Mark 1:1-8
Advent 2 / Year B
Several years ago I
spent a wonderful week vacationing at Canaan Valley in West Virginia. Now there is no easy way get to anywhere in
West Virginia, hence there is no easy way to get home. On my return trip I decided to make my way to
Seneca Rocks, which was a wonderful decision if you don’t mind driving on
remote roads. From there I headed south
and found myself on a scary, winding, narrow, and at times dirt road before
connecting with U.S. 250, which I could have driven all the way to Richmond if
I opted to. A United States highway will
be smooth sailing, I reasoned. I could
not have been more wrong.
Getting on 250 in
the Monongahela National Forest and heading east, it took me nearly three hours
to drive approximately 90 miles to Staunton.
There were, to my recollection, seven step accents and seven step
descents over ridge lines. And each way
up and each way down over all seven was cluttered with numerous switchbacks and
hairpin turns. One ridge would have made
for a fun drive. Two would have given me
my fill. But after seven I vowed never
again to drive 250 in West Virginia. When
I finally got to Staunton I decided to get on I64 and from there it was an easy
drive home.
I thought about
that drive as I pondered the words of the prophet Isaiah which we heard read
just moments ago:
“In the wilderness
prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every
valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground
shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of
the Lord shall be
revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has
spoken.”
The
people of Israel had lived in exile in Babylon for more than forty years, but
change was on the horizon. Soon they
were going to be allowed to go home.
Isaiah’s call to make a straight, level, and smooth highway in the
wilderness was a message of hope. I was
a call for the people to plan and prepare for a second Exodus. And, it had a practical element to it: the
path from Babylon to Jerusalem had been sparsely traveled for four decades and
no doubt was in sad repair. The journey
was going to be arduous.
Five centuries
later, John the Baptist quotes from Isaiah and draws on the call to prepare a
way and to make straight a path but utilizes this in purely spiritual and
personal terms. John senses how the
twists and turns of life, with its highs and lows, have left people feeling
disoriented, uncertain, and lost. For
him, the way forward and the way to God had become much, much to difficult and the
average person needed a way to be reoriented.
For John, this
looked like calling people to repent.
The Greek word metanoia, which we translate as ‘repent’,
literally means to stop in your tracks and turn around. We might say “do a 180” or “make a U-turn”. There is so much to distract us along our journey
and our lives are going to be a mess until we decide to stop traveling in the
wrong direction.
John offered a way
to ground one’s decision to repent… baptism in the River Jordon. This provided people with spiritual strength
to return to the way. And getting on the
right way is essential to prepare the way for the Lord, who wants to do
something marvelous in and through you. But
for this to happen we need to stop and ponder what God desires from us. The prophet Micah asked, “What does the Lord
require of you? His answer: “To act
justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (6/8). If your life is not moving in this direction,
then you need to repent.
I suspect for many
of us the images of twists and turns and highs and lows (like driving in West
Virginia) is more poignant than metanoia. We are trying to do the right thing and to be
the people God calls us to be, but there are so many obstacles in our way.
We want there to be
peace in the world, but other than prayer and perhaps a charitable contribution,
there seems to be little we can do. We
want there to be civility in our society, but short of treating others with
respect and limiting our exposure to the most reprehensible voices out there,
again, there is little we can do. We care
about climate change, but other than being as responsible as we can be, we are
powerless to make an impact on the bigger picture. We want to live into the Baptismal Covenant’s
promise to respect the dignity of every human being. We can do our part, but sense in our world a
rising disdain for ‘the other’.
It occurs to me believing
your witness does not make a difference is a distraction from which we need to
make a metanoia. And if one witness makes a difference, it
gets doubled if another joins in. Think
what happens when an entire faith community commits itself to living into God’s
dream for all people. Add enough people
and soon you have a movement and movements have the power to reshape the world,
or, as Isaiah put it, “to reveal the glory of God.”
God calls us to make a straight way
in the desert. Advent is a season marked
by hope and it comes at just the right time… when we are burdened by a spirit of
despair. Both Isaiah and John proclaimed
a hopeful message and they call on us to change, to be expectant, to be ready,
and to prepare the way of the Lord!
