Advent Road Construction – Sermon for December 5, 2021

It’s the second week of Advent, and today’s sermon is all about road construction. God promises to make a way through the desert, flattening mountains and filling in valleys. God is coming, bringing salvation. Prepare the way!

The texts for this week are Malachi 3:1-4, Luke 1:68-79, Philippians 1:3-11, and Luke 3:1-6.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

I don’t know how many children’s board books you’ve read recently, but I’ve read quite a few. I’ve discovered there are a few themes that come up over and over in toddler’s literature.

Lots and lots of books with animals, many with colors—some with animals in different colors—books about going to bed, grandparents, food, and books about vehicles. Especially construction vehicles! Apparently, every child is expected to be fascinated with dump trucks and backhoes and bulldozers.

They might be on to something—the first video I remember watching (and I think I watched it many, many times) was a program called Road Construction Ahead (apparently the whole thing is on YouTube!). I knew all about excavators and steamrollers as a three-year-old.

And I suppose that’s good preparation for being a pastor, because the theme I see in today’s Scripture readings is road construction.

That’s John the Baptist’s proclamation, right? Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. The valleys shall be filled in, the mountains and hills shall be made low. Road construction ahead. Straighten out the sharp turns, smooth out the rough spots.

John here is quoting from the prophet Isaiah, who’d given this proclamation centuries earlier, and when Isaiah talked about making a straight path through mountains and valleys, it was at least partially literal.

The background is that Isaiah’s speaking to the people of Israel in exile. After decades of prophet after prophet from God warning the Israelites that if they didn’t shape up and start following God’s laws, something bad would happen, God had finally allowed the Babylonian empire to invade. The chosen people had been captured and drug away to exile in Babylon, hundreds of miles from home. Eventually they repented; they cried out to God, and after about seventy years in exile, God decides they’ve been punished enough.

And so here comes Isaiah, with some good news for the exiles. In Isaiah chapter 40, he says basically “Get ready! God is coming to rescue you. Prepare the way for God to come. And God’s not coming the long way, wandering around through the wilderness and detouring around the desert.

No, God’s coming straight across the desert for you, running over any obstacles. There’s going to be a straight highway through the desert. Hills and mountains are all going to be flattened out; God’s on the way. And God’s going to lead you straight back home. The time of exile is over. God’s coming to rescue you, so get ready to head out!”

And it happens. Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled. The Persians defeat the Babylonian empire, and they send the Israelites back home.

A few hundred years later, that’s the tradition John’s quoting from. He goes out into the wilderness, and proclaims that once again, God is on the move. Wash up, pay attention. Get ready! God’s building a road to come rescue you. And of course, we know that this time, God’s not only working through wars between foreign empires and messages from prophets; this time, God is coming personally into the world, stepping into human history, into the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea. God is acting in our world.

Now, there are a couple challenges with this idea of God building a highway that I want to mention.

First, it’s not very clear from this reading how exactly we’re involved, what we’re supposed to do. Isaiah and John both say to prepare the way, but then they also say these things are going to happen. The valleys shall be filled. The mountains and hills shall be made low. The crooked shall be made straight. It’s going to happen. If we just ignore these commands, if we fail to do anything at all to get ready, it’s still going to happen. God’s holy bulldozer is still going to push through the wilderness.

So, how do we prepare a path for God to move? Well, sometimes you prepare a path by getting out of the way. And that’s an active thing, not passive. We get out of the way by trusting in God to act, by following the rest of John’s call to repent, to turn away from our sin and turn towards God.

John calls for a baptism of repentance, allowing God to wash you clean, to claim you as one of God’s chosen people, and then for you to live accordingly, to live God’s way rather than by the standards of this world.

As someone in my text study group said this week, part of how we prepare is by slowing down, looking for the Lord’s coming. It’s easy to get so busy, perhaps especially in this season, that we miss the signs of God coming, that we fail to see the indications God is on the way, the cloud of dust rising up in the desert, if you will. If Advent is about waiting for God to enter the world, part of it is about getting out of the way, getting past ourselves and admitting our need for Jesus to come rescue us.

Another challenge is that to build a highway, land needs to be given up. New construction might run through your cornfield.

Someone else in my text study group has a family member literally dealing with this right now. There’s a proposal to build a carbon pipeline through Iowa, and it goes through his grandpa’s land. If God’s going to build a highway in our world, it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s going to interfere with our lives. God’s eminent domain puts a claim on our lives, and not just parts, but our whole lives.

The “Psalm” we read is actually an example of that, and yes, it can still count as a psalm even though it’s not from the book of Psalms. It’s from a passage called the song of Zechariah in Luke 1.

Zechariah often gets overlooked in the Christmas story, but he has kind of a fun story. He’s an elderly priest when an angel comes to him and says he and his wife are going to have a baby. Zechariah has some trouble believing this, and so he’s struck dumb, unable to speak for the length of his wife Elizabeth’s pregnancy.

It’s not until he yields to the angel’s instructions and names his newborn son John that his ability to speak is restored, he’s filled with the Holy Spirit, and he speaks the words we read today. Basically, God shoves him out of the way, silencing him for nine months. Talk about getting run over by God’s highway!

Sometimes, what we’re asked to give up can hurt. Repenting, turning away from ourselves and our sin, sounds good, but sometimes we like trying to do our own thing. Sin always has consequences, but in the short term, sin can be a lot of fun! There’s some tempting things that can get paved over, that need to get paved over. We all have plenty of things we need forgiveness for, that we need God to bury and forgive.

The prophet Malachi describes the day of God’s coming as a refiner’s fire, burning out the impurities in God’s people, purifying us of our sin. Not necessarily a pleasant experience in the moment, but it’s all in preparation for our Savior’s arrival. It’s a gift of grace, God smoothing out even the rough places in our hearts, filling in our valleys, making us ready to receive Christ who is coming to us.

And in the times when it feels painful or overwhelming, maybe especially in the times when we look but can’t see any signs that God is still active, in the seasons when there’s just cones sitting on the road for months and no sign of any actual progress getting made, hold on to the promise in Philippians: “The one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”

God’s timing often doesn’t follow our plans, but it always works out — sometimes just on an eternal scale. God’s road construction project won’t run out of budget. It won’t stop half-completed for the winter without the promise that it will resume in the spring. “The one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”

So, beloved of God, as you wait, hold on to the promise. God is on the way. Prepare the way of the Lord.
Amen