Prepare the Way of the Lord

Let us pray. Holy God, open our eyes to your presence. Open our ears to your call. Open our hearts to your love. Amen. Please be seated.

We are in the holy season of Advent and today is the second Sunday of our four week journey.  Each year the gospel offers the words that best encapsulate the theme or purpose of this holy season. ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’. As we reminded last week by Reverend Keyser, during Advent, we prepare for the yearly celebration remembering Christ’s birth, and at the same time, we look forward with expectation to the return of Jesus and the establishment of God’s kingdom. All the readings of this Sunday are wake up calls for us to prepare to receive the Lord who is coming soon. However, Advent is not just a season of remembering the past and looking to the future. Advent is a season that helps us with the present.

Our Collect today reminds us that the prophets were messengers sent by God. While they may have felt at times that they were speaking in vain, they caught enough attention that we continue to hear their words and they have reverberations today.  For this week and next, the gospel readings focus on the prophetic voice of John the Baptist, who comes to prepare the way for God’s Anointed. John, whose name means ‘God is gracious’ in Hebrew, was the long awaited and only son of Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth.  In our Canticle, you heard that when John was born, Zechariah proclaimed that he would be the prophet of the Most High, who would go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give knowledge of salvation to his people. Luke, by setting the preparation for the advent of Jesus Christ in the context of the world history and universal purpose of God, says that the gospel belongs to all people.

He sets John the Baptist’s ministry clearly within a historical context by identifying the political and religious leaders of the time.  Luke provides a roster of those who led and held power in the world. Five of the seven named are secular leaders, two religious.  Among the secular figures, all noted were minimally corrupt and cruel and provide a great contrast for the righteousness of John the Baptist’s message, calling people to divest their resources and act justly, redirecting their allegiance to God, something utterly different from those in power. John’s ministry exemplifies the stark contrast that Jesus’ life, message and ministry will have with the powers of their day. The gospel will not only encounter the poor, lame, deaf and blind, the widow and orphans, but also the synagogue rulers, high priests, governors, treasurers, city officials, imperial guards, and finally the emperor himself. While the prophets were encouraging people to return to God, to care for the vulnerable, to be restored in relationship with one another, there were surely then, as now, competing voices for the people’s attention. Voices of power, greed, despair, or complacency that were louder than the prophets call, and yet the prophets are still heard throughout the generations.

Luke quotes the prophet Isaiah who had foretold of a messenger from God and provides context of time and place. It was a terrible period for the Israelites, a time when they could not govern themselves, when political expediency, corruption and cruel occupation was the norm of the day. It is during this despairing time that the word of God came to John the Baptist 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’.

Now we find that the promises of John the Baptist, taken from the prophet Isaiah, are also echoed in the reading from the book of Baruch, the not so well known Hebrew prophet.  During the Babylonian exile, although the exact date and authorship of the book are uncertain, tradition indicates that God raised the prophet Baruch, Jeremiah’s secretary and friend, to speak to the Israelites. We hear the prophet giving a message of hope, a message of hope to the suffering Israelite people who were in exile.  In the midst of their mourning, he is able to say to the grieving City of God that God has not abandoned them or their children.  A mourning and dispirited Jerusalem and people will have cause for celebration because God is about to act and to bring those people home.

The God of mercy and righteousness will not leave God’s people scattered in exile. And when the exile would end, instead of wearing garments of sorrow and affliction, those who return would be clothed in righteousness, peace and glory. The peace and glory of God.  Baruch prophesied that God would lead Israel in joy by the light of his glory and his justice would accompany them. What a powerful message for Advent. It evokes hope and expectation in the hearts of all who wait for the coming of God’s kingdom, and those who sometimes feel they are in exile in a strange land following crooked and rough ways.

Along with Isaiah, Baruch was immersed in God’s vision for his world. They both had a sense of what life could be like if genuine concern for the common good of all replaced the self-interest and national interest of the powerful and the rich. And if a sense of the sacred dignity of every person replaced violence and a culture of death. You see, the way and the path of the Lord are the way of the path through which God comes and dwells in our hearts and lives. The mountains, hills, crooked and rough ways are our weaknesses, excuses, resistances and sins that restrict and limit God’s entrance into and dwelling in our very souls.

St. Paul understood this as well. He writes in our second reading, ‘I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ’. These words are of encouragement from Paul to the church in Philippi. They were not only persecuted outwardly by religious and civic leaders, but inwardly the community itself was divided. Paul wrote to encourage them to persevere in the good work. God began in them.  And when Paul prays for the congregation which he had founded, he writes, ‘My prayer is that your love may overflow more and more, and that this love with knowledge and full insight to help you, it then transform you so completely to determine what is best’. This assurance can comfort us, reminding us that God is always at work in our lives. Even when we face challenges, we can trust that God is guiding us and helping us to grow in faith.

Paul shows a great ability to let go and surrender under very trying circumstances without becoming passive or discouraged.  With prison chains hanging from his wrist he writes of great joy and love. This kind of surrender involves a mature growth and freedom.  Not the freedom to be whoever we want, but the ability freely to become who God is calling us to be. Not the freedom to do whatever we want, but the freedom to love and respect others in ever widening circles just as we have been loved. It is very much about the way in which we live and treat one another as beloved of God.

This is the same good news of John the Baptist’s message. If we hear and respond to his call to repentance for the forgiveness of sins, then we must believe that there is something we can do, that we can be agents of change. John is not saying things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be and they will never be, get used to it. No, his is not a message of futility in the face of brokenness in God’s creation. Rather, it is a liberating and joyful call to realign our individual and collective wills with the purposes of God.  To seek wholeness and harmony, to restore all people to unity with God and each other with Christ.

To hear and respond to John’s message is good news because in spite of the fact that things aren’t always the way they should be, they can change and so can we. Now more than ever, we need not only hear the cries of the prophets, but we need to grasp the baton of the prophets. We must ask ourselves, are we willing to be prophetic enough to walk out in faith, to work with and break bread with people who may not look like us or vote like us or speak like us? Are we willing to let God’s light shine through us so much so that we can show the world a new and better way of being?

Because this is the good news that we have to share. This is the prophetic vision of God that has the power to transform our relationships, and yes, the world. May this Advent be such a time for us. May all the prophets inspire us to grow in faith and love, drawing closer to God and one another. May their message of hope and their call to prepare be more than just a voice crying out in the wilderness. May it be our charge, dear siblings, to prepare the way of the Lord. Amen.