Prepare the Way
Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 3:1-6
December 9
We all know this passage – prepare the way! We are all familiar with the phrases from Isaiah that Luke quotes here: “make the way straight, every valley will be exalted, make the way smooth.” Prepare the way.
So I want to ask this morning, what “way” do we mean? Which way?
It would be easy, timely, and even quite defensible to preach this morning about the way of nonviolence as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, the nonviolent Jesus.
But such a gesture strikes me this morning as, in fact, too easy, and if there is one thing that we should be quite clear about it is this: the way of Jesus is not easy – ever. Even as we prepare ourselves to travel again to the manger, we must know that the way of Jesus is, ultimately, the way of the cross. Thus the way of Jesus is a way of transformation.
So if we are, these days, to be about the business of preparing the way of the Lord, then we are to be about preparing a way of transformation – of our lives and of the life of the world.
This, then, is no simple matter. It is not gumdrops and tinsel and packages, boxes and bows, no matter how much we might try to domesticate it and subsume it to market ideology or consumer culture.
Rather, this is, as Bonhoeffer knew, about the great turning around of all things. Bonhoeffer knew that there are two places that the mighty and powerful fear to go: to the manger and to the cross. As we prepare the way of the Lord, we are preparing ourselves to go directly into the midst of those places that the mighty and powerful fear to go.
I am neither particularly brave nor particularly risk averse – an odd and perhaps contradictory combination. So as I considered the places that I fear to go I thought first of places that I don’t particularly fear – caves, the tops of tall buildings, planes, the Beltway at rush hour, the woods, youth group road trips, roller coasters, zip lines, climbing walls, whitewater.
None of that strikes me as particularly brave – with the possible exception of youth group trips. The rest of it falls in the category of things I will do for fun.
But when I consider the places I do fear to go, well an interesting list quickly arises: jail cells; hospital rooms; sites of familial confrontations.
Like the manger and the cross, the places I fear to tread all have something to do with a fundamental fear of going too deep.
Sure, there is a certain innate unpleasantness to each of these places. For example, I simply do not like the smell of hospitals. Jail cells are not much better, and there is the threat to freedom that comes along with them as well. And, who, really, walks willingly into family confrontations?
But there is something deeper at stake in the fear of going into such places, and it is the same thing that is at stake at the manger and at the cross.
Hospital rooms are places of transformation. They may be places of great healing, but they are first and foremost, places of sickness and the fear that comes along with serious illness or injury. Jail cells are also places of transformation, and while there may be some hope of redemption in their midst, they are primarily places of the fear that comes with surrendering freedom and control. Family conflict? Again, they are sites of transformation – or, at least, of the possibility of transformation, and the fear that comes with emotional vulnerability.
As I considered my own list of places I fear to tread, I recognized quickly that what they hold in common is the possibility of transformation – and, more pointedly, transformations that I do not control.
That is what we open ourselves up to when we gather at the manger, or the cross.
When we go into the places where we fear to tread, and when we look within ourselves to find what it is that we are so afraid of, then we have begun to prepare the way of transformation.
These are places and moments of stepping into the refiner’s fire, of submitting to the harsh cleansing of the fuller. They are not easy, not comfortable, and most of the time we do our best to avoid them.
I have limited experience with jail cells, though I have been on both sides of the door, as it were. About 10 years ago, I found myself serving, for several months, as the designated spiritual advisor to a man who had committed a rampage killing, gunning down five people.
Sitting with this man, listening to his story, was a strange and fascinating experience that culminated for me when one of our final visits was actually face to face without the intervening glass and with no one else in the room with us. I was talking with him that afternoon – and I can vividly recall looking beyond him into the common room of the wing he was housed in and making sure that the guard there could see us through the window. As I was listening to him talk about jail life, his upcoming trial, his parents and his psychiatrists, I was struck by the ordinariness of his story, by the many touchstones of commonality between us – Presbyterian kids, raised in suburban households, college and grad-school educations. There but for fortune – in this case, paranoid schizophrenia and hallucinations and resistance to medications, among other things – there but for fortune could go you or me.
Coming face to face with that realization drives one to one’s knees in gratitude, and in repentance. For, as Bonhoeffer recognized, there is something about drawing close to the manger that brings us to the realization that God loves our worst enemies – and also those among us who do the most awful things – just as much as God loves us.
Therefore, we are called to extend mercy far beyond what is comfortable or acceptable or reasonable or safe, because we are called to come face to face with ourselves, and to recognize that which is of God in every other one we encounter – even the mass murderer who may, for a while, occupy the same room with you, or, even the same pew with you. For this is the way of Jesus – and such is the way we are called to prepare. No one ever said that the way would be easy; and no one ever promised that work of preparation would be welcomed with open arms and garlands and huzzas.
I was the on-call chaplain at the hospital about this time of year – Advent – a dozen years or so back. I was paged to surgical ICU, and told at the nurses’ station that a post-operative heart patient had coded and was not going to survive. Her family – husband and three grown sons – were in that little room where they send you when they think they are probably going to have to deliver bad news.
I knocked on the door. When it opened I introduced myself as the chaplain, and one of the sons immediately said, “we don’t need no stinkin’ chaplain.”
I’m sure that dozens of come-back lines ran through my mind; fortunately I said simply, “if you change your mind, I’ll be right outside.”
A moment later, the father came out, made the unnecessary apology and asked me to join them. We talked for a while and prayed together. They were Pentecostals, so the praying was quite an experience for a decent, orderly Presbyterian.
It turned out that the son who did not need a chaplain, was a Desert Storm vet with, well, a lot of anger-management issues, and he was taking out the anger stage of grieving on a poor nurse who happened to be in the room when the mother had coded. He all but accused her of murdering his mother, and his brothers and their father – in the midst of their own shock and sadness – were caught up in the stress of family conflict.
I’m not sure how long we were together in that small room, the five of us, awaiting the final word that we all knew was coming. We probably spoke together and prayed together for more than a half hour before the nurses called me out to speak briefly with the surgeon and we went in together so that he could break the news.
More tears were shed; more angry words spoken; and then, more prayers. I asked a nurse if the family could see the woman’s body and say goodbye, and we were led into the room. We prayed again, and I stepped to the doorway to leave them alone, and as I did, they joined hands around the hospital bed and sang the most mournful, poignant, hope-filled version of Silent Night that I have ever heard.
When they finished, the angry son stepped over to me and asked me if I would find the nurse at whom he had directed so much anger. I said that I would, but I wondered fearfully what he was going to do or say.
She was at the nurses’ station and I asked her if she was willing to speak with him, knowing full well how much venom had been spit in her direction. She said “yes,” with no hesitation, and we walked back to the family. All of this happened in one unit, so there was never much distance between anyone, and I think the entire nursing staff was paused in their work to watch and see what was about to happen.
The son looked her in the eye and said, “I am sorry. Will you forgive me?”
In the midst of bearing a most difficult cross, “will you forgive me?”
At the cross, at the manger, the places where we fear to tread in our strength, where our egos do not want to be for they are no longer in control.
But a way has been made there for us to come in our weakness, in our most vulnerable moments, to find grace and mercy, forgiveness and love.
John came preaching repentance, because he knew that such coming clean is a necessary first step in preparing our hearts, our lives, our world for the way of Christ. But he also came quoting Isaiah, because he knew that while the way is not easy, there is a balm along the way, there is mercy along the way, there is hope along the way.
So this Advent season, where are the places you fear to tread? What transformations await you?
Prepare the way.
For there is, even now, a voice that cries out: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'
Amen.
December 9
We all know this passage – prepare the way! We are all familiar with the phrases from Isaiah that Luke quotes here: “make the way straight, every valley will be exalted, make the way smooth.” Prepare the way.
So I want to ask this morning, what “way” do we mean? Which way?
It would be easy, timely, and even quite defensible to preach this morning about the way of nonviolence as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, the nonviolent Jesus.
But such a gesture strikes me this morning as, in fact, too easy, and if there is one thing that we should be quite clear about it is this: the way of Jesus is not easy – ever. Even as we prepare ourselves to travel again to the manger, we must know that the way of Jesus is, ultimately, the way of the cross. Thus the way of Jesus is a way of transformation.
So if we are, these days, to be about the business of preparing the way of the Lord, then we are to be about preparing a way of transformation – of our lives and of the life of the world.
This, then, is no simple matter. It is not gumdrops and tinsel and packages, boxes and bows, no matter how much we might try to domesticate it and subsume it to market ideology or consumer culture.
Rather, this is, as Bonhoeffer knew, about the great turning around of all things. Bonhoeffer knew that there are two places that the mighty and powerful fear to go: to the manger and to the cross. As we prepare the way of the Lord, we are preparing ourselves to go directly into the midst of those places that the mighty and powerful fear to go.
I am neither particularly brave nor particularly risk averse – an odd and perhaps contradictory combination. So as I considered the places that I fear to go I thought first of places that I don’t particularly fear – caves, the tops of tall buildings, planes, the Beltway at rush hour, the woods, youth group road trips, roller coasters, zip lines, climbing walls, whitewater.
None of that strikes me as particularly brave – with the possible exception of youth group trips. The rest of it falls in the category of things I will do for fun.
But when I consider the places I do fear to go, well an interesting list quickly arises: jail cells; hospital rooms; sites of familial confrontations.
Like the manger and the cross, the places I fear to tread all have something to do with a fundamental fear of going too deep.
Sure, there is a certain innate unpleasantness to each of these places. For example, I simply do not like the smell of hospitals. Jail cells are not much better, and there is the threat to freedom that comes along with them as well. And, who, really, walks willingly into family confrontations?
But there is something deeper at stake in the fear of going into such places, and it is the same thing that is at stake at the manger and at the cross.
Hospital rooms are places of transformation. They may be places of great healing, but they are first and foremost, places of sickness and the fear that comes along with serious illness or injury. Jail cells are also places of transformation, and while there may be some hope of redemption in their midst, they are primarily places of the fear that comes with surrendering freedom and control. Family conflict? Again, they are sites of transformation – or, at least, of the possibility of transformation, and the fear that comes with emotional vulnerability.
