Prepare Ye the Way

Prepare Ye the Way

Mark 1:1-8

December 7, 2014

Mark S. Bollwinkel

 

            The gospel of Mark doesn’t begin with a Christmas story, as do Luke and Matthew.  Rather Mark starts with John the Baptist announcing the Good News.  Quoting from Old Testament prophets Malachi (3:1a) and Isaiah (40:3) the baptizer shouts, “I am the messenger, the voice in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord!”

            By tradition the second Sunday of Advent always includes reference to John the Baptist.  Most of us want to hear about shepherds and angels, stars and Magi but this Sunday we get John the Baptist!  It makes sense for a number of reasons.

This is a season of preparation.  We are getting the house ready for Christmas by putting up the lights and decorating a tree.  We are preparing for Christmas morning by shopping till we drop.  We are cleaning out the closets and getting the guest rooms ready for visitors during the holiday.

We know how to prepare.

But do we know how to prepare “the way of the Lord”?

Unless we are comfortable relegating all this holiday effort to cultural conformity the reason for the season is preparing “the way of the Lord”.   That is why we decorate the house, and spend a fortune on presents and welcome friends and family into our homes.  We open our hearts and lives to the love of God in the gift giving, the feasting and the wonder of the lights and music and images of Christmas.  We seek the light of God in the darkness of our world through these preparations.

Don’t we?

In the original language the term “the way” literally meant “pathway”, “street” or “road”.  In the New Testament it is being used metaphorically to mean the path of, or pilgrimage with, Jesus.

“Preparing the way of the Lord” is the challenge to make ready our hearts for the journey with Jesus throughout our lives.  If we want more than going through the motions of Advent and Christmas we need to plan for the trip.  We will need a number of things for the journey.

 

First, a map.

The best trips begin with a clear sense of where we are going and how to get there.

            Have you ever been to Wisdom, Montana?  On the map this town of 98 people is located just outside of Beaverhead National Forest on highway 43.  If you’ve never been there you have to trust that the map is true.  In fact, this piece of paper is the record of hundreds if not thousands of people who have travelled to Wisdom, Montana.  Over the years a body of knowledge has been built necessary for the map makers to accurately depict their experiences to the exact location. 

This piece of paper isn’t Wisdom, Montana but if you ever want to visit Wisdom for yourself, you better have a good map.

The Bible describes the destination of history.  The Bible is our map for the journey.  Of course, we also use the creeds of the church, the hymns of our worship tradition and the teachings of the great theologians to map the way.  But if we would really “prepare the way of the Lord” in our lives we would we would get to know this wonderful resource we have in the Bible and bring it along for the trip.  John the Baptist suggested just that as he quoted from Isaiah and Malachi. 

 

            Secondly, we need a mirror.

            John the Baptist tells us to “prepare the way of the Lord” by the baptism of repentance.  Baptism was practiced for hundreds of years prior to John’s ministry as a ritual cleansing symbolic of spiritual renewal and re-birth.

            John the Baptist was an eschatological preacher.  He had a passionate view of what the future holds (Matthew 3:7-10, Luke 3:7-9).  He was a desert esthetic, wearing animal skins and eating wild foods to purify him self for the end of the world.  The Old Testament prophets he quoted saw the day coming when a Messiah would usher in a new heaven and earth.  The Good News John announced is that in Jesus the new Messiah has come.  God’s promised future is about to unfold (Matthew 3:2).  The baptism he offered was an initiation rite into the community dedicated to living in the present as if God’s future were now.

            In the original language “repentance” (metanoias) means “to change one’s mind”, it is rooted in the Hebrew verb (tesubah) “to turn around”.   Repentance is radical; it means to change one’s heart, will and conduct.

            Most of us sophisticated, well-educated folk don’t want to hear about repentance.  We are doing just fine thank you, we could lose a little weight, spend more time with the spouse or kids, be a little nicer to the dog but all-in-all we are decent folks.  Sure the world is a mess but we didn’t cause it.  Few of us would go out into the desert to be baptized by John.

