  In Egypt (by that time part of the Roman Empire), the pharaohs had been regarded as divine.  That combination of political and religious power inculcated in the people the conviction that there was no alternative to the men who ruled them on earth.  An appeal to God was an appeal to the emperor.  An appeal to the emperor was an appeal to God.

We’re also told the names of the men who were high priests in Jerusalem at that time.  It’s easy to forget they were priests, since they don’t act very priestly in the Gospel accounts.  What they seem mostly interested in is preserving the Jewish people, then under Roman rule.  The Romans may have gotten the taxes, but the priests had the allegiance of the people, insofar as an entire people will give full allegiance to anyone.

So, we start in 29 AD, in Judea, which was in the Roman Empire.  We know the Roman Empire was a big thing: you can see evidence of their accomplishments in Europe and around the Mediterranean region to this day.  What we might not grasp is that the Roman Empire stretched from the North Sea beaches of Germany to the even by then ancient temple of Ramses II along the Nile at Abu Simbel.  The empire reached from Lisbon, Portugal to Jerusalem in Judea: an area maybe just a bit larger than the continental US.  Rome was the center.  Italy was the center.  Judea was a hot, dusty, frontier outpost, filled with hostiles, religious fanatics.  It was violent.  It was important, because a stone’s throw to the east was the Parthian Empire, Rome’s greatest nemesis in those decades.

Here are the rulers, then, the earthly powers, the man-gods who controlled the destinies of peoples.  How insignificant they all seem, now!  Except perhaps for Tiberius, from whom Captain Kirk apparently got his middle name—right!  The only one who still has any significance for us is the least and the lowest whom Luke lists: John the Baptist.  John had no kingdom, no people.  He was no ruler, no god.  What was he?  He was a proclaimer, in the wilderness.  If there is any place you are least likely to have an audience, it is in the wilderness.  Go ahead, go out to Big Bend Park and proclaim.

Well, it wasn’t as if John just sat on a rock under the sun and shouted himself hoarse to the brush and the dust and the wind.  He went about the whole region of the Jordan River (3:3).  He took his proclamation with him.  Do we take our proclamation with us?  Do we make our proclamation where we go?  With whom have you spoken about Jesus, this year?

John has this to say—it’s still a powerful message!—God will forgive (3:3).  If you don’t feel the power of that message, either you’re dead, or you haven’t lived long enough or fully enough.  God will forgive!

But something else is there, too, something John says first: turn, and be baptized (3:3).  Turn.  Go another way.  Get onto the right road.  When you see the sign that says Dead End, and you speed up, what do you think is going to happen?  When you see the sign that says Wrong Way, and you keep going, what do you think is going to happen?  God forgives those who turn to Him.  To turn to God is to turn away from what we were pursuing before: self, pleasure, career, success, power, authority, wealth, “experiences,” family, “love,” happiness, stability—as if any of those were or could be the pinnacle of fulfillment, the goal of human existence.  But isn’t love the goal?  Isn’t happiness the goal?  And what does the world tell us, teach us, about love? about happiness?  Is the sin-addled human heart a reliable guide?  Isn’t God, isn’t God’s Word, a much more reliable source?  So, God is the goal, for only God can teach us and show us true wealth, true power, true success, true love, true happiness.

So turn.  Turn now.  Turn while there’s still time.  You can.  John wouldn’t say Turn if you couldn’t.  God doesn’t say turn when you can’t turn.  God says Turn because He means to help you to turn, and if God is going to help you, yes you can turn.

Be baptized.  Is there anyone here today who has not been baptized?  You know, we do baptize here, and not just babies.  If you haven’t been baptized yet, what’s holding you back?  God forgives those who turn to Him.  Among other things, Baptism is a sign of desiring, of receiving, and of accepting forgiveness from God.  If God forgives you, you are forgiven indeed.  God holds out forgiveness to you: turn to God, give yourself to Him, and receive His gift.  You have to want it, though.  What do you do with a gift that you don’t want?  What is a gift that you don’t want?

John knows his Isaiah; do you know Isaiah?  It pays to read and ponder that prophet.  Maybe that’s an Advent devotional for you.  Isaiah is long; start at Chapter Forty.  John enacts what we read, there.  He is the voice in the wilderness, instructing us to prepare the way.  How?  The summer before I began college, I worked for the county, on a road crew.  One of the engineers took me under his wing.  We were driving down a road that had been newly repaved.  He was very pleased with how it had turned out.  Not being an engineer myself, I thought he was getting a little too excited about a road.  Have you ever had to drive on a bad road, or what maybe sort of used to be kind of a road, back in the day?

I come into East Columbia on little 300J, which isn’t too bad until you get about halfway to Market Street.  Rough road.  I never really wanted to drive a Corvette—well, I do—but I pity the driver who makes the mistake of taking a car like that onto 300J.

Since my work that summer, I have come to appreciate good roads.  Good roads are straight and smooth.  They are not crooked.  When I drive up to Houston via 99, I like to go up Cow Creek, a.k.a. County Road 25.  It’s a nice drive.  It’s not a straight drive.  I’m amazed that I don’t hear ambulances more often, speeding north past Columbia Lakes, for yet another single-vehicle accident on CR 25.  It’s not a bad road, but I wouldn’t call it a really good road, either.  It’s not the shortest distance between two points.

Isaiah says that the valleys shall be filled and the mountains brought low.  Jesus, like Scripture, often speaks of how the exalted shall be brought low, and how the lowly shall be exalted.  This is how I hear what Luke shares from Isaiah, in describing the proclamation and ministry of John the Baptist.  The lowly, the humble, the poor—however you name those who long for deliverance here on earth—they will be filled, filled with encouragement, with hope and blessing, filled with Good News, up-built.  Who are the lowly?  They are the ones who turn.  They are the ones who go under the waters.  They are the ones who weep, yearning for forgiveness, who weep with joy because they know they have been forgiven.

The mountains will be leveled off, brought low, brought down.  The false foundations upon which they had built will fail them.  Those who lord it over others, those who lack charity—from a Latin word for love—those who are not merciful, those who take out their own angers on others, especially others who are weaker, smaller, those who would turn to anything rather than turn to God: all these shall be brought low.  In joy or else in dismay, all will acknowledge the power of God; all will acknowledge that God alone has power: power to save, power to transform, power to give life.  The way of God shall be straight and smooth, by blessing and by chastisement, and God shall be all in all.

All will see the salvation from God (3:6).  There was a time when there was no Columbia Lakes, some of you know very well.  A road was made.  This was a sign, a very visible, indisputable sign of development.  Development is preparation.  Something is happening, and something will be happening.  A road changes the wilderness, the land, changes our perspective on the land.  God calls us to make a way in the wilderness, which is a way through the wilderness.  We may remember something about a wilderness journey mentioned somewhere or other in the Bible.  I think the wilderness Isaiah also means, that John also means, that Jesus also means, is the wilderness of the human heart.  God has made a way, called deliverance, salvation.

God has made the way, and He calls us to prepare the way.  There is something for us to do, something given to us to do: proclaim and prepare.  Proclaim the way to others through word and deed—both deed and word.  Don’t be offensive about it; be persistent, be patient, be prayerful.  Prepare the way in yourself, in the wilds of your own heart: smooth the rough places, straighten the crooked places.  That’s work!  How to do it?  The only way you can, the only way you need: with God, through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever!