Advent 2 – 2021
Luke 3:1-6
Marian Free
In the name of God who has come and will come. Amen.
The home in which I grew up was not grand. It was one of four or five built by a developer on what had been a city council dump (and before that a swamp). The nearby houses were basically of the same design with only slight changes to make them appear different. Though the house was quite ordinary, it was ours. When I was quite young there were many occasions on which my parents would invite guests for afternoon tea. What marked out these days for me was not so much the visitors, but the preparation. Together we tidied the bedrooms, cleaned the bathroom, put out a nice hand towel and arranged biscuits on our best plates. I took it for granted that this was the way in which guests were treated and have (mostly) maintained the practice in my own life.
There are two ways of interpreting this behaviour. One is that it reflects a sense of pride, a desire to present oneself in the best light. Another way is to see it as a sign of respect for the one who is coming, the host making an effort so that the guest feels valued and welcomed. I would not want my friends to think that they mean so little to me that I have not gone to any effort in preparation for their visit, nor do I wish to entertain them surrounded by the detritus of my life – physical, emotional or spiritual.
Our Gospel today is all about preparation.
John the Baptist, Jesus’ forerunner, proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Using language taken from the book of Isaiah he was, according to Luke, “a voice crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”
It is important to note the distinction between the agendas of Isaiah and John. Though John uses the words of Isaiah he is speaking into an entirely different situation. Isaiah is addressing the Judeans in exile in Babylon announcing that a path will be made in the desert to smooth their journey home. Just as God led the people through the desert to the promised land, so now, Isaiah says, God will create a smooth path from one place to another. The earth will experience a radical upheaval – the flattening of mountains and the raising of valleys – such that every barrier between Persia and Judea is removed.
John, taking the words of Isaiah, puts them to a different use. His insistence on repentance and forgiveness suggests that it is the Judeans, not God, who need to clear a path and that it is God, not the Judeans who will use it. John insists that making a path will require changes to the lives of individuals that are every bit as dramatic as the earth moving changes described by Isaiah. The upheaval that John depicts will take place in the human heart as those who seek John’s baptism reassess who and what they are and as they endeavour to remove every obstacle that prevents God from being an integral part of their lives. As the penitents reassess who and what they are they may find that they need to make changes that are every bit as earth-shattering as the removal of mountains and the building up of valleys as they remove every obstacle that prevents God’s being an integral part of their lives.
Preparing our hearts for God’s coming is not unlike the preparation of one’s home for a guest. Each of us will need to have a good hard look at ourselves so that we can clear out the debris from our lives and do a deep clean of all the dark and hidden places of our hearts. We will have to make an honest assessment of the state of our lives and to ask ourselves what it is that stands between ourselves and God and what must we do to break down the barriers we have created.
Scripture reminds us – sometimes in terrifying terms – that God could come at any time, ‘like a thief in the night’. The implication of these warnings is that we should exist in a constant state of readiness.
Of course, none of us can really live like that, constantly on the edge, perpetually in a state of anxiety as to whether or not we have not left a stone unturned or failed to remove a bend in the road.
This perhaps is why the church in her wisdom has given us Advent, a time to reflect on our lives once again and to consider our state of readiness for God’s coming, a time to remove any impediments that prevent us from being completely open, exposed and vulnerable, a time to be honest about our short-comings and to seek God’s forgiveness. Like the housekeeper who allows their home to return to normal when the guests have gone, so we too may slip into our old habits once Christmas has passed. Hopefully though, throughout Advent our lives will have been changed – if only a little – and we won’t completely slip back into our old ways. The time we spend in preparation will make us more ready to welcome God than we were before Advent began and will mean that next Advent we can continue the process of smoothing out the way for God.
The good news is that it is not all turmoil and destruction. Every Advent we look back to Jesus’ coming as well as forward to his coming again. Through the Incarnation we have already experienced the presence of God among us and in Jesus we have been shown that God does not stand apart but is ready and willing to enter fully into the messiness of our existence. God in Jesus is content to sit down amid the clutter of our lives and to relate to us just as we are not as we could be. This and every Advent, it is important that we hold the tension between God with us, and God who is coming so that we can be comforted and disquieted in equal measure, knowing that God loves us as we are and challenges us to become who we can be.
Swallowsrest 