The Gospel for the Second Sunday of Advent this year introduces the last great prophet before Jesus Christ, John the Baptist. The evangelist Luke places the story of the John the Baptist into a specific known moment of human history. We are told that it is the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar and during the rule of Pontius Pilate as governor and Herod as tetrarch of Galilee. Finally, we learn he is the son of Zechariah, a priest married to Elizabeth. John was miraculously given to them in their elder years as they had been childless.
While the names of Pontius Pilate and Herod are verified as real historical persons, there is no historical evidence of John the Baptist, his parents, their barrenness and their miraculous conception of their son. To modern and skeptical ears, this story seems like a myth—clearly lacking verifiable details. As we delve further into this story, the other important persons – Joseph, Mary, and even Jesus – will be presented to us as real historical persons even though there is no scientific or archeological evidence of them.
It helps to understand that the gospels were written to teach us the truth regarding Jesus Christ. The evangelist, in this case Luke, just like the others, Matthew, Mark, and John, is not writing a historical account. They are not historians or reporters; they are theologians. Theologians tell us the story of God’s mysterious action in our world. The Gospels are informing us that God has actively intervened and entered into human history. This is the meaning of the well-known phrase “the Word made flesh.”
Similarly, our Eucharist is not a purely historical event. It is instead a mystical encounter with God who stands both in history and outside of history. While all of us will continue to struggle with skepticism and a desire to understand things, belief is a willing surrender to the inexplicable mystery and truth of God. This Advent season, once again, invites us to journey with those elusive unrecorded historical persons of long ago—John the Baptist, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary—and find in our believing, the Way, the Truth and the Life.