            But in his day hundreds left the cities to do just that, so much so that the historians of the day wrote about his popularity.  The tyrant of the day, King Herod, had him beheaded to remove any political threat.

            John’s world was a mess, too, with famine, wars and rumors of wars.  The Roman occupation of Palestine was brutal and the Hebrew people lived under constant threat and limitation.  Unlike us, they sensed that their spirituality had something to do with it.  Many, across all social strata, felt that a spiritual renewal as a society could redeem their nation and future.  They flocked to John the Baptist with a passionate hope for their lives and the world.

            What they found in that moment was an opportunity to take stock of who they really were as individuals and their need for God.  Baptism was “coming clean” about their mortality, their ethics and the brokenness in their lives and then “washing away” their sin.  To “prepare the way of the Lord” meant a radical honesty about who they were and where they were going, and a radical openness for God to make something new of them and their world.

            In the 12 Step recovery movements from any addiction, the steps include taking a “fearless moral inventory” of one’s life and a commitment to make amends for the past hurts we have caused others.  We won’t get healthy and whole as individuals…we won’t get healthy and whole as a society…until we honestly confront the shadow side of our lives.

            Those who really love us are willing to offer that honesty in supportive confrontation.  We call it “holding up the mirror”, really taking a look at yourself, what you have done and who you have become as a person.

            To “prepare the way of the Lord”, to journey on the way with Jesus, means we will have to bring our mirror along.

 

            Lastly, we will also have to bring along a large trash bag.

            The baptism John offered was for the repentance of sins and the receiving of God’s forgiveness.   That too is a challenge for people like us. 

            You see, to “prepare the way of the Lord” means we learn how to forgive and receive forgiveness.  The journey on Jesus’ way is a glorious opportunity to get rid of the trash we carry around with us like a dead weight.  It’s a life long journey that leads to joy and peace; past hurts, slights and failures only bog us down.  That is why John the Baptist offered repentance and forgiveness.  To be an agents of the future we have to learn to let go of the past.

 

Clara Barton (1821-1912) founded the American brand of the International Red Cross in 1882.  Earlier she had become known as a battlefield angel of mercy in European wars, and she carried the same respect in her own country during the Civil War.  One day an old friend, burdened by the painful weight of a long-held grudge, yet anxious to find a companion who would help him nourish it, reminded the famous nurse of a time years earlier when she had been the victim of a vicious act of hatred.  When Clara acted surprised and unaware that such a thing had ever happened, the friend asked, “Don’t you remember that?”  Clara replied, “No.  I distinctly remember forgetting it.”

(Max L. Christensen, Turning Points: Stories of People Who Made a Difference, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993, pp.7-8)

 

The Good News John announces is that in our estrangement from God, God has come back to us.  We are given an opportunity to clean up our act and start a new life, in fact a new world. However much we have fouled up, nothing we have done can defeat this good news.

Journeying with Jesus into the promise of God’s future we are going to need a

large trash bag in which to dispose the garbage of our past. 

 

            When we remember John the Baptist on the second Sunday of Advent we hear that same call in his proclamation to “prepare ye the way of the Lord.”  The road leads to eschatological promise of hope.  The kingdom of God and eternal life are the destination.  We’ll need a map, a mirror and a trash bag to get there but there is joy to be found in the journey.

 

If all we want from the Christmas season is warm memories and comfortable platitudes we will dismiss the call of John the Baptist.  But this Jesus he foretells isn’t interested in memories and platitudes. 

God loves us just as we are but God loves us too much to leave us that way. Change and growth results from the encounter with grace.  Advent can be an opportunity to clean up the old and make a new commitment to God’s future for our lives and the world.

So will we have another Christmas as usual or shall we prepare the way of the Lord?

 

Amen.