Let’s listen again to the prophet Isaiah’s beautiful, poetic words in
the 1st reading (Isaiah 40:1-11):
A voice cries out:
In the wilderness prepare the way of the
Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway
for our God.
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.
Now, we know a lot about making highways around here –
just think of the recent remaking of the streets of Nenagh, and the building of
the M7 motorway. Isaiah’s words could almost be an anthem for the National
Roads Authority! Great cuttings have been blasted through the hills. Giant
machines have moved the spoil to make embankments. Bridges have been built over
rivers. All to make the road as gentle and smooth as possible.
Road building would not have been so vast in Isaiah’s
time, but it would still have been a gigantic community enterprise to make the
roads to allow farmers to transport their produce on pack-mules to market in
Jerusalem, and to allow pilgrims to travel to the temple on Mount Zion. The
roads knit together the Jewish people in the cities of Judah to their holy
mountain of Zion, not just in a material way, but also in metaphor as a
worshiping community. I feel sure that for Isaiah the way of the Lord was not a
road for God to travel to his people on, but a road for his people to travel to
God on.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be
revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
In our 3rd reading (Mark 1:1-8), in the very first words of his Gospel, St
Mark recycles this road building metaphor.
John the Baptist is a wild man, wandering about the
Judean desert, clothed in camel’s hair, with only a leather bag at his waist,
who ate locusts and wild honey, we are told – the very image of an Old
Testament prophet! Mark quotes Isaiah to identify him as: The voice of one crying out in the
wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’ For
Luke he is the fulfilment of the hope expressed by Isaiah.
John proclaims ‘a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness
of sins’. And he is very
successful to judge by the crowds he gathers. But John is also the self-effacing
herald of the coming of another. Claiming no special position for himself, he
says: ‘The
one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop
down and untie the thong of his sandals.’ He means Jesus of course.
And John continues ‘I have baptised you with water; but he will baptise you with the Holy
Spirit.’
Why have the compilers of the Lectionary chosen this
reading for today? John’s message of repentance and forgiveness for sin might
seem at first sight out of place in this Advent season. In Advent we look
forward to Christmas and the great gift that God has given us. God comes to us.
He comes in the form of a little child. His parents Mary and Joseph name him Jesus.
We rejoice with them at the miracle of his birth. With angels and shepherds and
kings we adore him. And we believe he grows up to lead us to God through his
loving self-sacrifice. So why spoil all the joy with dismal repentance for sin?
I think the answer lies in the metaphor of road building.
Yes, God makes the first move. Yes, God comes to us in
the person of Jesus. But he does not force himself on us. He does not compel us
to accept his love. He made us with free will, and we are free to refuse him.
But we cannot share in his kingdom unless we make a move in response. That
essential move is like building a road to travel on towards God. Each one of us
must ‘prepare
the way of the Lord’ and ‘make his paths straight’. And to do so we
must each accept John’s baptism for ourselves. We must admit our own sins, we
must seek God’s forgiveness, and we must undergo a change of heart to follow
God’s way in future. For that is what repentance means.
In the 2nd reading (2Peter: 3:8-15) the author of 2 Peter writes to disciples
who are going through a tough time.
Some are becoming weary of the work. Some have begun
to doubt whether the great road to the kingdom will be finished in their
lifetimes. Some are questioning the apostles’ teaching.
Time is not the same for God as it is to us, he tells
them: for God ‘one
day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day’;
and God ‘is
patient … not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance’.
So, he urges them to be patient. While you are ‘waiting for and
hastening the coming of the day of God’ – in other words, building the
highway to God – ‘strive
to be … without spot or blemish, and regard the patience of our Lord as
salvation’.
So, to sum up:
By the readings they
have chosen for us, I think the compilers of the Lectionary have tried to
correct any tendency we may have to be over sentimental in our anticipation of
Christmas.
Yes of course we should look forward with joy to Christmas.
Let us wonder at the miracle of Mary’s tiny helpless baby. Let us enjoy the
stories of the shepherds and the three kings. And let us sing our hearts out with
the angels in the beautiful carols we all love so much.
But let us also reflect on this. The love God shows us
at Christmas is no use to us - no use at all - unless we choose to act in
response, unless we choose to build a good smooth road on which we may travel to God. John the
Baptist has shown us the way, by proclaiming his baptism of repentance for the
forgiveness of sins, which Jesus also proclaims. All we need do is to commit ourselves to that baptism, to build
the road - and to be patient.
Let me finish with a Gospel collect:
Merciful
God,
you
sent your messengers the prophets
to
preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation:
give us
grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins,
that we
may greet with joy
the
coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer,
who
lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one
God, now and for ever. Amen
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