Sunday, December 6, 2015
2nd Sunday of Advent
In addition to the texts of the day we also used the theme “Prepare” as part of our worship for the 2nd Sunday of Advent. Apologies that there is no audio recording this week due to a technical error on the part of the pastor (i.e. I didn’t press record at the right time).
68“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.
69He has raised up a mighty savior for us
in the house of his servant David,
70as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
71that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
72Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
and has remembered his holy covenant,
73the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
to grant us 74that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, 75in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.
76And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
77to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
78By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
79to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.” – Luke 1:68-79
1In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
5Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
6and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ” – Luke 3:1-6
Advent is a season when time gets all-mixed up. It’s the waiting for Christ’s second coming while looking back to the advent of Christ’s first coming. The texts weave the end times conversation of the end of the previous church year with the apocalyptic vision of what is still to come of the new church year. And perhaps in one of the most confusing time-blending moments we hear today of John the Baptist as both an infant and an adult in the span of about 5 minutes. In the place of the psalm we joined in the song of John’s father, Zechariah, who thanks to an angelic visit has come to understand his newborn son’s role in preparing the way for God coming into the world. Then in the gospel we heard of John’s grown up self as a prophet in the desert crying out to all who came to gawk at his strange ways, Prepare a way in the wilderness, a highway for our God. Earth will move in every direction to reveal God’s salvation. Two very different pictures of John
After another week of stomach-turning violence in the news – and here I almost hesitate to mention San Bernardino for fear that one horrific incident might overshadow the daily violence that penetrates our culture – part of me would prefer to have just grown-up John’s hard message and not the bit about him as an infant. Many times I struggle with his challenging message of repentance, his words that almost suggest we must make a way for God as if the Creator of All Things can’t make a way in that creator’s own wilderness. But this week, I wonder more if we need someone with the nerve of John the Baptist to scream at whoever is listening about all the things I think they ought to do to prepare a way for God’s peace to reign in our tumultuous world. And while I’m at it I’d like John’s courage to scream and shout at all the life-threatening diseases and progressively debilitating diseases and the racism and Islamophobia and distrust of people who are just different. And if I list any more I might get riled up enough to jump into next week’s John the Baptist reading that calls a bunch of people in the crowd dirty snakes.
And part of me wonders if in the 21st century church we don’t need a little more of grown-up John shouting in our ears, demanding that we work on what will have to be multiple solutions to these complex and ever-growing problems. But I’m just too Lutheran to be convinced that in doing so we can prepare a place for God’s coming. It’s not that we can’t do something good and worthwhile and maybe even world-changing. It’s just that we’re not God.
Which is why I think it’s essential that we pair John’s shouting in the desert with his father’s singing at his birth. Because in joy at beholding his son, in awe of God’s having chosen him and Elizabeth who are past their child-bearing years, in hope for what God is doing among them, Zechariah sings of John’s preparing the way for God while John is still a helpless infant, in much the same way that we proclaim infants to be capable of joining us in our mission to bear God’s creative and redeeming work into all the world when we wash them in the waters of baptism. Zechariah doesn’t know how God will do this. Zechariah doesn’t know how to prepare the way of the Lord. Instead Zechariah trusts in his call to raise this child, who has been gifted with something unique to prepare for the Lord’s coming.
This tells me two things about preparing the way for Christ to come. First that it is always God’s doing. Now God chooses to do it in strange ways like giving children to couples who no longer expect them, and giving words that undercut power structures to a strangely dressed man in the desert, and so often making use of the people we think least likely to be chosen. God so often seems to choose working with us and using our incomplete and messy way of doing things to make paths in dark and wild places, but this highway making in the desert is always God’s doing.
And second, this tells me that preparing a way for the Lord is something that each of us does with the unique gifts we have been given. It’s easy to look at grown-up John and think he’s the one and only who can call out this message. It’s easy to look at him and with either admiration or disdain write him off as once-and-never-again kind of prophet. But I think Zechariah’s looking at the infant and singing about that child’s call to make a way for God in the world gives us a chance to see that maybe John isn’t so much one-of-a-kind as he is someone lifted up to remind us that each of us is issued a call to prepare the way and that each of us is endowed with a unique set of gifts to prepare that way.
It’s easy to hear the call to prepare and imagine tacking one more thing on a lengthy holiday season to-do list. But I think God is at work all the time preparing a way in our wilderness. And more often than not God is doing it through you and through the ways in which you are already using your gifts in the world. As people of God we have been created with unique gifts and invited to use those gifts to be partners with God in making a way through the darkness around us and the wilderness in our lives.
As I struggled this week to know how to be an agent for change in response to the problems of gun violence, I found myself presented with more than one opportunity already on my calendar to work at repairing the harm done by violence already on my calendar – an opportunity to visit with someone who was sick to extend a connection to community from which illness so often estranges us; a local clergy meeting that became a venue for us to work toward a common voice against violence and in protection of our Muslim sisters and brothers; a meeting of our local restorative justice program which this week was an opportunity to make room for healing for some victims of a physical assault. I share those small examples with you as a way of saying that I think each of you, too, did something this week that prepared a way for God’s coming into our midst even if you didn’t realize it. Maybe you did it through art or music, teaching, parenting, researching, studying, or whatever it is that you do with your days. But if you’re anything like me, you sometimes go about your daily work forgetting that by being the person you were created to be, God is using you to prepare the way of the Lord. God is using the paths you create to enter our world.
In the waters of baptism, you were given a call just as John was to prepare the way of the Lord, but just like John you are given everything you need to do that work in the world. Blessed be the God of Israel, for you, children of God, are called to be prophets of the Most High, going before the Lord to prepare the way, giving God’s people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. And in the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us to shine on all those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
-Pastor Steven Wilco
Stewarding the Word 