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The Second Sunday of Advent Baruch 5:1-9; Luke 3:1-6 |
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A man whose name was Joe walked toward the door of the church. His walk was deliberate, steady. His heart was not. Joe was forcing his body to move in the direction of Sunday morning worship; his heart and his mind followed, his body less willingly. Having not been in his parish church for ten years or more, Joe wondered how he would be received. In his sadness, his frustration, his lostness, his confusion, he wondered why he even cared. Joe couldn't remember why he had stopped being a close part of this congregation. The people were his friends, and he had been a steady and reliable churchman among them. But he had been distracted somehow, and not being there on Sunday became easier than being there. Soon he began to say no when he was asked to do things. And, eventually, he wasn't asked to do things at all. Finally, he said to himself, I don't even miss it. But today, for reasons even less clear than why he had wandered away, his feet were taking him toward that church door. He saw a man and a woman holding service bulletins, and they saw him and were ready to greet him. It was too late to back out now. To his own surprise, it looked like he was going to go through with it. To his even greater surprise, Joe was beginning to feel glad he was going to go through with it. The way back for Joe into the company of worshippers, men and women and children seeking out and witnessing the presence of God in their lives, suddenly looked easier to him than he had ever thought it would be. The same thing that was happening for Joe that morning happened twice in the Scriptures for the Hebrew people. One time, about two thousand years before the birth of Christ, they were slaves of the Pharaoh in Egypt. They were slaves in a foreign land, doing manual labor for a people who neither loved them nor respected them. And they longed to return to their own land and once again be God's own people. God made a way for them. He raised up Moses as their leader, and while the Hebrews were being pursued by Pharaoh's army, God opened a way for them through the Red Sea. And through the space of time, God led these men and women and children to their own land, and God helped them rebuild their homes there and become God's people once again. The Hebrews remembered what God had done for them. God helped them return to the place where they knew God best, just as God was helping Joe return on that Sunday morning. The same thing that was happening for Joe happened a second time to the Hebrew people. This time it was in the 7th century before Jesus' birth. The Hebrews had established a great nation under King David. But their apostasy, their faithlessness, and their self-centeredness had brought them to be a nation destroyed by their enemies. The homes they had built had been torn away, and the temple they had built to worship God had been laid to waste. The people of Israel were in bondage, slaves once again, this time in Babylon, far eastward from the land God had given them. Again, they longed to return home, and the promises of God came to them through the prophets. And God made a way once again to return to the land God had given them. This time the way back home was on highways through the wilderness. God led them back to their own land so that they could once again with dignity and honor serve God as God's very own people. Baruch, a poet of Israel, writing scarcely 50 years before Jesus' birth, remembers this second estrangement of the Jews, and we hear Baruch's poem in this morning's first
reading. Times are difficult once again in Baruch's day, and Baruch wants to remind his people that God will lead them again, just as he has led them in past difficult times. And God's people need not fear returning with shame or grief, says Baruch, "Take off the garment of sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory of God. Put on the robe of righteousness that comes from God; . . .For God will give you evermore the name, 'Righteous Peace, Godly Glory." And the Hebrews remembered what God had said to them. And they returned to God. And they continue to be God's very own people. Joe (remember Joe) goes up the steps of the parish church. He receives handshakes from the greeters. He goes to a seat and begins to pray. When he looks up at others around him waiting for the service to begin, Jim is aware that nods and smiles are aimed at him. Suddenly to his surprise, he is comfortable, and he is at home. A short time before Jesus' ministry begins, John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin, is in the wilderness away from the cities and towns of the land. John is calling on men and women to be ready for what is about to happen. Crowds of people make their way into the desert to hear the advent message of this rustic hermit. John's sermon is not an easy one. He calls on women and men to return to their God in preparation for the coming of the Lord. He calls for people to repent and seek forgiveness for their sins. He calls on those who are separated from the faithful community of God to return home again in preparation for the Lord's coming. John immerses--baptizes--each willing listener in the waters of the Jordan River. The baptism is a sign of their repentance, a washing away of their former selves, so that they may be ready for the Lord's coming. "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." Once people decide that they are ready to come, God makes a way for them back into God's very own presence. Then Joe realizes what is the greatest surprise of all. Even though he has just been among Christian men and women and children worshipping with them for the first time in years, there really isn't any difference between himself and them. The ones who have been there all along are received just the same as those who have been away. All are welcomed and all are counted as equal before God, and God will make a way for anyone and everyone who is ready to come home. And that's the way it is. It doesn't matter today whether you and I have been seeking God's presence all along, or whether we are returning to God's presence from a long time away. It doesn't matter whether our absence was physical, as was Joe's, or whether it was mental, or spiritual, or emotional--a sort of being here but not being here. God begins to provide for us a way--by straightening paths in the wilderness, and filling valleys, and making mountains low. We are immersed in the waters of the Jordan River--again--and cleansed. We are invited to “take off our garments of sorrow and affliction and to put on forever the beauty of the glory of God.” Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height; look toward the east, and see your children gathered from west and east at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them ...and welcomes them, and brings them home. In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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