A Meditation on Luke 3:1-6 ~ John the Baptist calls seekers and believers to prepare the way for God’s arrival: “Fill in the valleys, level the mountains, make the crooked straight and the rough places smooth!”
The Hiddenness of God
And then, one day, he simply emerged from his cell. His door stood open, and there he was. His disciples – stunned and confused – demanded an explanation. “Why, master? Why, why, why?” And the great Hasidic master told them: “Now perhaps you understand my relationship with the Almighty, who will not reveal Himself no matter how hard I beg, who hides his face from me.”
Now even as the culture strings lights from roofs and pads to the mall to sit in Santa’s lap, our faith community steps into Advent tentatively and cautiously. It’s the hiddenness of God that bewilders us. It’s the hiddenness of God that settles like a winter storm in our hearts. Advent is a season for those who experience, who feel what Menachem Mendl of Kotsk has felt. No matter how hard I beg, God hides his face from me. No matter how hard I pray, God seems distant, lackluster, unconcerned. If God really cares for me, if God really holds my soul in her hand, how can I feel such pain, such grief? Advent is a season for Jews piecing life together in exile, for parents raising kids in wartime Baghdad or Kabul; it’s a season for addicts roaming the streets and software engineers surfing the web for work. If God really cares for us, if God really holds our souls in her hand, how can we struggle so? Why is God so hidden?
Forgive me this dark beginning, but Advent begins in darkness, in exile, in an alien place, a disconnected place. There’s a kind of honest and heartfelt agnosticism that’s completely appropriate in Christian faith. And Advent begins in not knowing, in not seeing, in not feeling close. Some time ago, a thirty-one-year-old woman named Milagros Martinez drowned herself off the shore of upper Manhattan Island. She had AIDS and no way of taking care of herself, keeping a job, paying the bills; so she went to the river and threw her body, which had become a fearful thing to her, she threw her body into the Hudson River, ending her life.
Before she drowned, from the edge of drowning, Milagros Martinez called to her seven-year-old son: She’d left him standing on the riverbank. And according to police, and a sixty-seven-word newspaper article, Milagros Martinez begged her son to join her in the water. And he refused, the seven-year-old refused, watching instead as his mother was taken away by the river’s current.
In Your Life
And that’s where Advent begins, on the banks of the Hudson River, with a seven-year-old whose mother has AIDS and just can’t take it anymore. That’s where Advent begins: in exile, where nothing makes sense and heartbreak is routine. That’s where Advent begins: in not knowing, in not seeing, in not feeling close.
When I imagine this Gospel scene in the Judean wilderness, in the region around the Jordan River, I imagine bewildered crowds and broken hearts. I imagine Milagros Martinez and her seven-year-old son, and a friend who lost his job last week and can’t imagine what comes next. I imagine men like Tiger Woods whose vulnerabilities become sins and whose sins cause distress for those who love them most. I imagine you and me and every believer who’s ever doubted, every dreamer who’s ever given up.
And somehow, someway, the promise of peace comes to us. Somehow, someway, the word of God comes to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. Knee-deep in another river. Knee-deep in the possibility of grace. The word of God comes to John. He’s not a scholar. He’s not a preacher. He’s not a best-selling author. He’s just a guy in the wilderness, a baptist knee-deep in a river. And the word of God comes his way. And it’s not a timid word, it’s not a thin whisper. The word that comes to John, knee-deep in the Jordan, is a thundering word, a provocative word. “Every valley shall be filled,” he proclaims, channeling the prophet Isaiah. “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low! The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth. And all flesh,” he thunders, “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Nothing timid, nothing thin, nothing casual about it: “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
John’s message – like Isaiah’s before him – is a message for that little seven-year-old on the banks of the Hudson, and for his mother. It’s a message for kids in Manhattan and Santa Cruz, too, who feel the world slipping away and look to violent gangs for some kind of purpose and direction. It’s a message for you and me when the world comes crashing down and darkness takes our breath away. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” he cries, “make his paths straight! For every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low!” You may have adjusted to a life without passion. You may have given in to life without justice. You may have settled for a life without purpose. But here comes John in the wilderness, dressed all wrong, going meatless, eating locusts and honey, and insisting that things are going to change. Despair’s not all there is. Life is more than passing time. And God is doing a new thing. In your life. A world-flipping, heart-healing, home-coming, soul-saving new thing! In your life.
