Over thirty percent of the bridges in this country are classified as needing major structural repairs. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re taking your life in your hands the minute you start to cross a bridge, but it does mean that, as a whole, our transportation system is wearing out. Some of it is because there’s more traffic, but not a lot. Mostly it’s because we haven’t invested in maintenance. Millions of dollars were spent to build the famous bridges of New York, St. Louis, Seattle, San Francisco. Billions more dollars were spent building our interstate transportation system back in the 50’s. We transformed the landscape, do you realize? to accommodate the internal combustion engine. It was exciting, an adventure, in a way, flexing our technological and economic muscle, spanning the rivers and conquering the vast open spaces and bringing our national wonders within the everyday reach of ordinary people.
It was new. It was exciting. It was a blue-ribbon performance.
And then we started taking our roads and bridges for granted.
And then we started skimping on the upkeep, diverting resources to sexier programs, projects with more publicity value, causes with a more modern, up-to-date ring. Road repairs don’t capture the public’s attention. “Build bridges to the future” captures headlines; “rebuild the bridges of the past” does not.
The internal combustion engine - our automobiles and minivans and recreational vehicles and pickup trucks - are more important than ever. We scurry around in our fast, fun, shiny machines, sometimes impatient, sometimes oblivious, but rarely wondering if the structures we rely on are crumbling away beneath our feet. Who remembers a time when it wasn’t even there? Whoever thinks, nowadays, about how we changed the world - to fit our cars?
The word of God came to John bar Zechariah and he went up from the desert into Judea, preaching repentance.... He was, as Isaiah the prophet said “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’”
Once upon a time the news that God had become man and lived with us and died for us was new. Once upon a time the news turned whole societies upside down. Once upon a time the idea that we owed Jesus Christ our lives created in us a sense of excitement, of adventure, of commitment. But now, I think, especially in our comfortable, sophisticated Western world, we take a lot of the gifts Jesus brought us for granted.
So now we prepare our hearts and our homes for the coming of the Christ child. We put up displays in our front yards, we send out Christmas cards, we decorate our trees and bake gingerbread and wrap presents and sing Christmas carols and you name it. Some years ago a satirist named Tom Lehrer wrote a song about Christmas:
“Christmas time is here, by golly,
disapproval would be folly.
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
fill the cup and don’t say when.
Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
stuff the goose, drag out the Dickens.
Even though the prospect sickens,
brother, here we go again.”
We scurry around with our shiny toys, sometimes impatient, sometimes frustrated or exhausted, sometimes really making an effort to set aside time to remember what lies beneath all of the activity. But there’s so little time, so much to get done, so many demands and pressures. Maybe later we’ll check the infrastructure. Maybe next year we’ll see if the way in the desert is still visible. Maybe later we’ll check into the potholes on the highway for our God. In the meantime, we’re just praying to make it to the next rest stop.
The people of Jesus’ day - even the Pharisees - longed for the Messiah, too. They searched the scriptures and knew the prophecies. They thought they were ready. But they had forgotten what the prophet Amos had said, “Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light.” [5:18]
The coming of the Lord was something to be feared. The last time the Lord appeared to his people was on Mt. Sinai, and there was thunder and lightning, and all the people in the camp trembled. Moses brought them out of the camp, to the foot of the mountain, to meet with God. The whole mountain shook violently and a sound like a trumpet blast became louder and louder. Moses would speak, and God would answer him with thunder, and God told Moses to warn the people not to come near, else they would perish.” [Ex 19:21]
Micah, too, warned the people of the coming of the Lord: “The Lord is coming out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth, and the mountains will melt under him, and the valleys will burst open like wax near a fire, like waters poured down a steep place.” [Mic 1:4]
John came to remind the people of his day NOT ONLY that Lord was coming, but that the day of the LORD was not a holiday. A Holy Day, certainly. But not a holiday. He came to remind them of what was needed in order to be ready for the coming of God. And what was needed was repentance. Because God’s highway, the one that needed to be surveyed, drained, straightened, and resurfaced, was the human heart. And one of the reasons we celebrate the season of Advent is to awaken us to the need to examine and repair our current state of readiness.
John shows us three areas of our lives that need to be tested.
The first is our religious life. He warns his hearers, sharply, that just because they are children of Abraham does not make them safe. Just because they are technically members of the covenant community does not make them children of God. In the same way, so should we be aware that just because we come to church on Sunday does not make us immune to what John calls the wrath to come. Don’t rest on the past, says John. Check the present. Where’s the evidence that your relationship with God is a living reality, rather than a dusty trophy of an almost abandoned habit?
The second is our possessions. We’ve talked a lot about giving lately, since today is consecration Sunday, so I won’t spend a lot of time expounding on what John has to say about possessions. I’ll just repeat it. John said, “He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise.”
The third area that we need to check for potholes is our working life. Two people asked John what they should do, a soldier and a tax collector. “And he said to the tax collector, “Collect no more than is appointed you.” And he said to the soldier, “Rob no one by violence or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.” Both the soldier and tax collector were looked down upon by the Jewish people; tax collectors were no better than collaborators, on a social par with prostitutes if slightly better off financially. And the soldiers probably were Herod’s enforcers, assisting the tax collectors in shaking down the populace and taking a cut of the proceeds as a fringe benefit.
What surprises many people is that John didn’t tell them to find other work. Jesus didn’t either, later on. It wasn’t the line of work itself they were that mattered so much as how they performed it. And that’s a lesson for us, as well; even jobs that are looked down upon by some in our society - like journalist or politician - can be performed in a manner that honors God. There are still some lines of work, though, that I do NOT believe are acceptable to God, no matter how well performed. But that’s for another time.
None of these three areas can be overlooked as we complete the survey. Both our work and our possessions reflect the authenticity of our religious life. A living faith will show up in both places. Many very good people have learned well the high ethical standards that God requires, have grown up from babyhood committed to truth, loving their neighbor, and sharing their gifts with the needy. And this is good. But neither material generosity nor high ethical standards will prepare them for the Lord’s coming. All of our external observances will crumble under the weight of the presence of the living God unless the foundation of our lives is the heart’s “yes” response to God in Jesus Christ.
Christ came, clothed in human flesh, so that we could approach God without fear, so that we could come near to the Holy one and not be consumed by fire. The first thing the angels said to the shepherds was, “Do not be afraid.” We’ve learned that lesson too well, here in our society. The fiery angels of that Judean night have been transformed into lapel pins. It is very much out of fashion to talk about the fear of God; and the result of abandoning the fear of a holy and righteous God is that we take God’s love for granted.
In this waiting season, let us prepare our hearts to become a highway for our God. Let us drain them of the standing worries and concerns that bog us down. Let us straighten out the road, getting rid of the detours and dead ends that waste our energy and discourage us. And let us make absolutely sure that everything is solidly grounded on a belief and trust in Christ, as our only Lord and Savior, and the only one in whom we can meet the day of the Lord unafraid.
