Behold: Salvation

Malachi 3:1-4

Luke 3:1-6

Advent 2 Year C

December 9, 2012

First Presbyterian Church, Clarksville

And Harmony Presbyterian Church

Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Our two readings this morning, first from the writing of the prophet Malachi and the second from the Evangelist Luke, are about John; John the son of Zechariah, as he was known to family and friends; John the Baptist or the Baptizer as he is known to the church.

            The words from the prophet set the stage for John.  God says, “See, I am sending my messenger.”  In the Hebrew ‘my messenger’ is Mal-a-ki and it is this Mal-a-ki who declares the coming of another messenger, the one who proclaims messiah.  I suppose you could say that the declaration of God of the prophet Malachi is the foretelling of the coming of the one who will foretell the coming of the Lord.

            Paired with that prophecy is a reading from Luke’s Gospel.  It is a reading that recounts the fulfillment of that prophecy.  Malachi tells of one who will come, Luke tells that he has come.

            Now as a listener, it might be worth out time to consider what it is that this messenger has to say.  I mean after all, the message is so important that the coming of the messenger was foretold by another messenger!

            God’s Word came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.

            There are a lot of people in this world that I am glad I am not- a lot of jobs I am deeply grateful God has not called me to do.  Being the guy who was alone in the wilderness who is given the Word of God to proclaim the coming of the Word of God in the person of Jesus Christ is one that is easy to put at the top of the list!

            I mean imagine it.  You have a full life, I have a full life.  Imagine that in the midst of that life the Word of God came in and said, “proclaim the Word of God and the salvation of the world!”  Thank goodness John got that job, right?!

            Yeah, I’m not buying it either.                     

            Try as we might to cram this whole story back into John’s hands, the message that this messenger whose coming was declared by a messenger is not something that dies on the pages of the lectionary readings for the Second Sunday of Advent in year C.

            We come to this place and encounter the word of God in reading, in prayer, in song and, we hope at least occasionally, in sermon.  We come to this place to hear and to proclaim the same message that John proclaimed so long ago.

            Still, we do have it a little better than old John.

            Imagine having the burden of proclaiming the coming of the Christ on your own!  Thank goodness we have each other.  We have this community of faith, the whole of the Church of Jesus Christ to share the task of proclaiming the Lord’s coming so we are not alone in our work the way John was so long ago. 

            But make no mistake about it, we are called upon to be messengers just like John was because God’s Word has come to us as well.

            Now I don’t know about you, but when there are a bunch of people who are tasked with the same thing I am, I occasionally find myself thinking, “well, if I don’t get to it right away it’s OK.  Someone else will get to it sooner than I am able.”  We often have that tendency don’t we.

            We’ll leave welcoming new members to the welcome committee.

            We’ll leave the visible presence of the church in the community to the pastors.

            When it comes to understanding our place in the proclamation of God’s word it is tempting and often very easy to let ours individual selves fade into the background of the larger community of faith.  We become spiritual wallflowers, one eye scanning the crowd to be sure we are not noticed and the other watching the door to make sure we have a clean getaway route.

            John didn’t have that option, and we should be wary of it.  The God who encounters us through the word is the same God who told Jeremiah that God knew him by name in his mother’s womb.

            God’s call to proclaim is not some sort of generic ya’ll come casting call for the faithful.  Like John, we are encountered, in some way, by the Word of God.

            So if we are going to go around proclaiming this message, we should probably know what it is right?  Well, Luke gives us the message John proclaimed.  They were not wholly new words.  John did not go out and reinvent the wheel, instead he took God’s words and used them to proclaim God’s Word. 

as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “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;

            Prepare the way of the Lord.

            When was the last time you used those words in conversation?

            “Robert, what have you been up to lately, well it is Advent so just the usual things- getting liturgies together, working on my Christmas Eve sermon, going to a few Christmas parties, you know, just generally preparing the way of the Lord.”

