Practice to Prepare

Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8

Dec. 7, 2014

Some years ago I heard an interesting counterpoint to Isaiah’s vision that “every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.” Responding to that passage, someone said, “making the way too easy removes the challenges that make us who we are.”

I agree with the general sentiment. As M. Scott Peck suggests, "Our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers."

However, when it comes to this particular passage from Isaiah, it’s an interesting interpretation that, alas, rests on one of the most common interpretive mistakes we make: we think the text is about us. That is to say, we imagine that the way is being made clear for us. But the highway in the desert is not for us.

To begin with, in this text, the highway is for God – it’s a way through the desert places to the place of human habitation. It’s the way for God to come close to us.

But even if I hear in these words a call to smooth the human way – that is, to build a road where there is no road – I ought to understand first that no road exists just for me. As much as I’d like to believe that the new HOV lanes on I-95 are being made just to make my way smoother, that doesn’t make it so.

It’s never about just me.

Indeed, if it’s Isaiah, it’s probably about justice, not just me and not even just us. If it’s about a way for humans in Isaiah, it’s going to be for all humans and it’s going to be a fair and level way – a way, that is, that lifts up the lowly and knocks the high and mighty from their lofty perches.

It’s a compelling word for us to hear this week, as we see yet another instance of white cops getting off the hook in the killing of a black man. I’ve just got to imagine that if Eric Garner were still living, he wouldn’t mind if some of the rough places got smoothed out just a bit.

Against the seemingly endless litany of injustices, it’s pretty simple see that if we’re going to make a way in the desert of injustice for the God of justice to come near we’ve got a whole lot of work to do.

Indeed, on this point I’m going to do something that I’m pretty certain I have never done in 15 years of preaching: I’m going to quote favorably a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention. Following the announcement of the Long Island grand jury’s decision, Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said,

Romans 13 says that the sword of justice is to be wielded against evildoers. Now, what we too often see still is a situation where our African-American brothers and sisters, especially brothers, are more likely to be arrested, more likely to be executed, more likely to be killed. And this is a situation in which we have to say, I wonder what the defenders of this would possibly say. I just don’t know. But I think we have to acknowledge that something is wrong with the system at this point and that something has to be done.[1]

Yes, we’ve got a lot of work to do. If what we are building is a way for to be brought closer to God – for God to bend low to us – then what we’re talking about in Isaiah is a massive construction project – one that puts the past ten years of work on the Mixing Bowl to shame.

You’d think, after more than a decade of work on that road they’d finally get it right. After all, they say that practice makes perfect. Then again, we’re 60 years past Brown v. Board of Education, and we’re still struggling mightily in this nation trying to find a way toward authentic repentance from our original sin.

Now, of course, the way Isaiah announces is not an actual road; it’s a metaphor. It’s about creating deeper human relationships with God, and about creating just and right relationships between and among God’s children. But just as building an actual road takes some actual practiced skills, so does building deep relationships with God and with one another.

It’s takes time. It takes commitment. It takes practice.

Doing justice is a spiritual practice of Christian life. Offering hospitality is a spiritual practice of Christian life. Generosity is a spiritual practice of Christian life. These are among the tried and true, age-old practices of the faith that followers of Jesus have used to draw themselves more deeply into the heart of God.

The season of Advent invites us to prepare a way in our own hearts for the nearness of the divine. So, this morning, I want to spend some time sharing some of the practices of our own faith lives that draw us closer to God; that deepen our faith; that embed us more deeply in relationship with the people of God; that draw us more tightly into the circle that centers on the way of Jesus; that bring us closer to that image that Isaiah offered – swords into plowshares, that Jesus imagined – the kingdom of God, that King dreamed – the Beloved Community. We’ll only get to such places if we make a way in the desert. We’ll only be able to make a way if we practice.

What are some of your practices of faith?

*****

I spent some time last week leading worship and offering a few thoughts to the Virginia Ecumenical Camp and Retreat Leaders Gathering. I talked with them about the notion of “constant whitewater”: the situation of being constantly buffeted by chaotic conditions. As a young man I was a whitewater enthusiast, and the first time I heard the phrase at some leadership development conference 15 or more years ago my first thought was: “great! Toss me a paddle and let’s go!”

Of course, if you’ve ever spent a day paddling, you know it leaves you spent at the end of it. Imagine how you’d feel if you had to do it all the time, all day, every day. You’d be desperate for a big rock in the river to eddy up behind, or a gently slopping shore to rest on for a while.

Imagine what if feels like to be foundering in raging rapids; to be struggling mightily at work, in school; worse yet, to be victimized or marginalized on account of, oh, for example, the color of your skin … or your gender … or your gender identity … or your sexuality … or your poverty. Constant whitewater, indeed.

I left the camp leaders with the challenge or invitation to take up a spiritual practice that could be for them an anchor place, a calm center, perhaps, in the raging whitewater that they encounter in their work. Similarly, I encourage you, this season of Advent, to commit or recommit to a spiritual practice of the Christian faith that both buoys you in the whitewater of your own experience, and that also continues that great construction project of making a way in the desert of contemporary life for the coming again of our God. Amen.

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[1] Quoted in “In Wake of Eric Garner Case, Southern Baptist Leader Rips Racism in the Church,” by Sarah Posner, in Religion Dispatches, Dec. 4, 2014.