Advent 2C Ð December 9, 2018

Don't know quite where I am going with this yet, but the beginning of the reading struck me forcibly as I read the Gospel to myself yesterday - the way Luke piles up all those names and territories. "in the 15th year of the emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ..ruler of Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiphas."  

The impression is of a world where all the power is sewn up, where every square inch has its ruler - there seems so little room to maneuver.  Yet into this comes the word of God to John - prepare a way, make the paths straight, all flesh shall see the salvation of God.  It seems a very deliberate piece of storytelling - the contrast between the tightly packed earthly powers and the imagery of God sweeping into this place as if he owned it (which of course he does). 

I imagine the Roman road builders would have acted like this - they wanted to build their nice straight road through your land; they built their nice straight road through your land. You didn't like it? Tough!  It spoke to me of the way that we like to think we have got things all organized, but perhaps discover when something unexpected happens that we aren't as powerful, as in control as we thought.  

In another sense it also speaks to me of the helplessness we can feel that we have no room to manoeuvre either - we can't do this and we can't do that - the territory of our lives is all sewn up - we have to be responsible for such and such and so and so - this or that won't let us do what we feel called to do - what will people think of us if we do something different from the herd?  This article from The Independent on Sunday (a UK Sunday newspaper) left me scratching my head in bemusement, not sure if I wanted to give the author a good shake, or cry for her. http://money.independent.co.uk/personal_finance/invest_save/article2030802.ece  

And there are those who live with far more crushing oppressions and restrictions - poverty, disease, occupation, civil war - I think of child soldiers around the world, for example - their lives seem to have been all sewn up at an early age, conditioned to fight and hate as children, - and yet things can be different, those who work with them can make a difference - a pathway can be made into their lives which lets something new in  (the dawn from on high shall break up on them.) and lets them out into a new place too. http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/crp/index.htm  

I have mental image of Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, Philip Lysanias et al. standing spluttering furiously as the road builders of God come tearing into their nice, well sorted landscape ."you need planning permission for that road..! You can't build it here. This is my land."

The highway of God is to be built not in the spare land, the land no one wants, but through these tightly ruled lands. It is a highway, not a bypass. The lectionary reading from Baruch 5.1-9,  makes it quite clear that this is a highway to Jerusalem, the center of power, the center of the world.  

Faith is not a bolt on extra; the perfect gift for the person who has everything; something to do with your spare time and energy. It should be something that goes to the heart of our lives and our dealings with the world.  

There are commemorations planned for next year marking 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade, for example. We might wonder how so many Christians could have lived with this, and why it took so long for them to let the message of the Gospel get to the heart of their thinking on this, why there were so few, apparently, like Wilberforce, raising voices to challenge the trade. 

The disjunctions between our apparent comfort with our over-consuming lifestyles and the effect this has on the people of the two-thirds world and on the environment might be an example of this same "bypass" mentality today. 

Sugary sentiments about the love of God, mushy choruses about the joy of salvation, focus on the destination of eternal souls; these are all ok, but when faith gets involved in politics there can be hell to pay. God can have the spare bits of our lives, the bits which would otherwise have been unoccupied desert, but not building a highway to Zion, to the center of power is another thing altogether.  John's preaching starts in the wilderness - but the culmination of Jesus ministry is in Jerusalem.

Forgiveness
  
Carl Michalson, a brilliant young theologian who died in a plane crash some years ago, once told about playing with his young son one afternoon. They tussled playfully on their front lawn when Michalson accidentally hit the young boy in the face with his elbow. It was a sharp blow full to his son's face. The little boy was stunned by the impact of the elbow. 

It hurt, and he was just about to burst into tears. But then he looked into his father's eyes. Instead of anger and hostility, he saw there his father's sympathy and concern; he saw there his father's love and compassion. Instead of exploding into tears, the little boy suddenly burst into laughter. What he saw in his father's eyes made all the difference!  

The sharp blow of God's message to us is: Repentance. But, look into your father's eyes. What he offers you is forgiveness and that makes all the difference. Repent and you will be forgiven.  (by James W. Moore from Some Things Are too Good Not to Be True, Nashville:Dimensions, p. 43. Adapted)