Luke 3:1-6
Have you ever noticed that events in life, such as untimely deaths or political scandals, tend to come in threes? Michael Jackson’s untimely death was followed by the death of Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett that same week. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the “Big Bopper” all died together in a plane crash in 1959. Jimmy Hendrix, Janice Joplin and Jim Morrison all died within weeks of each other in 1970. Former Governors Eliot Spitzer, Jim McGreevey and Mark Sanford all resigned their elected offices because extra-marital affairs. Did you also know that in a group of 23 people, there is a 50 percent probability that two of them will share a birthday, not necessarily in the same year. The rule of 3 is a powerful one. In baseball, three strikes and you’re out and three outs and the inning is over. How about this: we can go three minutes without breathing, three days without water, and three weeks without food. The Trinity comes in three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The genetic code, the code for life, is based on a trinity of nucleotides each specifying the nature of exactly one amino acid. Three is the magic number.
John’s appearance on the scene a couple millennia ago followed a 400-year period often known as the "silent years," i.e., the period of time between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. In that period of time, there'd been no major prophetic activity.
Suddenly, things get interesting! The rule of three comes into focus. First, "the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness," so our text says. John bursts forth into the region around the Jordan River like he's swinging a baseball bat, looking for the fences: "... proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins," and his hearers quickly conclude that the time of prophetic silence is over. As another gospel writer tells it (John 1:19-23), once John makes clear that he is not himself the Messiah, the crowd immediately concludes that perhaps he is the return of Elijah or "the prophet" (a Moses-like figure, predicted to come; see Deuteronomy 18:15). But John accepts neither of those identities, describing himself only as "the voice of one crying out in the wilderness," a quote from Isaiah. But no matter how John describes himself, the people hear him as a prophetic voice from God. Jesus later calls John a prophet, too (Matthew 11:9).
Then comes along another prophet! First comes John, and then comes Jesus himself. Jesus appears on the scene, more than a prophet, to be sure, but the crowds recognized the prophetic in him as well (see Matthew 21:11). Jesus even called himself a prophet on one occasion (Luke 4:24).
And then, not too much later, along comes Paul! Nobody seems to have called him a prophet per se, but the Lord described Paul's work to Ananias in prophet-like terms, calling him "an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel" (Acts 9:15).
So what's going on here? No prophets of great stature for 400 years, and suddenly there are three!? Those three, to use a term from statistics, were outliers, which refers to something (or someone) situated away from the main group. That is, John, Jesus and Paul were prophets in a way quite different from others who also bore that title during the same time period.
Why is this important?
Because ... of the message these outliers brought to the world. There's a divine agenda behind what happens in the world. John’s main call was for a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; the ritual of cleansing, signifying a return to God with the expectation of forgiveness. In other words, what makes this so important is that the first thing people needed to do was to align themselves with God's plan by repenting and receiving forgiveness for their sins.
Malcolm Gladwell, a former business and science reporter for The Washington Post, addressed this Prophet Clustering or Genius Clustering in his best-selling book Outliers. His research suggests that high IQ itself is overrated and that many people are smart enough to succeed when they have cultural advantages and given the right opportunities -- meaning that they are in the right place at the right time as certain historical developments are occurring. Gladwell says it this way: "The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up".[1]
As an example, in his book Gladwell points out that Bill Joy, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer, Scott McNealy and Eric Schmidt, all power-players in the U.S. computer industry, were all born between 1953 and 1956. Gladwell explains this by noting that Silicon Valley veterans agree that the most important date in the history of the personal computer revolution was January 1975, the month when the magazine Popular Mechanics ran a cover story about the Altair 8800, a desktop computer you could build from a kit at home. This was a significant departure from the huge mainframes that were up to that point the only computers available and were so expensive that only corporations, government agencies and universities could afford them. But now, here was a $397 computer kit you could assemble in your garage.
Gladwell argues that those in the best position to take advantage of this breakthrough were people born between 1953 and 1956. Those in Silicon Valley interested in computers but born before those dates had jobs at IBM, which made mainframes. Once you were part of the mainframe industry, you saw little value in pathetic desktop machines. You belonged to a different paradigm. Likewise, those born after those dates were simply too young to get in on the ground level of the personal-computing revolution.
