PREPARING THE WAY

Luke 3: 1-6, 10-14; Isaiah 40: 3-5
Steve Lindsley
December 18, 2011

Does this sound like anyone you know?  It’s mid-December, and he’s moving non-stop.  He’s trying to wrap up things at the office in time for the holidays – closing out the books at the end of the year is always a fun task.  Then there's the office party, and he’s in charge of snacks this year.  He’s hoping to take an afternoon off this week to scramble for much-needed Christmas shopping for the wife and kids.  He’d do it on a weekend, but this Saturday is the traditional “decorate the house” day, and he still hasn’t figured out how to make those darn Christmas tree lights work.  Plus his son’s basketball team has a big game, and that’s not even mentioning all the stuff at church.  It’s all special and wonderful, but there are only so many hours in a day.  He’s just hoping he can cram it in sometime in the next week! 

Does this sound like anyone you know?  She lives with her seven-year old son in a run-down apartment complex in town.  It's not much, but it's something, and she’s thankful for that.  What she’s not thankful for is the boyfriend who vanished from the scene without a trace last summer, taking every last bit of security with him.  Or the rent bill that comes every month that she pays by scraping pennies together from her part-time job as a waitress, along with some financial assistance from a few local church.  Or the neighbor next door who seems to delight in hurling racial insults at her and her son on a frequent basis.  Her greatest fear is that she is one month away from being banished to the streets, along with her son.  It is a very real fear.  Still, she tries to keep things as normal as possible – she's got her son’s name on one of the Angel Trees in town and is hoping someone will do for her son what she cannot.

You know, the Advent season that we are well into finds us in the middle of all kinds of preparations.  There are cakes to be baked; trees to be trimmed, gifts to be bought.  And for some, there are bills that can't be paid, trees with nothing under then, pantries that are empty.  All of us, in our own ways, with what we have or what we don’t have, preparing for the baby in the manger.  This is Advent.
Long ago a man named John did some preparing of his own.  He was like you and me – eager to serve, passionate about what he believed in.  And he was also unlike you and me – a nomad, living on the outskirts of society.  This man, like us and not like us, was called to announce the coming of Christ and, in the words of the prophet, to prepare the way.

Now John, as you might already know, was not one for mincing words.  So in the third chapter of the Gospel of Luke we read the bold declaration he makes to a crowd of people desperate to hear good news; words borrowed from the prophet Isaiah:

Prepare the way of the Lord!  Make his paths straight,
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill 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.

Prepare the way!  It was something those first century Palestinians understood.  They were used to Roman emperors and governors making grand entrances into their cities as a show of power and might.  Riding chariots, flanked by centurions and horses and the weaponry of war.  It was a production if there every was one; and practically speaking, it needed the dirt roads of the city to be made ready.  Divits had to be filled in and bumps smoothed out so that chariot wheels and horses' hooves could pass over them with no problem.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill made low. Prepare the way!

So here’s the question you and I need to ask ourselves on this fourth Sunday of Advent: if so much of our rich scriptural heritage is telling us to “prepare the way,” then why is it that you and I are so often ill-prepared for the coming of Christ?  Why is it that, even with all our best intentions, we often wind up further from the manger than where we started? 

Sometimes I wonder if the pageantry of the season has the effect of overwhelming us; where decorating trees, preparing goodies, and shopping for perfect gifts takes precedence over the baby in the manger, and the star in the sky, and the Savior in our midst.  It is all-too-easy to get consumed by the “things” and the “tasks” of this time of year, as enjoyable as those things and tasks might be. 

It reminds me of a little boy, exhausted from a long day of Christmas shopping with the family, fighting their way through malls and checkout lines.  And when it came time to say his prayers before crawling into bed that night, he spoke with the brutal honesty of a child and said, "God, forgive us our Christmases, as we forgive those who Christmas against us!”

I think the boy’s on to something!  But there's another reason, I think, that we’re not always as prepared as we need to be.  It’s one that gets lost in the shuffle of all the red and green, and the general feeling that everyone is supposed to be happy this time of year.  The reality is that, while there is a lot of joy, for some that joy can ring hollow; those who are reminded of what is not with them this Christmas season – a job, a full pantry, even a loved one.

Studies have shown that Christmas can be a significant time of depression and struggle for many.  Earlier this week I was reading about a different type of Christmas service some churches are doing these days.  Unlike the typical celebration, there's no Christmas tree in the sanctuary, no poinsettias or Christmas carols or any of the typical sights and sounds.  Instead it’s a much more somber occasion – the sanctuary is filled with the sound of melancholy piano and the stale scent of dead branches placed on a table up front.  Women and men hold each other and cry on their shoulders.  They call it a “Blue Christmas” service; and it’s meant for people who, for whatever reason, struggle this time of year.  And you know what?  More church are doing them, because more people are showing up.

