Second Advent
Mark 1:1-8; Isaiah 40:1-11; 2 Peter 3:8-15a
I took my son to school Friday. Jonathan is a Junior at Stevenson High School—usually he drives himself to school but this weekend he is helping lead a Snowball retreat in Wisconsin so he couldn’t take the car—he needed a ride. School starts at 8:05—we left the house at 7:30 for the maybe two mile drive—I think he made it to class on time—but just barely. It took us a half hour to drive two miles to the high school—and the return trip home took me almost 45 minutes. Route 22—Half Day Road is unfortunately at long last living up to its name. The road construction has begun to move the utilities and widen the road—but that means the road must be narrowed—to one lane—controlled by men with hand held signs that control the fate of every driver—a two mile drive now feels like it is taking half a day to complete. Sitting in the traffic—waiting—I found my mind turn to scripture—I am after all a preacher—and the passage of scripture was our text for today—All these frustrated and frazzled drivers—stuck in their cars—what did they need to hear from God but the words—Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God….make straight…a highway for our God…. A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?”—but I could read people’s lips—I knew what they were saying in the solitude of their cars—I knew what I wanted to say—And the prophet does too—declaring that God’s judgement is what is needed—the moment needs to be set straight once and for all.
My oldest son is studying to be a civil engineer—he wants to dig tunnels—pave highways—as he said one time—he wants to bring people together the old fashion way—by building bridges.—One of his brothers has observed however that he knows what Andrew really wants to do—create a traffic jam like every other road construction worker. Now when I was in high school and college we all knew that one of the best paying summer jobs you could get was working for the highway department—and we also especially envied those few select (often girls) who got the job of holding the “stop” and “slow” sign that controlled traffic flow through the construction sight while working on their summer tan. My uncle who owned a construction company in southern Minnesota told me once that he always hired girls to hold the signs because drivers didn’t get as upset with teenage girls controlling the signs—Comfort, O comfort my people. Such is not the case with God—To control the flow of human history God used prophets who often were anything but attractive and proper sign wavers. Prophets of old were usually the fringe element of society—Visionaries maybe but having more in common with our modern day political commentators then with the Sunday preacher.
Most of God’s prophets were not the popular leaders of society—generally they set the pattern for political correctness before it was politically correct—which means that most people thought them to be out of touch with the real world. The familiar words of the Old Testament lesson for today are from the prophet Isaiah—they echo through history to the often Christmas identified melodies of Handel’s Messiah but the original context for these words would have been far more challenging. The nation of Judah had been conquered and prisoners carried off to a distant land—Babylon’s armies had made short work of the grossly outnumbered and militarily inferior forces of Israel—the U.S. military versus Afghanistan—and the prisoners of the conflict were spirited away to a distant land—no rights or privileges except the controlled practice of their faith—a faith strange and unfamiliar to their captors. Time passes—fifty years of exile in Babylon and then come the Persian armies (modern day Iran) and the enlightened leader Cyrus who defeats the Babylonians and declares freedom for the Hebrew exiles. Cyrus orders the rebuilding of Jerusalem. In this moment the prophet Isaiah speaks in our text for today—“Comfort, O comfort my people”—the time of exile is completed—now get ready to build—build a straight path back to God—the prophet is directing traffic—Out of the wilderness of exile comes the promise of something wonderful about to happen—God is coming again to his people—get ready—get ready to build.
Jump ahead five hundred years—As our Psalmist for today knew but a blink of the eye to God—the prophet’s words are still burning hot—Listen for the voice—a voice preparing the way—crying in the wilderness. John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness—directing traffic—God’s civil engineer—working to make straight the path—leveling off the rough places. Advent—the Sundays leading up to Christmas are a civil engineer’s dream. I have been watching the progress on Route 22—It began with the moving of trees and other obstacles—We have been doing the same behind the church in preparation for our building project. The first step is preparation—removing the obstacles to a new beginning. The Advent words for this day are a call remove the obstacles to God’s coming—To examine our lives and identify those things that come between us and the final goal.—The things that might block us from arriving at the intended end result—the obstacles of our lives. From ancient times they have been called gods—that’s spelled with a small “g”—You know my favorite definition of a god—I repeat it to the confirmation students almost every week—Paul Tillich’s famous definition—a god is anything that is your “ultimate concern”—and we produce “ultimate concerns” by the minute—sometimes they are matters of life and death—real “ultimates” like our health or the safety of a family member—but more often then not the “ultimate” concern on our mind is far more mundane—what to wear—what to buy—what to give—what to say or what to do in a given moment—concerns that matter very little to the eternal scheme of things but that become an ultimate issue for us in the moment.
The prophet Isaiah understood this—“All people are grass”—he observed—“their constancy is like the flower of the field”—the constancy of flowers—now buried beneath the snows of winter—quickly fading in the cut arrangement here on the sanctuary wall. Surely we can do better then the fickled flowers—“Prepare the way of the Lord”—that’s what John proclaimed—echoing the ancient Isaiah words—“Prepare”—Clear away the obstacles—the distractions—make a straight path—no detours. Not an easy thing to do in the modern world—traffic is pretty heavy out there—we look for the short cuts—only there aren’t any. The other day sitting on Route 22 I watched a number of cars decide to take a side street—obviously they were unaware that there are only three roads that cross the river going west—and none of them connect to each other through the neighborhoods—I watched the cars in their hurried and frustrated manner zip around the line of cars stalled on 22 and head into the subdivision—only to return ten minutes later and try to turn back onto 22 with the rest of us who had not moved anywhere while they were gone.