As I considered my own list of places I fear to tread, I recognized quickly that what they hold in common is the possibility of transformation – and, more pointedly, transformations that I do not control.
That is what we open ourselves up to when we gather at the manger, or the cross.
When we go into the places where we fear to tread, and when we look within ourselves to find what it is that we are so afraid of, then we have begun to prepare the way of transformation.
These are places and moments of stepping into the refiner’s fire, of submitting to the harsh cleansing of the fuller. They are not easy, not comfortable, and most of the time we do our best to avoid them.
I have limited experience with jail cells, though I have been on both sides of the door, as it were. About 10 years ago, I found myself serving, for several months, as the designated spiritual advisor to a man who had committed a rampage killing, gunning down five people.
Sitting with this man, listening to his story, was a strange and fascinating experience that culminated for me when one of our final visits was actually face to face without the intervening glass and with no one else in the room with us. I was talking with him that afternoon – and I can vividly recall looking beyond him into the common room of the wing he was housed in and making sure that the guard there could see us through the window. As I was listening to him talk about jail life, his upcoming trial, his parents and his psychiatrists, I was struck by the ordinariness of his story, by the many touchstones of commonality between us – Presbyterian kids, raised in suburban households, college and grad-school educations. There but for fortune – in this case, paranoid schizophrenia and hallucinations and resistance to medications, among other things – there but for fortune could go you or me.
Coming face to face with that realization drives one to one’s knees in gratitude, and in repentance. For, as Bonhoeffer recognized, there is something about drawing close to the manger that brings us to the realization that God loves our worst enemies – and also those among us who do the most awful things – just as much as God loves us.
Therefore, we are called to extend mercy far beyond what is comfortable or acceptable or reasonable or safe, because we are called to come face to face with ourselves, and to recognize that which is of God in every other one we encounter – even the mass murderer who may, for a while, occupy the same room with you, or, even the same pew with you. For this is the way of Jesus – and such is the way we are called to prepare. No one ever said that the way would be easy; and no one ever promised that work of preparation would be welcomed with open arms and garlands and huzzas.
I was the on-call chaplain at the hospital about this time of year – Advent – a dozen years or so back. I was paged to surgical ICU, and told at the nurses’ station that a post-operative heart patient had coded and was not going to survive. Her family – husband and three grown sons – were in that little room where they send you when they think they are probably going to have to deliver bad news.
I knocked on the door. When it opened I introduced myself as the chaplain, and one of the sons immediately said, “we don’t need no stinkin’ chaplain.”
I’m sure that dozens of come-back lines ran through my mind; fortunately I said simply, “if you change your mind, I’ll be right outside.”
A moment later, the father came out, made the unnecessary apology and asked me to join them. We talked for a while and prayed together. They were Pentecostals, so the praying was quite an experience for a decent, orderly Presbyterian.
It turned out that the son who did not need a chaplain, was a Desert Storm vet with, well, a lot of anger-management issues, and he was taking out the anger stage of grieving on a poor nurse who happened to be in the room when the mother had coded. He all but accused her of murdering his mother, and his brothers and their father – in the midst of their own shock and sadness – were caught up in the stress of family conflict.
I’m not sure how long we were together in that small room, the five of us, awaiting the final word that we all knew was coming. We probably spoke together and prayed together for more than a half hour before the nurses called me out to speak briefly with the surgeon and we went in together so that he could break the news.
More tears were shed; more angry words spoken; and then, more prayers. I asked a nurse if the family could see the woman’s body and say goodbye, and we were led into the room. We prayed again, and I stepped to the doorway to leave them alone, and as I did, they joined hands around the hospital bed and sang the most mournful, poignant, hope-filled version of Silent Night that I have ever heard.
When they finished, the angry son stepped over to me and asked me if I would find the nurse at whom he had directed so much anger. I said that I would, but I wondered fearfully what he was going to do or say.
She was at the nurses’ station and I asked her if she was willing to speak with him, knowing full well how much venom had been spit in her direction. She said “yes,” with no hesitation, and we walked back to the family. All of this happened in one unit, so there was never much distance between anyone, and I think the entire nursing staff was paused in their work to watch and see what was about to happen.
The son looked her in the eye and said, “I am sorry. Will you forgive me?”
In the midst of bearing a most difficult cross, “will you forgive me?”
At the cross, at the manger, the places where we fear to tread in our strength, where our egos do not want to be for they are no longer in control.
But a way has been made there for us to come in our weakness, in our most vulnerable moments, to find grace and mercy, forgiveness and love.
John came preaching repentance, because he knew that such coming clean is a necessary first step in preparing our hearts, our lives, our world for the way of Christ. But he also came quoting Isaiah, because he knew that while the way is not easy, there is a balm along the way, there is mercy along the way, there is hope along the way.
So this Advent season, where are the places you fear to tread? What transformations await you?
Prepare the way.
For there is, even now, a voice that cries out: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'
Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
7:17 AM
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