            Prepare the way of the Lord.

            Sounds really weird when you try to put it into conversation doesn’t it?!

            I think perhaps that is because, like John, our proclamation is meant to take less the form of words that are spoken than words that are lived.

            Our calling is not merely to tell the world to prepare the way of the Lord but to begin to actually do it; to fill in valleys and level mountains and straighten the crooked and make smooth the rough. In short, we are called to invite the world to join us in preparing the way of the Lord not by shouting a generic ya’ll come, but by inviting the world through our very living.

            John went down to the riverside and baptized.  He invited the people to come and join him in preparing the way of the Lord.

            I have a friend who is a Baptist preacher and we have a running debate on baptism.  He, of course, advocates for full immersion and I, in good mainline Protestant fashion, am find with a little sprinkling.  One time when we were bantering about it he said, “you Presbyterians just don’t get it.  John did not go down into the river and throw the water out on the people!”

            While I still disagree with him about baptism, I think he makes a good point about this reading today.  John did not stand by the river and passively throw water at people in the hopes that they might notice that they were a little wet.  He invited them down into the river.  He invited them to join him in living the word of God.

            For John’s community preparing the way of the Lord meant taking a tangible step toward joining a movement- being marked if only with water as belonging to someone or something else.

            Going down to the river and baptizing was how John helped prepare the way of the Lord, and the church continues that today.

            What else, I wonder, is there that we need to do to prepare the way?

            Perhaps another way of asking that is, what are the valleys we need to fill, the mountains we need to make low?  What are the obstacles we erect that divide us one from the other?

            God is not satisfied for us to peer at our neighbors across a great chasm whether spiritual, physical, political, economic or any other human made division.  God wants us shoulder to shoulder and if that means leveling mountains to make it happen, so be it.

            You know obstacles I mean; the things that divide us one from the other.

            Self-centeredness.

            Self-indulgence.

            That healthy dose of cynicism and doubt that makes us feel oh so postmodern.

            Fears based on gender, race, faith or lack of faith or a different kind of faith, physical appearance, sexual orientation or identity, ethnicity or nationality, economic status,…the list of all of the things that keep us from taking deep breaths of the Spirit in the presence of another.

            The way of the Lord is through the hearts and minds of God’s people.  If we are to make that way straight, we must be willing to let go the things that clutter the path of the Lord into and through our hearts and lives.

            Have no illusions. 

            It is difficult. 

            Preparing the way of the Lord is difficult and in our own lives it often seems impossible. 

            Knowing how great the challenges are, Isaiah and later John use images of nature to show how great the healing power of that love will be.  The deepest valley will be filled and the highest most unconquerable mountain will be made low.

            Every obstacle will be removed through the power of God.

            It begins with us and our commitment to remove the obstacles in our power.  With our individual hearts cleared of all that extraneous junk, the obstacles that divide the world will be removed so that the love of the Lord can sweep across all creation.

            And to what end?

            Why does John proclaim this message?  Why do we?

            What will happen when we prepare the way of the Lord?

            all humanity will see God’s salvation.”

            We struggle and labor to clear the path of the Lord not for ourselves or for the church or for Christians alone, but for all people in every time and place.  We clear the path of the Lord not for ourselves alone, but for the web of humanity that makes our world.

            That is the salvation John and we are called to proclaim.  Not salvation that comes through any action of ours but the salvation that is freely given by God in Christ Jesus.  We are called not to save the world, but to help clear away the clutter so the world can see that God already has.

            Just when it seems that all hope is lost.

            Just when it seems that the world is going straight to hell.

            A voice cries out from the wilderness; prepare the way of the Lord.

            The word of God calls out to us in this season of hope in the midst of a world of doubt.

            What will we do when we hear it?  Will we remain in the wilderness hoping that someone else will heed the call of God?

            Or, like John will we take God’s Word into the world and allow God to call us mal-a-ki, my messenger?

            In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.