On this second Sunday of Advent, we explore how the prophets prepare the way for people to turn towards God and look at the loving plan of salvation that he has prepared.  God’s promise in Malachi is to send two messengers, the first is understood to be John the Baptist, the second is Jesus the Messiah. The prophet sees God’s loving plan for his people taking shape in the re-establishment of the purified Temple worship at the heart of national life, following their return from exile in Babylon after 537 BC. Malachi’s images of purification – using refiner’s fire and launderer’s soap, suggest that God is serious about forgiveness. God doesn’t simply forgive, as if with a shrug of the shoulders. Forgiveness is demanding and costly, and it lies at the heart of worship that is ‘pleasing to the Lord’. 

Then we move onto Luke1: 68-79. This passage is known as the Song of Zechariah. The elderly priest has been mute since he refused to believe the angel Gabriel’s message that his wife Elizabeth would bear a son who would be ‘great in the sight of the Lord’. Here, filled with the Holy Spirit, he breaks his silence and praises God for fulfilling his loving plan to free his people from their enemies. It is a mark of his confidence in God that he can celebrate the coming of the long-promised Saviour before he is even born, He knows that God’s purposes for Israel are unshakeable and have deep roots in his promises to Abraham and the house of David.  Notice how broadly-based God’s salvation is: deliverance from foreign oppression and the fear this induces, so that his people can be free to serve God; forgiveness alongside political freedom. These often come together in the prophets, who see defeat and captivity as the consequence of Israel’s repeated unfaithfulness like the prophets before him, Zechariah rejoices because God prefers to remember his ancient promises and plans rather than Israel’s chronic failures. As God’s messenger and prophet, his son John will herald the dawning of a new age. Its freedom and forgiveness will be like the light of a new day that rises on those who have lived for too long in the dark night of exile and foreign occupation. Light that shines by God’s ‘tender mercy’ is a reliable guide for the coming new world that the promised saviour will bring,
one that is at peace with itself because God’s loving plans for all people are at last being revealed and realised. 

In Luke 3:1-6 we see the ministry of John the Baptist that heralds the start of Jesus’ ministry, Luke is careful to root John’s proclamation in the period of Roman occupation. Tiberius rules through Pilate and the Herodian royal family. Annas and Caiphas owe their priestly authority in Jerusalem to the same emperor. By contrast, John is directed by ‘the word of God’ a prophetic call.   God’s loving plans for the world are taking shape in unlikely places. The wilderness was a region of complaint, rebellion and testing, where God’s people seemed to have lost their way to freedom.  
But for one prophet at least, it would be a hopeful place of new beginnings, which is why John is there, preparing the way of the Lord by offering a simple ritual of washing to symbolise God’s call to repent. John calls all peoples to prepare to meet Jesus, that includes you and me, no matter what your standings with religious organisations are, don’t let feelings of being an outsider cause you to hold back. No one who wants to follow Jesus Christ is an outsider in Gods Kingdom.