Have you known someone who set an extra place at the table for an ‘unexpected guest’? Maybe Jesus, or Elijah, or a prophet? Or perhaps an angel, lest they entertain one unawares and badly?
Early in the days after Herod reigned in Judea, the people of the land expected Elijah or someone like him. They just didn’t know who, or when, that prophet would appear.
In no way did some ordinary household expect his arrival, any more than an ordinary elderly couple expected a late-life child. “I am old, and my wife is getting on in years.”
Pious temple-priest family as they were, Elizabeth and Zechariah did not see themselves as look-alikes to Abraham and Sarah, or Hannah and Elkanah, or the parents of Samson. Those were stories in the Bible they read, for sure, but they were centuries, even millenia, old. Part of the tradition, not a daily hope.
And yet. The unexpected met - and exceeded - all expectations. One like Elijah did come, and come he did to that small family. They rejoiced at the unexpected and their neighbors rejoiced with them.
And yet. And yet. Knowing what they knew, separately or together, they named their child John - beloved of God, sign of God’s favor, and grace.
"What then will this child become?” Everybody asked. And nobody answered quite what they came to see.
John, son of a priest and of the line of the first priest, Aaron, did not hold on to these things, and sought no position within the temple structure. Instead he went out to the undeveloped country, the land around the river, where he began to do his work.
He proclaimed and preached and called to all the people to turn aside from any way but God’s way; to prepare themselves as a straight road through the wilderness, a highway for their God. And on that road, that path of faith and hope, they would return to obedience and holy living.
The universality of his message was clear, as was his welcome. Tax collectors and soldiers, Herodian or imperial, were among the many motley crowd who took baptism under his hand.
What then should we do? They asked. He had some practical advice. And then something more: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!”
JRL+
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