"Prepare the Way of the Lord"

by The Rev. William G. Lamont, Pastor

Back in October Hidenwood hosted the Presbytery of Eastern Virginia here for a day-long presbytery meeting. Over 200 people came from far and wide for that gathering and we provided for their every need while in the building: registration, morning coffee and refreshments, elders to serve communion, an organist and soloist, a pork barbeque lunch, audio-visual support, photocopying and administrative support. We were commended for the great job we did hosting the event because an event of that size and caliber doesn’t just happen magically. Betty Sink and Penny Taylor had been planning for presbytery since last June and they recruited an army of volunteers to help. The secret to their success, they would tell you, is preparation.

Whenever something big happens, preparation is required…take the Christmas season for example. There are no shortage of things to be done before now and Christmas day, are there? Christmas lights need to be strung outside – several of my neighbors already have their lights up…a reminder to me that I do not. And inside the house there are decorations to be put up - garland and tinsel, holly and pine bows, strands of lights, the crèche scene and the Dickens village. There is a tree to be bought, dragged home and decorated, Christmas cards to be signed and mailed, Christmas baking to be done, an office party to attend, a dinner party to host, presents to be purchased, worship services to attend…

To get all these things done before December 25 takes planning and preparation. And preparation takes time – which is why we need to set aside time prior to December 25 to prepare. 

And just as there are outward preparations, there are also inward preparations to be made. The church has long preached the need for us to prepare our hearts for the advent of the Messiah. Because Christmas is more than the marking of a birthday that happened 2000 years ago, it is about making room for Jesus who still desires to come to us.  "Where meek souls will receive him still the dear Lord enters in."  So Christmas is about making room in the ‘inn’ of the heart for our Lord. Our attitudes, our actions, our thinking must accommodate Jesus and his ways.    

And so the church has assigned the season of Advent as a time of preparation. It is a season of four weeks immediately proceeding Christmas when we are called to prepare ourselves. And the principal figure of this season is John the Baptist. He is the one sent to prepare the way for the coming Messiah. The gospel writer Luke makes a connection between the prophet Malachi and John the Baptist. John the Baptist is the first prophet in the New Testament. Malachi is the last prophet in the Old Testament -  a post-exilic prophet -  one who preached to the people after the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple after the return from exile in Babylon. He warned the people about getting lax about worship and ignoring the plight of the poor. He spoke out against priests who were skimming money off the offerings in the temple.  He claimed that there would be a day of accounting  -  that the Lord would come and set things right. And it was Malachi who declared that before the coming of the Lord, there would be a messenger come to prepare his way. Luke identifies John the Baptist as that messenger.  

So John the Baptist is the first prophet to show up in nearly 400 years. And there is no mistaking his message -  "prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight, the crooked shall be made straight and the rough ways made smooth." In Malachi’s day road work was a communal affair. They didn’t have road work crews, or machinery to look after the roads, so if a messenger came to a region announcing the arrival of national dignitaries, everyone was expected to get busy with roadwork. The common people set up proverbial orange cones and rolled up their sleeves to prepare the way. They rolled out wheelbarrows of dirt to fill in the deep ruts caused by wooden wheels. They filled in washed out portions of the roads, and potholes, making the rough ways smooth. They removed rocks that had rolled down hillsides onto roadways and straightened crooked pathways. So the people were literally called upon to "prepare the way".   

John the Baptist draws upon the physical imagery of road work in his spiritual call to God’s people… "Prepare the way of the Lord!" Only John isn’t talking about fixing the roads into Jerusalem, he’s talking about the preparation of our hearts. Prepare the way of the Lord - clear away everything that is blocking the entrance of God into our lives…smooth out the rough spots… remove any barrier that stands in the way of God’s kingdom. And John not only preached a message of repentance, he also called the people to receive a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  

This was different from the proselyte baptism that was offered by synagogues for non-Jews. John’s baptism was a call to take a dramatic change of direction...to turn around and go the other way. Repentance literally means to turn around. The Christian church used to embody this change of direction in its baptism service centuries ago. The recipient for baptism would face the west… the direction of the setting sun...the place of gathering darkness...and they would go down into the water, and when they were raised up they would be facing the east, the direction of the rising sun...the gathering light. They would die unto sin and rise to new life in Christ. So baptism embodied this repentance that John preaches. Today we simply ask a question, "Do you turn from sin to the ways of Jesus Christ?"

So how does the church prepare the way of the Lord in this day and age? What does repentance mean for us today?  What are the rough ways that must be made smooth? What are the crooked paths that must be made straight? What are the valleys that must be lifted up and the mountains that must be brought low? What are the rocks that block the way for God’s coming kingdom?  

I think John would point to these two things that we desperately need to do in this day and age. First of all we need to work to establish peace in our world. Turn on the news on any given night and you know what I’m talking about…war in Iraq, troop surges to Afghanistan, gang slayings in our own city, domestic violence and abuse in our own neighborhoods. You would think that a civilized society would gravitate away from war and violence as a solution, but we have not. It is no secret that the previous century - the 20th century - was the most violent of all in human history.  And moving into the new millennium there was the collective hope that violence and war would be left behind in the old millennium and that we would enter a new era of peace. That clearly has not happened. The first 10 years of the new millennium has been as violent and deadly as ever. We have not learned to be a reconciling people. We have not made peace with our neighbors. John the Baptist would have harsh words to say to us today about this. He would call us to work for peace and justice…to be peacemakers, locally and globally. This is what it means to prepare the way of the Lord in this day.

The other thing I think John would point to in our modern day society is the tyranny of busyness. We have grown far too busy as people and as families in this modern age…we have fashioned a culture of busyness. Families are juggling incredible daily schedules – rising earlier than ever, working harder than ever, involved more than ever in the lives of their children. Charles Darrah, professor of anthropology at San Jose State University, has studied the busyness of families today. He says that busyness has forced people to blur the boundaries between work and home life. People now work at home and “do family” at work. It’s nearly impossible to keep the two separate. He argues that we need new rules for connecting and disconnecting so that families can manage the busyness.  

I think that John would argue that this culture of busyness threatens the faith-life of the modern-day family. God is being crowded out because of the pace of life we are trying to keep. People who don’t come to church will say things like: "Sunday is the only day we have to sleep in". It is an admission that the family’s faith life is being sacrificed on the altar of cultural busyness. Ironically, Christmas is not better but worse when it comes to busyness. This culture goes into hyper-speed in December -  just at the time when the church is calling people back to church to reconnect with their faith roots.    

John’s message to families today would not be to cram a little religion into already full calendars. No, he would challenge this culture of ours that mistakes busyness for abundant life. Doing more is not the secret to a full and satisfying life. Sure, there are more choices in life today, it just means we have to be more discerning in what we choose…because a day is still only 24 hours long. We should not sacrifice our faith in God or that of our children for anything.

So as we enter the Christmas season, John’s message to us is: "Prepare the way of the Lord." John’s not talking about putting up Christmas lights and decorating the tree. He’s talking about making some serious changes in our society and in our personal lives. God’s kingdom is coming. Christ has come and is coming again. It’s up to us to do our part to clear away the boulders and branches that block the way for his entrance. What is at stake is our very faith,  and when it comes to faith - preparation is everything.

Amen.