In other words, it isn't that there aren't people just as smart as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Bill Joy born in the several years before and after them, it is that the same opportunity wasn't available to them.
Now apply all of this to the Jewish population of the first-century Roman Empire. Obviously Jesus, as the Son of God, is a special case, and I am not suggesting that given the right timing of birth and the right placement geographically, any smart Jewish child could have become the Messiah. But we can take this business of opportunity and cultural legacy to mean that many born in the years before or after Jesus and John (and perhaps Paul -- we don't know when he was born) had the potential to become great prophets, too, had the timing been right.
When John first preached in the region around the Jordan, his primary concern was not with everybody treating one another nicely or following the Ten Commandments or fighting for justice for all. John’s main calling was for a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; to align themselves with God's plan by repenting and receiving forgiveness for their sins.
Author C.S. Lewis describes the unrepentant condition as being in a "hole" where we need the help of a friend (i.e., a savior) to get us out. And what sort of hole is it we've gotten ourselves into? For one thing, it's behaving as if we belonged to ourselves. We are not simply imperfect creatures who need improvement; we are rebels who must lay down our arms. "Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realizing that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor -- that is the only way out of a 'hole,'" says Lewis. And this process of surrender is what we call repentance (the Greek "changing the mind" or "turning around"), and it's what John was calling for in his prophetic preaching. [2]
Lewis adds this important note: "... this repentance ... is not something God demands of you before he will take you back and which he could let you off if he chose: it is simply a description of what going back to him is like." We cannot be right with God without repentance; it's like asking God to take us back without actually going back.
In October 1989, the city of San Francisco was struck by a powerful earthquake. Huge cracks appeared in the walls of Candlestick Park, where thousands of fans were waiting to watch the third game of the World Series. Sections of freeway twisted and buckled; some collapsed. At least twenty-seven fires broke out across the city; the largest, in the Marina District, consumed dozens of buildings.
At the edge of the Marina District, a crowd of curiosity-seekers gathered, watching the firefighters as they battled the flames. After a few minutes of this, a police officer came up to the crowd and began shouting at them. "What have you come to look at?" he said to them. "This is no time to be standing around. There's been an earthquake. You all have work to do! Go home. Fill your bathtubs with water (if you still have water). Prepare yourselves to live for the next several days without electricity. The sun's going to set in another hour; your time is running out. The firefighters will do their job here: Now you go home and do yours!"
That police officer spoke truth, as John the Baptist spoke truth. He spoke with urgency, as John the Baptist spoke with urgency. His message, like John's, was what the people truly needed to hear.
What's the message we most need to hear, in these ever-shortening days of Advent? Is it a message of spending and partying and conspicuous consumption? Or is it a message of repentance and forgiveness and faithfulness?
During this Advent season, in what wilderness should our voice be crying out? Where are we needed to proclaim a baptism of repentance? It’s where we play, where we work; it’s in our schools, in our homes, downtown, out in the country, on the highways and the by-ways. We must proclaim this before the seats of power and influence at the courthouse and the statehouse; the White House and the Congressional house. We must proclaim that all people, no matter their race, gender, ethnicity or creed, must repent of our sinful nature and get right with God. In the words of John Donne, “No man is an island…we are all part of the main…”. We are all in this together.
Malcolm Gladwell also writes, "It's impossible for ... any ... outlier ... to look down from their lofty perch and say with truthfulness, 'I did this all by myself.' Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritance, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky --- but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all." [3]
John, Jesus and Paul indeed were a genius cluster. Jesus, of course, is unique because of his divine identity, but, if the outlier research is correct, given the right timing of birth and upbringing in a culture steeped in the Old Testament, many of us might have been able to fulfill the roles John and Paul did in the introduction of Christ to the world. That time has passed, of course, but there is still the opportunity to introduce Christ to new generations, and to tell them of repentance, the path to getting right with God. We can be a John or Paul to those who haven't yet understood that.
[1] Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success.
New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008.
[2] Lewis, C.S. "The perfect penitent." Mere
Christianity. New York: Macmillian Paperbacks, 1960, 56-61.
[3] Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of
Success (New York: Little, Brown and Company,
2008), 285.
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