There are no short cuts—Straight ahead—God’s Word—God’s way—no matter how slow it may seem—there is only one way. Christmas comes so quickly now that I am an adult—I suppose it’s because there are so many things that need to be done—so many distractions and obstacles to my observing it’s approach that it seems to arrive before I can see it coming—Such was not the case when I was younger—The days of advent lasted half a year in those days—or so it seemed. We used to watch for the signs—The arrival of the Sears Christmas Catalogue was always a prime indicator—Now times have changed—the Christmas decorations come out in stores at Halloween and the Christmas sales begin at Thanksgiving. The church takes a more measured approach—The Advent signs have a cumulative effect—Christmas program practices begin—Advent wreathes are made—the Angel Tree is set up—Christmas orchestra begins rehearsal—the tree cutting—the hanging of the greens—the gathering momentum—Preparing—Prepare the way of the Lord. I am still always surprised by the quickness with which storms arrive around here—surprised because with all the trees and buildings there is never a clear view of the horizon—the sky seems to suddenly turn to clouds—turns so quickly. On the farm prairies of the Midwest the view to the horizon affords opportunity to anticipate the coming changes of weather. Advent is intended to allow us time to prepare—not just to finish our shopping but to prepare.
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness—God’s civil engineer—clearing a path. With water and a call to repentance he came.—That is what Advent has meant since the most ancient of days—repentance—the turning away from wrong direction to the straight path to God—no easy task. That’s why it took prophets to proclaim this calling—time to rethink—reorder—redirect. To see the world through prophet eyes—and that changes the way we see the world completely. It means letting go of the old ways of thinking and seeing and ordering and embracing something totally new. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Our world is filled with so many rough places—but the Christian knows a straight way.
The great preacher Thomas Long tells a dramatic story of what the advent transformation means. “Many years ago in India, a group of men traveling through desolate country found a seriously wounded man lying beside the road. They carried him to the Christian mission hospital some distance away and asked the missionary physician who met them at the door if a bed was available for the man. The physician looked at the injured man and immediately saw that he was an Afghan, a member of the warring Patau tribe. “Bring him in,” he said. “For him we have a bed.” When the physician examined the man, he found that an attacker had seriously injured his eyes and the man’s sight was imperiled. The man was desperate with fear and rage, pleading with the doctor to restore his sight so that he could find his attacker and extract retribution. “I want revenge,” he screamed. “I want to kill him. After that I don’t care whether I am blind the rest of my life!” The doctor told the man that he was in a Christian hospital, that Jesus had come to show us how to love and forgive others, even to love and forgive our enemies. The man listened but was unmoved. He told the doctor that Jesus’ words about forgiveness and love were nice, but meaningless. Revenge was the only goal, vengeance the only reality. The doctor rose from his bedside saying that he needed to attend to other patients. He promised to return that evening to tell the man a story, a story about a person who took revenge. When he returned that evening, the doctor began his story. Long ago, he recounted, the British government had sent a man to serve as envoy to Afghanistan, but as he traveled to his new post, he was attacked on the road by a hostile tribe, accused of espionage, and thrown into a shabby makeshift prison. There was only one other prisoner, and the men suffered through their ordeal together. They were poorly clothed, badly fed, and mistreated cruelly by the guards. Their only comfort was a copy of the Book of Common Prayer which had been given to the envoy as a farewell gift by his sister in England. She had inscribed her name along with a message of good will on the first leaf. This book served the men not only as a source for their prayers but also as a diary, as a place to record their daily experiences. The margins of the prayer book became a journal of their anguish and their faith. Those two prisoners were never heard from again. Their families and friends waited for news that never came; they simply vanished without a word, leaving those who loved them in uncertain grief. Over 20 years later, a man browsing through a second hand shop found the prayer book. How it got there, no one can say. But, after reading some of the journal entries in the margin, he recognized its value, located the sister whose name was in the front of the book and sent it to her. With deep heartache she read each entry. When she came to the last one, she noted that it was in a different handwriting. It said simply that the two prisoners had been taken from their cell, publicly flogged and then forced to dig their own graves before being executed. At that moment she knew what she must do. Her brother had died a cruel death at the hand of torturers in a run-down Afghan jail, and this injustice must be requited. She must exact revenge…but Christian revenge. She was not wealthy, the doctor continued, but she marshaled all the money she could and sent it to this mission hospital. Her instructions were that the money was to be used to keep a bed free at all times for a sick or wounded Afghan. This was to be her revenge for her brother’s torture at the hands of Afghans and his death in their country. The wounded man was quiet, silenced by this story of such strange revenge. “My friend,” said the doctor, “when you were brought here our hospital was full except for one bed—the one you are lying in. Your care is her revenge.” A straight way has been prepared—a way to God unlike any path taken before. A straight way has been prepared and we declare—Come to God’s table of grace—“Here is your God!”
Amen.