Transcript
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord.” Please be seated.
Are you all ready? You all prepared? You know, for Christmas — it’s right around the corner. The influx of family, or travel to family, for the ringing of Santa bells (I saw a couple of us already doing that), and the bright, garish lights in the silver bows for Christmas trees, and trying to keep toddlers or cats or dogs away from those low-hanging ornaments. And also for the baby. The baby, the one whose birth we celebrate every year on December 25th. The baby who, as we say every Sunday, came down from heaven and was made man. The baby who literally changed the very fabric of the our world and redefined what it means to be human. The baby Jesus.
Advent is the season of preparation, after all, and not just because it’s December and we’re all busy preparing for Christmas, preparing for the commercialism of giftgiving. And yes, I did spend several hours this week researching Christmas presents for the kids in my life — misnomer, since most of them are now in college. Advent is also the season of preparation for our lives, for our hearts and our souls to be prepared for the coming of Jesus. The third coming of Jesus.
Did you know there was a third coming of Jesus? Of course you know the first coming of Jesus; after all, that’s literally what we’re talking about, the coming of sweet baby Jesus when he came. And you know the second coming of Jesus, when he comes at the end of times — you’ve heard me preach on that a bit recently. The third coming of Jesus, though, is much more intimate. Way more intimate than a king coming back to judge the living and the dead. Even more intimate than a baby coming into the the world, birthed by a young woman and laid in a manger to sleep.
The third coming of Jesus is the coming of Jesus into our hearts, into our lives, into our very identities as God’s adopted children. It is the decision we make every day to live according to Jesus’s teachings, to be Christians, especially in a world that might rather have us distracted by a jolly old man in a red suit. Although there is nothing wrong with a jolly old man in a red suit; just maybe sometimes he overshadows the real reason for this season, the real reason for us to prepare — not our homes for our Christmas tree, not our wallets for Christmas gift shopping, but our hearts and our lives for Jesus.
In today’s Gospel reading from Luke, we hear John the Baptist refer to a time of preparation. We hear the word from Isaiah’s prophecies; we are told to prepare the way of the Lord. These lines, the last eight lines of the Gospel reading, from “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness” to “and all flesh shall see the salvation of God,” they are the exact same lines as Isaiah 40:3-5. In Isaiah, this is part of the exilic prophecy. It takes place when the Israelites have been expelled from Judah during the 6th and 7th century BCE, but this passage is towards the end of the Exile. This is when the people are officially and actively waiting to return to their homes, to their land, to the place where God called them to be. This part of Isaiah’s prophecy evokes memories of the wilderness, the 40 years of wandering in the desert before finally arriving to that promised land.
And it is no coincidence that John the Baptist also uses these same lines. He was the voice always crying out in the wilderness. He was the one invoking the tradition of wandering through wilderness. He was the one reminding all of us that when we are too busy with other things, when we forget the reason for this time of year, when we get distracted away from God, we must return, repent, prepare the way of the Lord. The lines quoted from Isaiah continue: “Make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.” Almost stepbystep directions on how to prepare.
And I’m curious how many of us today have crooked paths or deep valleys or high mountains and hills in our own lives — things that distract us from the real message of this season. And not just this season, but the season of being Christian, of being followers of Christ. How many of us so desperately try to fill that wilderness and wandering with our own created valleys and mountains? I know I did. In an attempt to preparing my own way, I dug valleys and piled up mountains. I veered off the straight path, journeying the crooked and rough ways.
You’ve heard my story; you know how it goes. I built up a mountain when I was 16 and decided I wanted to be a professional ballerina, but that was made low when at 18 I injured my ankle and at 20 had to get it reconstructed. I dug a valley when I decided my next life plan was foreign aid and diplomacy, joining the Peace Corps at age 22, and that valley was very quickly filled when I was evacuated from an active war zone less than 18 months after arriving in country. I continued down a crooked path when I pursued academia in the high-tech industry, working with nuclear scientists and National Laboratories, thinking maybe I could bring about world peace through thought and technology. But that path was straightened out and smoothed over when my company was defunded by the government. And then at the end, realizing I was making the rough and crooked journey of my own creation, that’s when I finally heard my God intervention calling me to ordained ministry.
You know, it’s probably not a coincidence that my religious experience happened during Advent, during the time when we’re so busy preparing for other things that perhaps sometimes we forget to include time to prepare for Jesus. Time to be still, to wait, to pray, to listen.
Preparation for Jesus isn’t like our other usual ways of preparing. It doesn’t require to-do lists — or several, if you’re like me, colorcoded, of course, course. It doesn’t require cleaning and shopping. In fact, it really doesn’t require doing anything. Instead, I think preparing for Christmas, preparing for Jesus, requires not doing things, requires not filling our time with errands and chores and appointments and assignments. Instead, I think preparing for Christmas, for Jesus, is about waiting, and know that in the waiting, the very act of not doing anything, we are preparing ourselves, our homes, our lives, our hearts, our souls for all the comings of Jesus: the first one as a baby laid in a manger, the second one as a king to judge and rule, and the third one in our hearts as a guide and a guardian, as love.
Last week Derek invited us to consider the fact that Advent is the beginning of the church year, and he invited us to create something like a New Year’s resolution, but for our church and for our faith, asking ourselves, what is God calling me to be? What is God calling me to do this season of Advent? For the next few weeks leading up to Christmas, while you’re busy putting up decorations and baking cookies and wrapping presents, I invite you to also take time to prepare your heart, to listen for God’s call to each of you, to prepare your soul for the coming of Christ, the coming of Jesus, and then to prepare the way, whatever that looks like for you.
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
Amen.