I am so happy to be back in the Land of Luke in our Sunday gospel readings. I appreciate Luke’s emphases on healing, justice, the work of the Holy Spirit, highlighting Jesus’ compassion, and friendships with women and people marginalized by disease, ethnicity, poverty, wealth or sin. And maybe it’s the medical training (if the author of this Gospel and Acts is Luke the physician mentioned in the latter work…), but Luke is often very precise in his reportage, telling the story as fully and accurately as possible.
So it is that, before he tells us about John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness, he gives us the who, what, when and where:
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, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.
Luke gives us the lay of the land, the context – exactly when this story took place, the locations that were germane, the political figures of import, and the spiritual leaders. He even tells us whose son John was, and where he was when this word of God came to him.
This is more than attention to historical detail. Luke reminds us that this great story of God’s intervention in Gods own creation isn't just a mythic tale – it is specific. It happened to real people in real places, facing real challenges and circumstances. Our Good News is infinite and universal – and as specific as a unique person born to a particular family in a particular place and community. Theologians even have a term for this: the scandal of particularity. (Trot that out at your next dinner party...)
The power of the human incarnation of the Son of God is for all people in all times and places. But that incarnate person, Jesus, was rooted in a specific time and place. So are you. So am I. The infinite and universal Love of God has also shown up in your particular person and circumstances, family, networks, preoccupations and prejudices. You first encountered the Gospel in a particular setting and person and community, just as Christ-in-you is the best way that people around you will get to know God.
Where was it that you first encountered the Living God? When? Who was in authority, and who was important in your life? What was happening in the world around you? Take some time to recall the circumstances in which the revelation of God’s love first became real to you.
That’s your story within the Great Story. We can only effectively share the Great Story if we begin with how God showed up for us - and that story is always specific.
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