In the second year of
the presidency of Donald Trump, when Xi Jinping held power in China and
Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Angel Merkel and Theresa May wrestled Brexit in
Europe; when The Border Wall was a federal budget issue and gun regulation and marijuana
decriminalization were the hot issues in the states and climate change the
fearsome topic of world politics;
the Word of God came to
the people of Trinity in Moorestown, and they went forth into the wildernesses
of the Pine Barrens and of the Cherry Hill Mall crying out with the words of the
prophets, “Prepare the Way of the Lord!”
Okay, the last part’s a
bit of a stretch, I know.
But before I got to the
part where I set you up as a public
evangelist, were you wondering where we were going with all those political
figures and issues?
Or did you notice right
away that this is exactly what you heard Luke doing just a minute or two ago, locating
the story and the preaching of John the Baptist right in the middle of a
complex political and social environment?
Luke gives us a long
list of rulers and governors (that very few of us in this room want the
responsibility of pronouncing out loud), to pin down the preaching of John the
Baptist to a very specific time and place. And to the very specific political
and social reality of the restlessness and partisan messiness of Roman rule in Israel.
It’s important to Luke
that John and Jesus come into a world made ripe for some kind of faithful change
and ready for political upheaval. It’s important, too, that the coming of God
happens at a real, historical, specific moment – a place and time we can recognize.
Luke very much wants us
to understand the Good News that God brings salvation right into the
historical, political, physical reality we live in. It’s good news – the Word
of God for Trinity in Moorestown – that God can and will come in the very
ordinary, specific physical and political time and place that we live, just as God comes into the
ordinary, specific, physical and political reality of first century Palestine.
Now, it may not feel
like good news to some of us to associate the presence of the Messiah or the kingdom
of God with our current political and physical moment. Many of us are much more
comfortable keeping faith separate from politics, since politics seems so very messy
and unholy. Since the bitterly partisan nature of US politics right now is a dangerous
and unnecessary force of division among us, and we know God doesn’t really want
us divided and full of fear.
We might prefer – as
many of Jesus’ followers and Luke’s readers probably preferred – that God would
just end all that messiness, or at
least make it easy for us to ignore it and separate from it.
But Luke insists it is good news that the kingdom of God
comes among us right in the middle of all that. The kingdom of God isn’t separate from the messiness of
secular rulers and compromise and division. God comes to us right in and
through that.
And God’s kingdom comes
with the voice of one crying out from the margins, or maybe from the wilderness
of the center of politics: “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make a straight and level
highway for our God; the valleys raised and mountains flattened, level and
smooth, and all shall see God’s
salvation and glory.”
Prophets have been
saying that for thousands of years. John appears to be quoting Isaiah – who,
like Baruch whose words we also heard this morning – proclaims this “way of the
Lord” as the way that Israel’s exiles will return home; the way that all the
barriers that separate God’s people from God’s home and heart will be swept
away, and we will be redeemed and led back to God.
In the voice of Luke and
John, announcing the coming of Jesus, the “way of the Lord” becomes the
straight and level highway with which God comes at last into our midst,
sweeping through mountains and across chasms, into our place and time and national reality and daily lives, yours and
mine.
It turns out that the “way
of the Lord”, the highway of our God, goes both ways. It’s the way the full
presence and power of God comes into the ordinary here and now, along this way
where all obstacles are removed. And the way we return to God, from the exile of today’s partisanship and
secularism. Or we return from the exile of our own sins – our stupid,
embarrassing, or malicious choices and actions, small and great – along the
same way.
As he repeats the
powerful poetry of the prophets, John wants his hearers – God wants us, now – to prepare the way of the Lord
by looking at our real, physical, historical context – our place and time; our
hearts and lives; the news and the traffic and all the real barriers and
mountains and chasms, walls and potholes – and see the highway of our God.
When we can see that the
road from God to us, and from us to God, runs right through those barriers, leveling them and bridging the gaps, then
we’ll find ourselves able to help build that highway for others. We’ll find
ourselves removing the barriers we can
remove, with actions of forgiveness and repentance. We’ll find ourselves taking
the small actions and making the large commitments that dismantle the systems
and structures that prop up mountains of racism and sexism and classism and
nationalism and partisanism, raising valleys as we invest in renewal and
generosity and grace, knowing that God
removes the barriers we can’t remove.
So look around you. Look
at this second year of the presidency of Donald Trump, the first year of the
governorship of Phil Murphy, this time of walls and guns and weed and climate
change. Look at the mountains too high and steep for you to climb and the
canyons too deep and wide for us to navigate; look at the rough roads and broken
pathways, and see the highway of God.
See a world where
politics and policy and our own wrongs are not obstacles that separate us from
God, or God from us, but the way through which God’s highway runs.
What does that look like, when the way from God to you runs through
our current politics, without the politics being an obstacle? When the way from
God to you runs through a broken relationship with family or friends without
stumbling?
What new landscape do
you see when the way from us in our exile to return to the heart of God runs through guns and climate change and
border security and how we treat people in the Shop Rite parking lot – and not
one of those things is an obstacle, but rather a way that God’s salvation is
revealed?
What you see, then, is what
John sees. What Isaiah and Baruch and Jesus of Nazareth saw, and what God sees:
a highway of salvation and glory here and now in the midst of everything that denies
it or tries to block it. A highway where forgiveness and repentance, hope and
trust move mountains, and nothing can separate us from the glory of God.
Step on to that highway
you see, and run toward God, as God runs toward you, toward us.
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