Prepare The Way of The Lord - December 5, 2021

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Luke 3:1-6“He’s making a list, checking it twice,
Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice . . . “

For some children, and perhaps even adults, most of us learn at an early age to start watching what we do or say, how we play with others, our tone of voice, our helpfulness around the house and community, and any other number of ways to be on the “nice” list rather than the naughty.

Somehow the lectionary Gospel reading for today doesn’t seem to have that same effect on each of us, yet we hear some version of these words each year as well:

“Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” John calls people to a baptism of repentance. Every valley will be filled and the mountains and hills will

be made level with the filled valley.”

It’s not quite as catchy as the Santa Claus phrase. . . unless you are humming these words from Handel’s “Messiah.”

Whether it is Santa Claus or Luke these words remind us as the Apostle Paul said that “There is no distinction (among us) for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) None of us are at our best at times.

No one of us is immune from sin, from showing our worst side, our worst behavior, our irritability. But there is a lot more to the concept of repentance as John the Baptizer and Luke the Gospel writer say than our understanding of sin, in the “capital letter sense of SIN.” Our sin is associated with God’s forgiveness, and we are encouraged to be forgivers of others’ sins, or debts, or trespasses just as God forgives us.

The forgiveness — that act of mercy and grace from God is in a very real way the mechanism by which the valleys are raised up and made level and the hills and mountains are brought down to level. God’s forgiveness is a given. It does not depend on us, it is God’s free gift to each of us. There is not one of us here that can on our own initiative bring a mountain down a level or raise a valley up. Much less keep it there against the forces of nature. The same is true of forgiveness.

Once forgiveness has been given repentance is possible.

Repentance is actually our response to God’s grace-filled and merciful gift of forgiveness. Repentance is based on our ability to accept God’s forgiveness. Repentance is based on our understanding that all we need to do is to accept the fact that we are accepted by God who loves us.

Once we accept forgiveness we are able, if we are willing, to see that most of what we call sin is a sign that we are walking in the wrong direction. The road we are traveling on is away from God, away from God’s love, away from God’s directions, away from the teachings of Jesus.

In the light of God’s forgiveness we are able to consider repenting in the truest sense of that word: to repent is to “turn away from,” or “to radically change direction,” or “to return.” To repent is to make a 180-degree turn in our direction or pathway. Repentance is to say to ourselves, “if I don’t change nothing else will change.” “God, what can I do differently so as to not repeat this again.”

John who was the second cousin of Jesus called people to “prepare the way of the Lord” and he offered to people not forgiveness but a baptism of repentance. About 150 years later the early Christian writer and theologian, Tertullian, wrote that the call “for repentance should . . . prepare the home of the heart, by making it clean, for the Holy Spirit, who was about to supervene.”1

Getting ready for Christmas is when many of us spend time preparing our homes, for guests and family homecomings. In Advent —in the church —we prepare our hearts making room for God to dwell in us. Repentance is where the scriptures call us to begin.

Let us turn from the way we have been going. It may not have been some wicked or vile direction, but many of us find ourselves walking some direction we would not choose to go if only we believed we could re-direct our paths. By the love and mercy and grace of God, each of us receives that gift today:
“In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.”

Let us repent and seek out a new direction, a straight path, a level highway with God.

Let us prepare the way of the Lord in our hearts, and in our homes, and in our community and in our churches.

In the old days, before the reformed liturgy for Communion or Eucharist was adopted, back before 1972…

Most churches served communion at the communion rail where the people knelt and were served the juice and the wafer with people waiting at the rail in prayer until the pastor spoke a table dismissal.

During Advent one of the table dismissals used had these words I want to offer us as a congregation as we move from a time of worship into a time of blessing out gift and sending one another out into a world of service:
“Arise and go in peace; repent and walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.”

Let us rise now and bless our gifts and one another.

David L. Bartlett; Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 1: Advent 1 through Transfiguration. Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.