"
Luke
3:1-6
When I was a kid, one of the most exciting times in our house was when someone came to visit. I don't mean my friends - they were more like family. With five children in the family, and all their friends constantly running in and out of the house, my father said he had trouble keeping track of which ones were his. But guests were special. As soon as my mother heard a guest was coming, the house had to be cleaned, from top to bottom. Each of us would get a job. The one I really hated was the bathroom - especially the bathtub. I couldn't, for the life of me, imagine that someone who was coming over for a two-hour visit would need to take a bath while they were there! But my mother wouldn't listen: "Just do it!"
It was a good exercise. Sometimes, in cleaning, you found things you'd never realized you'd lost. The couch and chairs were checked pretty regularly for loose change, but under the bed usually revealed a few surprises - candy left over from Halloween, the match for one of your socks, even letters from a girl your brother was trying to hide from prying eyes. Finally mom or dad came around to inspect and make sure everything was ship-shape. They usually would find something we missed - like clothing I'd jammed under the bed instead of putting away where it belonged. In the end, in the words of John the Baptizer, every valley was filled, the crooked were straightened out, and our rough ways were made a bit smoother.
You'd think we were preparing for the Queen of England. Usually it was for a bunch of relatives. Actually, if my Uncle Al was among them, the bath tub might get some use, since he was likely to stay on a few days. I doubt that he would have cared about the condition of the tub. Neither would anyone else. They were family. They came to visit with folks they loved. We'd prepared for the Inspector General. But the folks that came to visit were just happy to be there with us, however we may or may not have prepared for them.
That's John's call to us today: "Be prepared! Get ready! God is coming!" John was intent on getting things ready. He even did a little reinterpretation of the Old Testament passage he quotes. Originally, it was part of a parallelism: "The voice of one crying: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; in the desert make a highway for our God!’" Isaiah’s emphasis was on places of preparation - the wilderness and desert. In Isaiah's time the people had been overrun by the Assyrian armies. They felt they were living in a wilderness - in a desert of hopelessness. Where and when it seems most unlikely, Isaiah says, prepare for God to come. But John changes the emphasis, to mark the need for preparation. John wants to remind the crowds to which he delivered his message of the prophetic nature of his calling, speaking from the wilderness, where they had first met God, but emphasizing their need to get moving and get prepared. His was a call to action. He is the voice in the wilderness, calling: "Get the house in order! The heavenly guest is on His way!"
There are two things I'd like to note about John's call this morning. The first is that we do need to hear and heed that call. I'm thankful that John calls it to our attention, because with everything else that's going on in our lives, frankly, it's easy to miss the main event! It's so easy to get wrapped up in the immediate and the necessary, and forget why we're here. So that voice calls us back to reality. Someone important is coming - forget about the small stuff! Although our relatives couldn't have cared less how the house looked when they came, it was a sign of our care and love for them that we got the house ready to receive them. It was a way of our saying to them, "You are more important to us than the Queen of England."
Of course, Jesus came precisely because we can't get our own house in order. We've made a mess of things, and we can't get out of it, however we try. When God comes, there is still plenty of trash lying around, my clothes are still pushed under the bed where they don't belong, and there are a few skeletons hanging in the closet. I can't get my spiritual house in order, but God doesn't care about that. He has come because He loves me - He wants to spend time with me and help me. But it's a sign of my love for Him, at this time of year, that I do what I can, that I prepare for His coming anyway. There is a lot that is crooked that needs straightened out, a lot that is low that has to be lifted up. There is the low gossip we repeat, the discouraging words, anger and selfish attitudes we express, the false promises of our culture we have bought into, the poor that need lifted up, the message of hope and promise we need to take up again. Each item needs to be brought to the light, and shaken out, straightened up and leveled out, and examined carefully to see whether this is what we want laying around when the Heavenly Guest comes.
The second thing I'd like to note is the context of that call. John, with his message of mountains being brought down, awakens us to awareness that peace does not come in the absence of conflict and tension, but rather reflects the presence of God, who comes when things seem most hopeless and dark, to reassure us and give us strength. It is in the midst of the wilderness, in the desert in which we live, that the road to the Kingdom is prepared by the Prince of Peace.
A lot of people think that the church shouldn't have any conflict, any problems - not if it is doing God's will. We should just be one big happy family, blessed by God, growing by leaps and bounds, without any financial problems. Of course, that isn't so. Paul likens our walk to an athlete who is always pushing the limit, seeing how far he can stretch himself, so that he might at last achieve the prize. There are a lot of ways in which our congregation and our church are stretching themselves. Our church, in asking about the nature of its ministry, about those who minister, is wondering about the boundaries of God's grace and what it means to be an inclusive church. Our congregation is concerned about its finances and its ministries. How far are we willing to stretch ourselves in that regard? Who will we encompass within the walls of this church? Can we expand our thought, our hearts, our ministry large enough so that no one in our community is left out? That can be uncomfortable, but it is also exhilarating. As the earth beneath us trembles and shakes, as we wonder about the mountains in our way, and the valleys that can swallow us up, we hear also the excitement in John's voice, and his urgent call: "Hurry up! Get ready! God is on His way!"
In the wilderness, John's call isn't simply a call to be better people. It isn't a call for divine retribution on a sinful world. He isn't calling us to retrench. John comes into the wilderness to call for baptism - for immersion into the promises of God and into His coming Kingdom. In the light of God's immanent arrival, he says, we need to begin living as children of hope and of promise - as children of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is not "some day and far away." It is present wherever the Prince of Peace reigns. Let Him reign here today - among us, within us. Let him reign in our community. We can't turn back. Let's not say, "The world is irredeemable." Let's not play, "Ain't it awful." Let's say, instead, that God is coming, and continues to come - and therefore there are possibilities for peace and reconciliation even when mountains stand before us. Let us say that it is God who is making the rough places smooth, and cutting down mountains to make a way - a highway - even in this desert.
Let us get ready. Let us BE ready, so that we may live in the future Kingdom that is, even now, appearing. Let us make the Kingdom a way of life for us, so that, when He does come, we will not be strangers there.