Clear the Way
Luke 3:1-6
December 9, 2012[1]
Prepare the
way of the Lord.
I have two
images in mind this morning when I think about preparing “the way.”
The first
image is one that people who live or work in Washington, D.C. will experience
from time to time. One Sunday morning in
January 2001, I was taking our son, David, to Foundry United Methodist Church
on 16th Street NW. We were
driving north on 18th Street when I saw the blue lights of a
motorcycle move ahead of us and block the intersection. Soon, he was followed by a other police cars
and a couple of black Suburbans and then, finally, the black limousine with
flags on the front quarter panels, indicating that this was the car of the
President of the United States. All we
could do was to wait for the motorcade to pass by. Parking always was hard to find at Foundry; but
on this particular Sunday morning, as we got closer to Foundry, we noticed that
it was more difficult than usual.
We arrived
at the church and I dropped David off at the door. It took me another 20 minutes to find a
parking space a half mile away. I
approached the church, and I saw men dressed in black holding guns. As I entered the church building, I had to
pass through a metal detector, and I was met—not by a regular usher—but by a
Secret Service Agent who told me that there were no seats available in the
sanctuary. I would have to go to the
Fellowship Hall and watch the rest of the service on TV. It turned out that David got the last
available seat in the sanctuary. I can’t
begin to guess how many people were involved in the simple task of taking the
President to church and ensuring his safety.
By the way, the President arrived at church on time; I did not!
The second
image is much closer to home and it also involves traffic delays. This past fall, most of us have had the
experience of being stopped in traffic near the intersection of Route 53 and
Route 600 while work was underway to construct the new roundabout. It always amazes me to see just how much work
is involved in making the crooked straight and the rough places plain as we
prepare a new highway. The workers had
to move electric lines, clear brush and trees, grade the earth, not only to
clear the roadway itself but also to prepare for new drainage ditches and
culverts. Then they had to compact the
soil before actually beginning the process of laying down the new
pavement. And all of this was the work
we could see. People were working in
advance, for months, to survey the land, acquire the rights of way for the
property that was needed, to prepare plans and specifications. This was a small-scale version of what it
takes to build a highway.
These two
images illustrate two different meanings of the words, “prepare the way of the
Lord.” A traffic and security detail led
the way for the President, ensuring a smooth journey for the President’s timely
and safe arrival. Scores of workers
involved in building a highway project, to straighten out the curves and hills
of an intersection that was judged to be dangerous, eliminating a hazard that
could threaten the safe journey of travelers.
Both of
these images come to mind when I hear the words “prepare the way of the
Lord.” John used these words, drawing
upon Exodus 23, Isaiah 43 and Malachi 3, to call the people of the region
around the Jordan to a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He called on the people to turn around, to
change the direction of their lives, in order to see “the salvation of God” (Luke 3:7).
These are
huge words, “the salvation of God.” In
our Christian vocabulary, we use the word “salvation” a lot, but I don’t think
we come close to understanding this word in all of its many dimensions. We often, if not usually, hear it in the
sense of “forgiveness of sins,” and that certainly is an important part of
it. It was part of the message of John
the Baptist. But forgiveness of sins is
only a part of what the Bible teaches is the grand design of God.
We begin
with the understanding that God created us in God’s image. God has a plan for the world. In the story of Adam and Eve, we find people
insisting on their own way, substituting their own plan for God’s. The result has led us to a broken world. We get comfortable with things, we get used
to the way things are. But John the
Baptist reminds us that the “way things are” is not the “way things are
supposed to be.”
It only
takes a glance at the headlines to see a world in which warfare continues, we
find Syria readying its chemical weapons to use on its own citizens[2],
we continue to play out a dangerous game of nuclear hide and seek with Iran[3],
we continue to fight a war thousands of miles away in a country that we don’t
understand. I don’t believe that God
planned for us to live this way.
It only
takes a glance at the headlines to see a country in which violence runs
rampant. Whether it is an NFL Player
taking the life of his fiancé and then of himself[4],
or whether it is a New York subway passenger pushing another passenger into the
path of an approaching train while a photographer records the story[5], I
don’t believe that God planned for us to live this way.
It only
takes a glance at the headlines to see a world in which almost half of the
world’s population, more than three billion people, live on less than $2.50 per
day, in which the world’s poorest 20% consume just 1.5% of the world’s goods,
while the world’s richest 20% consume 76.6%.[6] I don’t
believe that God wants His children to live that way.
I know these
issues are complex, and I don’t want to oversimplify them. For the moment, I simply am looking at the
big picture, the result of the way humanity has been living, and I don’t think
that this is the way God intended us to live.
The
“salvation of God” is the way we express the hope that God will fix
things. We may not agree on
interpretation of prophecy and we may have different ideas of how God will get
us there. But the Gospel tells us that
there is a way to God’s salvation. It is
a way that Jesus of Nazareth traveled, and it is a way that we are called to
prepare and then to follow. It is a way,
a journey, that led Jesus to a cross, a way that leads to forgiveness of sins,
but it also leads to healing a world from its brokenness.
How does one
begin to find the way?
John says it
clearly. He says, “Repent.” Turn around.
Change direction. That is what
repentance means.
For John,
repentance wasn’t simply a matter of saying, “I’m sorry,” although confession
is part of it. Repentance means that we
change the way we live. Repentance means
that we live as God wants us to live.
That we let go of our insistence on putting “me first,” and put God first. That we live out the reality of loving our
neighbor as we love ourselves. It means
that we seek reconciliation, ways of living peaceably with our neighbor. That we clear away from our lives the sins
that so easily beset us.
And yet, we find that when we try to do this in our
own power, we discover that we can’t do it on our own. The good news of the Gospel is that we don’t
have to. The Gospel of John assures us
that “to all who received him, to those who
believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--
children … born of
God.” (John 1:12-14, NIV).
As we discovered in our Bible Study Class last
Thursday, we can get caught up in a lot of theological discussions about how it
happens. Those are mysteries known to
God. But there is no mistake to the
message from the man in the wilderness about what we are called to do—John
calls us to a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, a repentance
that leads to the salvation of God.
When we come to the Table of the Lord, we come signifying
just that—our repentance, our intent to change direction. We also come signifying our neediness, our
emptiness. We come with empty hands
reaching out to receive the Bread of Life that is offered to us without
price. As you come to the Table this
morning, may you use this as a time for clearing the way, asking God to show
you the underbrush in your life that blocks your own journey with Christ. May you seek God’s help to prepare the way of
the Lord. My prayer for you is that you
too will see the salvation of our God.
May it be so!
Copyright © 2012 by Thomas E. Frost. All rights reserved.
[1] Preached at Cunningham
United Methodist Church in Palmyra, Virginia.
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/05/syria-chemical-weapons-sarin_n_2248115.html?icid=maing-grid7|maing6|dl1|sec1_lnk3&pLid=241876.
[3] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/11/us-nuclear-middleast-idUSBRE8AA0AN20121111
[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/01/jovan-belcher-suicide-murder-girlfriend-chiefs_n_2224167.html
[5] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/08/naeem-davis-man-charged-i_n_2263210.html
[6] http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
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