And that’s what John’s preparing for out there in the river. That’s what this baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins is all about. Are you ready? Are you preparing? Are you opening the doors of your heart for the new thing, for the world-flipping, heart-healing, home-coming, soul-saving new thing God’s about to do?
Bear Light in the Darkness
I want to encourage you this morning to be intentional this Advent, intentional in your practice of repentance, conversion, preparation. Don’t simply let Christmas happen. Make it happen. Prepare the way of the Lord! Open the doors of your heart. Be intentional. What we’re talking about here is conversion: not a blinded-by-the-light, once-in-a-lifetime conversion, but a day-to-day conversion, a moment-by-moment conversion. A conversion in which you participate and commit and prepare a way for God.
The Catholic writer, Macrina Wiederkehr, describes “deep and lasting conversion [as] a process, an unfolding, a slow turning and turning again. We are saved every day,” she says. “We are saved from our self-righteousness, our narrow minds, our own wills, our obstinate clinging. We are saved from our blindness. Salvation stands before us at every moment.” So maybe our Advent practice has to do with this slow turning, this daily purification process, this welcoming of Christ every day. Maybe it has to do with being intentional.
How you do this is, of course, up to you. But I offer this “Teshuvah” guide as a resource, as an opportunity, as one way among many. Jews practice ‘teshuvah,’ in a deliberate way, during their own High Holy Days at the Jewish New Year. You may know that they mark the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with a disciplined practice of reflection. Some believe that what happens during those 10 days determines all that happens in the year to come. On Rosh Hashanah, they believe, the Book of Life opens; on Yom Kippur, it closes. What they do in between matters. It matters a lot. So they spend those ten days thinking about their spiritual lives, their connection with God, their commitments to family and friends, their commitments to justice and peace. They confess and make restitution for mistakes. They reconcile with troubled friends. It’s intense.
So I wrote this guide for myself: because, for years, I’ve longed for a different kind of Advent; because, for years, I’ve craved a counter-cultural experience during these four weeks, an experience of spirit and hope. I want focus during Advent, not frills. I want transformation, not the same old same old. I want Advent and Christmas and my own spiritual life to be intense. So you’ll find a kind of liturgy for each the season’s four weeks. It’s meant as personal liturgy, a devotional guide; you’ll be invited to pray, to meditate on sacred words, and to think about, to really think about, your spiritual life. Are you taking time and investing energy in the nourishment of your soul? Are their relationships in your life that need your attention, your grace, your time? And what about your commitments to peace and social justice? Are you aware of the power we have – right here – to effect significant social change? Are you timid or bold in exercising this power?
And maybe most importantly, Advent invites a patient kind of introspection: Are the doors of my heart open to the stranger, to the friend next door, to the enemies of my country? Am I aware when those doors bang shut? And what can I do to swing them wide again and again and again? These questions matter most perhaps, because tradition tells us that Christ comes in a stranger’s guise. To welcome a stranger, to welcome one another: is to make a place in our hearts for Jesus. Christmas boils down to this.
What I’m interested in, then, and what John the Baptist seems committed to, is a robust faith, a resilient faith, a courageous and forgiving faith. It’s the kind of faith that’s able to look the addict in the eye and say, “There’s a path for you. The valleys will be filled, and the mountains will be leveled for you.” It’s the kind of faith that’s able to take that seven-your-old orphan by the hand and say, “There’s a path for you. The crooked will be straight, and the rough ways will be smooth for you.”
Be intentional, friends, about your faith, about your heart, about your connection to the source of spirit in the universe. Be intentional with your practice. Because God needs you. Because God chooses you to bear light in the darkness. Because God chooses you to speak comfort to the broken. Because God tasks you and me with filling in valleys and leveling the mountains. For that seven-year-old orphan. And for Jesus.
Prepare a way for the little One of Bethlehem.
Prepare a way for the Prince of Peace, Mary’s Son.
Prepare a way for the Lord.
