Prepare the Way of the Lord!
Mark 1:1-8
Pastor Deb Troester, STHPC, December 10, 2023
A priest walks into a bar and sits down. He is followed by a pastor, who sits down beside him. John the Baptist is tending the bar and serves the two. He then looks over the bar and says in a loud voice, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. God’s Kingdom is starting to arrive.” The pastor leans over to the priest and says, “Does that mean he’s buying?”
Advent is a time of transition. It signals the beginning of the church’s liturgical year and the approaching end of the calendar year. Advent is the time between the old and the new, when we stand at the door, ready to step through it into the future. We look forward to Christmas and the New Year, yet we also turn our gaze back to the birth of Jesus, over 2000 years ago, an event which shook the earth and changed history forever, an event that still gives us hope, so many centuries later.
As we enter into Advent, focused on our holiday preparations, John the Baptist intrudes amid the tinsel, twinkling lights, and Christmas carols, with his rough camel hair coat, his leather belt, wild hair and beard, breath smelling of locusts and wild honey. People don’t put giant blow-up figures of John the Baptist in their front yard, surrounded by reindeer and giant candy-canes. He doesn’t shout, “Merry Christmas! Ho! Ho! Ho!” Rather he cries to the crowds, “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight. Repent and be baptized! The Kingdom of God is near!” What does that have to do with Christmas anyway?
Just as John prepared the people of his day for Jesus’ ministry, his voice is a call for us to deepen our relationship with Christ. Advent is an opportunity for spiritual preparation. As we put up our Christmas trees, decorate our homes, and plan our Christmas festivities, Advent reminds us to prepare our inner selves to encounter God again in the person of the Christ Child, Emmanuel, God-with-us. But how can we prepare for such an encounter?
The people of John’s day left their work-a-day lives and trekked out to the Jordan River wilderness to hear this strange prophet. Likewise, for us, the first step to spiritual preparation is to come away, out of our normal, everyday lives to take a look, to see what God is doing. I don’t necessarily mean getting out in nature, although that is a pretty good idea, but at least we must take some quiet time apart with God. We need to step out of our usual routine and seek to be near God, even if only for a short while each day.
When the people of ancient Palestine got to the Jordan, they listened to what John had to say. Once we have entered the wilderness of our souls, we, too, must listen for God’s voice. We don’t have John preaching at us, but we do have the Bible we can read and meditate on. When we come away to a quiet place, we can see ourselves and our lives more clearly, and maybe we can also hear the still small voice of God speaking to us.
John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. That’s why he’s called John the Baptist – he baptized people. But first they had to repent. What does that mean? Basically it’s when we reflect on our lives and ask ourselves, what have I done that has separated me from God and from my fellow human beings?
Have I done things that have hurt others, or have brought dishonor to God? Have I done things that have hurt myself and kept me from being my best self? Have I harmed God’s creation? Once we confess our sin, God is ready to forgive us. Yes – we should be sorry for what we’ve done and want to do better, but we don’t have to wait until we are perfect for God to forgive us. God forgives and accepts us as we are.
When people came to John at the Jordan to be baptized, they were saying – I’ve done wrong and I want to do better. Most of us have been baptized already, but Advent is a good time to remember our baptism and what it means: cleansing from sin; dying to that sin and rising to new life in Christ; identifying with Christ and his body, the church; making a commitment to follow Jesus. It’s good to remember our baptism and to remind ourselves whose we are and where we belong.
For me, the most intriguing part of John’s message is when he quotes the prophet Isaiah, crying, “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.” This message is repeated in all four gospels, so it must be important. Luke adds a few more lines from Isaiah 40:
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.’
My father was a civil engineer who helped design and build the interstate highway system back in the 60’s and 70’s. One of the goals of this enormous project was to replace the narrow, winding local roads with wide, smooth, relatively straight expressways that would be easier and safer to travel on, building a network of highways from one end of the country to the other. A lot of hills had to be sliced off, valleys filled, and curves straightened out to build the interstates highways.
Of course, John and Isaiah aren’t talking about literal roads. They are speaking metaphorically. Those who are poor and down-trodden – down in life’s dark valleys, so to speak – will be lifted up. The proud and powerful, who think that, like a mountain, they can never be moved, will be humbled and brought low. Those who are crooked – maybe the ones who don’t obey God’s laws – will be “straightened out,” and people who have had rough and difficult lives will be given a smoother path.
Or John’s words may refer to our individual hearts – in order to draw near to God, we must repent of our pride and our crooked or rough ways – when we haven’t been kind or thoughtful of others – so that the Holy Spirit may fill our hearts more completely. If we think we are not good enough for God to love us, think again – “every valley shall be filled” – God wants to fill our lives with good things, with joy, and peace, hope and love. There could be many ways to interpret these verses, but basically, John calls people to do whatever needs to be done to get rid of the obstacles that make it difficult for God to work in our lives, and in the world.
There is another word for this process: transformation – Valleys and mountains being transformed into level roadways, the crooked and rough transformed into straight and smooth. God is in the business of transforming us, and the entire world, into something new and unimaginably beautiful: a new heaven and a new earth, as the book of Revelation says.
Teri Ott, author of our Advent Bible Study, writes, “We are to bear witness to the transformation that is possible by living according to God’s purposes.” What are some of these transformations? As in nature, transformation often takes place slowly – a seed waits in the ground until the rains come, when it sprouts and grows slowly into a tree. Eventually the tree will bear fruit, but the transformation can be long in coming. Other transformations are faster – an egg hatching into a chick or a bird, the desert blooming right after a rain. The transformations of nature are amazing, but there are other transformations that may be harder to see. Father Greg Boyle tells of the transformation of gang members into contributing citizens, as they come to his ministry in L.A. and learn useful occupations, and, more importantly, learn that they are valuable human beings, worthy of being loved.
Children in a Central African village come to a school built by the church where they learn to read and write, transforming their lives with opportunities they did not have before. People in South Sudan with serious medical problems come to a church-run clinic to receive life-altering surgery, without having to pay a dime. Someone who couldn’t see gets an eye operation at a Presbyterian eye clinic in Cameroon, and now they can see clearly. Refugees fleeing the violence in Sudan arrive at a refugee camp and are given food and shelter, in part thanks to donations from churches in the U.S. and Europe. They feel safe and welcomed for the first time in weeks. The kingdom of God is coming near.
All of these things are true; they are all things I have seen with my own eyes or have read about recently. They are all happening now, in a world filled with violence, war, and pain, where we only hear the bad news, not the good news; they are small transformations that are making a difference. There are many more stories I could tell, some of them much closer to home. All of this is preparing the way for God’s kingdom. All of this is helping to make God’s path straight, so that “everyone shall see the salvation of the Lord.”
So this Advent, let’s prepare the way of the Lord. Let’s let the words of John, this strange and crazy prophet, call us out of our routine so that we can draw near to God. Let’s listen for God’s voice in the wilderness, or wherever we are. Let’s examine our lives to see if we have placed stumbling blocks on the paths to wholeness – obstacles that keep us or others from fulfilling God’s plans and dreams. Let’s heed John’s call to repent, and let’s remember our baptism that made us a part of Christ’s body here on earth – his hands and feet to help others, his heart to love God. Let’s begin the work of transformation to which Advent calls us. Amen.
©Deborah Troester 2023