Commentary
“All Flesh Shall See the Salvation of Our God.”
Luke places John the Baptist
and his preaching in the historical context with a list of names. “In the fifteenth year of the reign of
Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was
tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea
and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood
of Annas and Caiaphas.”
Some of these people we know
because they are mentioned elsewhere in the New Testaments or historical
records.
The names of the Roman Emperor Tiberius
Caesar and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, brings to mind the
oppression and bloodshed that come with the Roman conquest and occupation of
the land. [1]
Pontius Pilate was “a cruel and
malicious” ruler [2], accused of “constant executions without trial, unending grievous
cruelty.” [3] And remember the way he
handled the trial of Jesus?
And the mess in the family of Herod
and Philip! Herod stole the wife of his brother and was responsible for the
death of John the Baptist's death because John told him it was wrong to do so.
Annas and Caiaphas were heads
of the religious leaders that put Jesus to death. There, they behaved more like power-hungry and
cunning dictators than religious leaders.
Not mentioned here, but there were other people who were waiting for the fulfillment of God's promise. John, his parents, Mary and Joseph, the
shepherds, the Magi, the people who came to the desert to listen to John, …
To such a world, to such
reality of the human race, the Lord came.
And “all flesh shall see the salvation of our God.”
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[1] & [2] Diocese of
Saginaw, Michigan. Little Blue Book
for Advent 2012, entry for Tuesday – Second Week of Advent.
[3] The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 1249.
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