Com’in Straight On For You!
Advent 2C-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
John the Baptist, and not St. Nick is the one whom Luke calls “prophet of the Most High” (Luke 1:76). God appointed the wild and wooly John to prepare the way for the infant Jesus.
You might wonder, why on earth would people flock to the desert at considerable expense, effort, and personal risk to see John? I think it’s because John offered them grace without the Temple and its religious strictures. John offered union with God despite their uncleanness which their work life or social status made unavoidable, inevitable, and indelible. John offered them grace freely and abundantly. The price was metanoia –or repentance—a new mind, a complete turnabout. John opened the way to the life that Jesus lived, proclaimed and endured. In other words, John offered hope.
He is the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. He was like the voice of one crying (Luke 3:4). For modern Christians John announces the coming of something more than piles of ripped wrapping paper, ribbons and boxes. John proclaims the advent of God. Grace un-folding and abounding is making its way again to us. Look! A royal highway is under construction. God in Christ Jesus is bringing low the high obstacles. Jesus is straightening out the crooked pathways. Jesus is working a way to into our hearts. Christ will carry us home again amidst shouts of joy from angels on high. The 17th century German priest and poet, Angelus Silesius, famously wrote, “If in your heart you make a manger for his birth then God will once again become a child on earth” (Angelus Silesius, b. 1624 – d. 1677).
John announced the coming of the Messiah from heaven to earth. In the fifteenth year of the emperor, when governor so-and-so ruled with two other people who were Big Deals, and the high priesthood of (blank) and of (blankety-blank) were in charge in Jerusalem, the word of God came—not to any of them—but to John, son of nobody you’ve heard of, in the wilderness. (Luke 3:1-2). Luke’s gospel is a shot across the bow to political and religious windbags and despots everywhere. God’s holy highway breaks through the wilderness, from the margins, among the lowly. The voice in the wilderness cries out for the way of God to be prepared with relentless urgency. John’s voice kindles hope for the lost and bewildered.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the road Jesus opens links us with each other. The pathway to God runs to, not over, our fellow human beings. In fact, we finally arrive at home dwelling in God, not at the end of this road, but just by being on this road. Simply by walking the way of Jesus we are home. Christ is with us, and we are with one another. In the words of Martin Luther, “We are not now what we shall be, but are on the way. The process is not yet finished, but it is actively going on. This is not the goal, but it is the right road. At present, everything does not gleam and sparkle, but everything is being cleansed.”
John gave the people hope with the assurance that God’s home is here with us and in us and everyone. That’s why people matter, justice matters, how we live makes a difference not only for those around us but for us too. The peaceable kingdom is more than a dreamy vision of heaven. It is God’s dream for the world—and once we begin to live there in Christ Jesus, we are always, already home no matter where we travel. This is the gift of the incarnation. This is the source of our hope.
With baptism for the forgiveness of sins John offered the people of ancient Israel a vision of unity with God and each other that re-kindled their hope. Two thousand years later, John’s message about God building a highway to reach us and carry us home has power to restore our lives, light the fire of love to warm our households, give new life to the church, and find the common ground upon which to build a more perfect union.
John’s proclamation of incarnation has this extraordinary life-giving power because this is our founding story. French philosopher, Régis Debray, and historian, Yuval Noah Harari, point out that such Stories are the ground beneath our feet which enable homo sapiens to purposefully cooperate in collective endeavors and to build civilizations. Without a common story, societies can’t hang together and thrive, no less survive. When the story unravels, so then does the society.
What it means to be a follower of Jesus is changing as his gospel once again emerges out from under the shadow of Empire, colonization, domination, and extraction. What it means to be an American is likewise undergoing profound revision and expansion. God has placed both into the refiner’s fire of truth. We pray God will find a way lead us forward, bring us home, and rekindle our hope in a common future.
In the meantime, we are bewildered, confused, lost, at sea, stranded in a trackless wilderness with no clear path ahead. John tells us the truth is startling. We do not have far to go to find our way home. John stands in the middle of the wilderness like one of those signs you sometimes see on the highway that reads, ‘If you lived here, you would be home by now.’ God’s kingdom is already, always, everywhere, here, and now. In fact, our home in God travels with us. It’s never far away. John is standing at the off ramp signaling to the lost to be found, for those stumbling in deep darkness to find light, for the hungry to find food and for those who thirst to find living water to drink.
Just keep the dotted line of compassion on your left, and the solid line of God’s steadfast love on the right. You don’t need anything more. You don’t need special knowledge or skill. You don’t have to know where you are to find your way home and into the loving arms of God.
This is how the church becomes the gathering place of those once scattered. Diverse and different, we are one in Christ. The is the way the church sends us out knowing that we are secure in the house of the Lord—even as we stay on the move, following the way of life that Jesus did, said, and endured. The one who came and is coming draws us together into the One Life of God. Rich and poor, slaves and free, male and female, young and old, gay and straight, Jew and gentile, Christians and non-Christians. All are welcome. See ‘every mountain and hill is made low.’ We are joined in one great communion by the Advent of our God. Let the people say, Amen!
