Is. 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8
Rev. Laura J. Collins
December 8, 2002
Prepare a way for the Lord!
That is today's text from both Isaiah and Mark and it is today's context for our congregation as well. We have lifted up the valleys, lowered the mountains and made a level path so that people can come and worship. Praise the Lord!
Takoma Park Presbyterian Church has a little motto we toss around, "A Church for All People." It is a nice motto, as far as it goes. It signals that we don't want to be a church for just white folks or just black folks, for just straight folks or just gay folks, for just young folks or just old folks, or even for just Presbyterian folk. We long to be a congregation which has room for many kinds of people -- an ecumenical vision of God's beautiful diversity.
We know that we are not really a church for all people -- we are Christian, for instance, so we exclude non-Christians and we are English-speaking, so we exclude those for whom English is not a preference. We aren't particularly pentecostal and we aren't exactly conservative, so we aren't going to appeal to everyone. Nonetheless, we try. We try to be inclusive and accomodating of many differences. We try to be welcoming and open-minded and generous-hearted. We try.
And our completion of the elevator is one more way of saying, "We want you here -- you who are older and unable to maneuver the forbidding front steps. You who have disabilities that make walking steps a challenge or an impossibility. You who are temporarily disabled and need some extra help. We want this to be your church, too."
And why? Why do we care? Because we're nice people? Well, some of us are some of the time. Or is it because the gospel demands it of us?
All of Advent is about preparing the way for Christ. Every year, before we get to the beautiful, silent night when we kneel with the shepherds and praise God for showing up -- showing up in vulnerability and humility and amazingly gracious love -- every year, we need to make a way for ourselves and others to find the manger.
The gospel and the prophets cry out to us: make a way. Break down the barriers. Smooth out the rough spots. God promises to be near us, to come close enough to touch us and know us and be known by us. God will hold up that end of the covenant. But then we need to do our part, because even with God reaching out there will be barriers and we will need to help each other get across them.
Breaking down barriers that keep people from God's love and justice is our calling. All of us who claim the name of Christ.
Sometimes the toughest barriers to break through are in our own lives. Some of you know that when I was in college I had planned to work in some aspect of the political system. I imagined myself working for change on issues like hunger and peace. So it came to me as a kind of rude but wonderful awakening to sense that God wanted me to work on change from another angle -- the change in people's souls that make them care about hunger and peace.
The barriers we have to meeting God are many -- barriers of trust, family history, personal baggage. They are emotional barriers, intellectual barriers, spiritual barriers. The person who needs to be in control and can't imagine that God actually might be capable of running things, because if God is in control, she sure isn't running things the way I would. Or the person who has been abused and oppressed and imagines God as punishing and harsh, like human authorities he has known. Or the person whose physical or mental pain interferes daily with the ability to experience joy.
Barriers also exist in our environment. Barriers of sexism and racism which claim, implicitly, that God is more like me than like you.
Barriers of poverty -- where getting basic needs met takes so much energy that there is none left over for spiritual explorations.
Barriers of violence that breed such deep-seated fear and hatred that the capacity to experience grace is nearly extinguished.
"Prepare a way for the Lord; make God's paths straight. Lift up the valleys, bring low the mountains, make the rough places plain."
These images do not suggest that preparing the way is as simple as a prayer or something that can be accomplished with a smile. Lifting valleys and tearing down mountains requires serious work -- lots of demolition, lots of rebuilding. Sometimes it doesn't happen right on schedule. You tear down one wall and find another problem there!
This is true for the barriers God is calling us to remove as well. Barriers in our own spirits are like mountains that need to be brought down. For some people a few dynamite explosions are required. Others spend their entire lives moving one shovel full at a time.
The Hebrew people who heard the message from the prophet Isaiah were a people who had been defeated politically and personally. They were exiled by the Babylonian empire, having been removed from their homeland and living among a culture and religion foreign to them. They were tempted to despair and hopelessness. They fed on, as one scholar has noted, those "twin doubts that perennially afflict those enduring grievous suffering, the one questioning God's power to change the situation, the other questioning God's goodness and love." (1)
So Isaiah begins the chapter: "Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly ... to her." Whatever your doubts, whatever your troubles, whatever has plagued you, whatever is keeping you separated from God's love, know that God longs to comfort you. God longs to comfort you.
This is the good news. God has not left us in our grief, in our confusion, in our longing, in our exiles. God desires, more than anything, to be with us. This is what Isaiah spoke to the exiled people of Israel, with a promise that a better government was on the way. This was not a comfort of words only, but a comfort with a promise for a more hopeful life. If the people would make a way for God, God would come and walk with them.
This is the message of Mark's gospel as well. John the Baptist, with all his eccentricities, is crying out to get people's attention. Turn around, try a new way, he cries. The old way isn't working. Open your hearts to God's chosen one. Let yourself be baptized by the Holy Spirit. Prepare the way!
I stand before you today to give testimony to the fact that when the way is prepared, when the path is laid, Christ will walk in and baptize your life. God can transform depressed people into wounded healers, fearful people into courageous leaders, addicted people into compassionate friends, self-centered people into generous souls. God can change broken congregations into communities of joy, lousy marriages into places of grace, impoverished neighborhoods into bastions of hope. I know this because I've lived it, I've witnessed it, I've felt it in the marrows of my bones.
And so when I look over at that elevator, you know what I see? I don't see a mortgage for the next 20 years or a construction project for church improvement. I see a pathway. I see an open door inviting in every longing soul, every searching mind, every weary body who needs to hear those words, "Comfort, O comfort my people." I see a response to a gospel command, "Prepare a way, make straight the path." Somebody, somewhere today is praying for a place to come in from the cold. And maybe, just maybe, that person will find their way to this door.
And maybe, just maybe, we can greet them here with open arms and say, "Come in -- let us meet God here together."
(1) Hansen, Paul. Isaiah 40 -66. The Interpretation Series. (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1995). pp. 24-25. (Back to text)
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