Great Men

Scripture: The Second Sunday of Advent, A.D. 2015 C

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

There’s something called the “Great Man” theory of history, which basically argues that our human story jumps ahead in fits and spurts due to the actions of a few rare yet remarkable geniuses who emerge every couple generations to change our world. These are the great conquerors, philosophers, scientists, industrialists, revolutionaries, inventors, authors, and god-kings who by sheer force of personality forge the world around them to suit their mighty wills—while the rest of us get dragged along kicking and screaming into history’s new and brighter day.

Famous people, in other words, make the world go ‘round. We see this notion alive and well today in our media cults of personality. Celebrities and politicians work by an entirely different set of rules. For them the impossible seems possible. We want to be like them, be famous like them, be rich like them, because they change the world; they matter. We don’t.

In opposition to this rather Nietzschean worldview stands the sociological theory of history, which states that historical progress occurs upon the surge of social change, inevitable as the tide. The great men of history didn’t really do much of anything in and of themselves. They just rode the cresting wave of the masses. If they hadn’t been at the forefront, someone else would’ve served as the figurehead. Popular fashion, in other words, makes the world go ‘round—the zeitgeist, the so-called “right side of history”.

But I don’t find either of these theories particularly convincing. History is not shaped by the herculean will of god-kings who stride above we mere mortals. Nor is it the product of anonymous social forces that drag us along like debris in a flood. History is the product of individual human beings whose choices matter, because every choice we make, for good or for evil, ripples out from us to affect all of those around us, to friends and loved ones and strangers and enemies and who-knows-whom down the line.

Our choices influence their choices. And like a pebble in a lake, or a string in a symphony, or a fly in a web, our tiniest actions may have profound consequences the likes of which we simply cannot foresee. We who may seem so powerless have far greater importance than we realize.

The second Sunday of Advent always focuses on John the Baptist, and for good reason. John is the prophesied forerunner of the Messiah, the herald foretold centuries before his birth. He is the spearhead of the Incarnation, the forward skirmisher of Christmas. Everything that Jesus does, John does first. John is spoken of in the prophets of old, just like Jesus. John’s birth is miraculously foretold and facilitated by an angel, with a joyful mother and her dubious husband, just as it is with Jesus. John’s birth is greeted with song, his ministry with acclaim, and his mission with cruel and unjust execution—just like Jesus.

The difference, of course, is that John is not the Messiah, though some would claim him so. John is not Emmanuel, God-With-Us, God made flesh. Instead, his job is to prepare the world for the Messiah, to make straight the paths of the Lord, to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom of God in the Person of Jesus Christ. It is a job that he performs by the Spirit and power of God, and he faithfully stays the course to the end. “Truly I tell you,” sayeth the Lord, “among those born of women, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist.” John was a great man.

And yet the star of this morning’s story, for me at least, is not John but his father Zechariah, whose song, the Benedictus, we sang as our psalm this morning. We don’t know terribly much about Zechariah. He wasn’t what you’d call a great man of history. He was, in fact, a relatively obscure priest, getting on in years, with no children to call his own. 2,000 years ago, childlessness was a deep source of shame. Without sons and daughters, there would be none to support you in your dotage, none to carry on your name, none to perform your duties after you were gone. You had failed.

One night, as Zechariah performed his priestly duties offering incense before the altar, an angel appeared to him in glory and announced that his wife Elizabeth, though barren in her old age, would nonetheless conceive by him a son; and that this child would be none other than the forerunner of the Messiah, John the Baptist. And as a sign of God’s promise fulfilled, Zechariah was struck dumb, unable to speak for the entirety of his wife’s pregnancy, until the eighth day after birth. Then, as Zechariah affirmed in writing the promise given unto him by the angel Gabriel, his tongue was loosened and he immediately broke into song.

And this is what he sang to his newborn son:

You child, will be called prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare His ways, to give knowledge of salvation to His people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Zechariah was not a great man. We have no record of any remarkable discoveries or deeds or conquests in his life. He did absolutely nothing noteworthy other than to be a faithful husband to his wife and a faithful servant to his God. And now, at the end of his life, in his twilight years, he is overcome by the glory of what God has done through him, through his simple, humble life. If Zechariah never did anything else other than to lovingly father this child, it wouldn’t matter, because simply by being a father, he transformed our world. God transformed it through him.

Every choice that we make matters, because every choice has repercussions far down the chain of being that we cannot possibly foretell. We are like a single thread in a tapestry that cannot see its purpose in the grand design. Yet in the eyes of God each of us has a purpose, a role, a beauty all our own contributing to the whole. That’s why God is so concerned with each and every person, high and low, rich and poor, great and small. God can see the entire tapestry, and the value we hold within it: how it would be lessened by the breaking of even a single strand; how a small act of faith can hold the whole thing together, or a small breach of sin cause a massive, jagged tear.

It is not great men wielding great power that hold our world together. Nor do faceless forces govern our fate. Rather, it is the small and everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay, small acts of kindness and love. Little wonder, then, that God holds the common man in such high esteem. It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life. We’ll never know, this side of the grave, the full repercussions of our sins. But neither can we imagine the wonders God may work through us when we offer to Him an honest, bold, and everyday life of faith.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.