Now that’s a whole a different kind of preparing, isn’t it?  But it’s probably one that deserves our attention.  Jesus didn’t come when all was right with the world.  He came to make it right!  He came in the midst of chaos, of uncertaintly, of hopelessness. And there’s still plenty of that to go around today!  Which is why preparing is so important.  Those rough places can be pretty rough, those bumps in the road a little bumpy.

Advent is not a tradition we observe.  It’s a journey of transition and transformation.  As Christians we hold fast to the belief that, with the birth of Jesus, something in the world changes – and not in some nostalgic sense, but in a way that cuts deep to the heart of each one of us.  And that transformation is what enables us to come before the baby in the manger as we are – with all our joys and hopes and dreams, along with all our fears and pains and scars.  Contrary to what we sometimes think, we don’t have to put on a façade for Jesus just because it’s his birthday.  We come before him exactly as we are, because that’s exactly the way he wants us to.

Christmas is really that simple!  And yet, it’s anything but simple.  Somehow a basic birthday celebration has morphed into something else entirely. Kind of reminds me of what English professor Lionel Basney wrote in a newspaper editorial years ago:

The real crime of Christmas is the way we heap pretensions on its simplicity. Christmas is a complex cultural possession….and the problem is how to keep clean in the welter of it all – how to distinguish the valuable cultural extension of Christmas from the pretense, the true branch from the tin. (http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=2510, visited on 12.15.2009)

Heaping pretensions on its simplicity.  As wonderful and as meaningful as this time of year can be, we teeter-totter on the brink – as weird as it may sound – of making Christmas into more than it actually is. 
A little girl and her older brother are riding in the back of the car one Christmas Eve, bundled in thick jackets, hot cocoa from dinner still warm in their bellies.  Dad and Mom are in the front seats; and they are all heading to church for the traditional Christmas candlelight service.  It’s Dad’s favorite service of the year; and he relishes in recounting over and over again the details of what will happen and why this service is so special to him.  And as they pull into the church parking lot, the girl cuts her father off in mid-sentence and says, “Daddy, are you gonna let us enjoy Christmas, or are you gonna try to explain it to everybody?

The honesty of a child!  But you know, she's got a point.  Christmas is not all that complicated!  The message is as clear as it could be: God with us.  And that’s it.  Of course, it does involve a teenaged girl getting pregnant by someone – or something – other than her fiancee.  And it involves a census decree that couldn’t have come at a worse time, and a journey that no pregnant woman should’ve ever had to take.  And yes, it does involve having no place to go when the labor pains kick in, and an old barn that suddenly looks like the Ritz Carlton.  And it involves wrapping a newborn child in some torn musty blankets and laying him in an animal’s feeding trough.  But other than that, Christmas isn’t complicated!

Here in a nutshell is what Christmas means: God’s uncomplicated and everlasting love, coming to us in the midst of our complicated and chaotic world.  That’s Christmas!  And that’s why we need to prepare the way for him.  Because whether life is good or life stinks, Jesus is still coming.  Whether we get all nostalgic this time of year, or whether we loathe the pageantry, Jesus is still coming.  And Jesus needs us to “make those mountains low” and “raise those valleys up.” 

And when we do, it’s beautiful – because our eyes are opened to see things we may not otherwise see.  Are there those in our community who are lacking and would gladly receive some of the plenty that we have?  Are there those in our midst who need to know that we love them and are there for them in their time of need?  And are there those who have forgotten how Jesus’ simple act of God-With-Us broke into and changed our broken world?

This, my friends, is our journey of Advent: to “prepare the way” for the coming of Christ into our lives, into the life of our church, and into our world.  So let us embrace the simplicity of the baby in the manger, and welcome into our midst the infinite possibilities that can take place when God comes to be with us.

It is that simple!  And it is anything but simple.  But it is Christmas, and we are called to prepare for it – this year, and all year long.  Come, Immanuel, Come.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

Comments

[Caroline Frye Burruss]

It's 3:30 in the morning in Austin, Texas and i couldn't sleep, mostly for the reasons mentioned above, regarding the crazy, busy week. Thanks for some perspective. Much love to you and your sweet family.

[newborn gifts]

It is always exciting to have a new baby. I guess for those who have many kids, it's always a great feeling.