Names... Advent 2 (with baptism)

 

Philippians 1.3-11, Benedictus and Luke 3.1-6

 

Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, Annas and Caiphas. Judea, Galilee, Ituraea and Trachonitis, Abilene…

Today’s Gospel reading was full of names of people and places – a bit of a challenge to read. But my guess is that most of them meant nothing at all to you. Anyone want to tell me who Lysanius was? Anyone able to point to Trachonitis on a map? (Without googling them, which is what I had to do). Pontius Pilate and Herod might have stirred a memory, and maybe you recognised Galilee, but my guess is that there were quite a few names there that were a complete blank. It’s really tempting to skip over the opening lines of this reading. After all, what have these obscure people and places got to do with anything?

 

But of course, the point is that although these names and places are obscure to us, they wouldn’t have been to the people who first heard Luke’s Gospel. These were people who had been big in the first century world in which Jesus ministered, the ones who had power. Luke wrote his Gospel forty or fifty years after Jesus’ crucifixion, but these would still have been names and places that were remembered, that came freighted with memories and emotions. It would be a bit like me saying  “in the time of Margaret Thatcher” or “when Tony Blair was Prime minister ”. That would trigger a whole raft of associations for us, either from our own memories if we’re old enough to remember those time or from the stories of others. It’s the same with places too. If something happens in a place we know, where we used to live or still do, we sit up and take notice. We might feel a sense of pride. “It’s put Seal on the map” we say,. Or we might feel a sense of shame and surprise. “You don’t expect things like that to happen in your own backyard,”

 

Lysanius, Trachonitis and all the rest were as familiar and as emotive to the people Luke wrote his Gospel for as our own politicians, celebrities, or familiar place names are for us. They locate the story he writes in a particular time and place. It isn’t “long ago and far away”. He’s not writing about some abstract idea. He’s writing about something that happened to people and in places that his hearers might have known or known of. They were famous.

 

And yet it isn’t them who this story is really about. Listen to that first sentence again. “In the fifteenth year of the reign of the 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 Caiphas, the word  came to John son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.” John who? It was a very common name in first century Israel. John, the son of Zechariah. Zechariah who? Oh, just some old priest who worked in the Temple now and then, no one anyone would ever have heard of. And what territory does this John rule over? None at all – he lives out in the wilderness.

 

All that build up, through all those names, but it turns out that a scruffy unknown preacher is the central character in Luke’s story. And the reason for that, of course, is that he is the one who announces that God is on the move, that the Messiah, the leader God had promised is coming, who points the way to Jesus, another apparently obscure person, just a carpenter from Nazareth, with no army to command, and yet between them – John the Baptist, as we know this John, and Jesus – they would change the world. It’s their names which ring out through history, their impact which has lasted, when poor old Lysanias is long forgotten.

 

Names matter. Today in church we’re baptising Harry Benjamin Fuller. He’s not quite five months old yet. I have absolutely no idea what he’ll do when he is grown up. Even his parents are only really starting to get to know him, discovering his personality, his likes and dislikes. So much about little Harry is, as yet, unknown and unknowable, like the many thousands of children who have been baptised here before him. But what we do know is that he is unique, that he comes into the world with gifts to give, blessings to share. He may never be world-famous. He may not find a cure for cancer, or fly to Mars, or play football for England, but he will have an impact on those around him, just as we all do. When we baptise him I will ask for his name, just as I always do, and use it, not because I need to tell God who he is – God already knows– but to remind us that here is someone who the world has never seen before and will never see again, a life that is unique, just as all our lives are.

 

It doesn’t matter whether we are kings or emperors – Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, or Lysanias, whoever he was.  God can, and does, work through anyone, including unconventional desert preachers like John the Baptist, and carpenters from backwater towns, like Jesus, and a whole range of others; ordinary people, odd people, broken people, people whose lives have gone off the rails or hit the buffers or who seem to have nothing much to offer, fishermen and tax collectors and women who are looked down on and despised, All of these, and many more, will turn out to be vital to the story Luke will tell in his Gospel, a story of God’s love for us all, just as all of our lives, whoever we are, whatever we achieve, or don’t,  in the world’s eyes, are vital to God’s work now .

 

So today, whoever we are, whatever our name, whether we are famous or not, the Gospel tells us that we matter. The word of God came to John. The word of God comes to each of us, calling us to prepare the way of the Lord, to sow seeds of love and hope and joy and peace, to play our part in creating communities where people are welcomed and can thrive, filled with the life of God.

Amen.