Advent 3B, December 13, 2020. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of grace and mercy, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may, and cost what it will.

This Advent, I’ve been paying particularly close attention to our opening prayers, our collect for each Sunday. Our collect for this third Sunday in Advent pleads with the Holy One to stir up power and with great might come among us with bountiful grace and mercy because our sins are sorely hindering us. I love this prayer, and it also scares me. It’s not that I disagree with the idea that our sins are sorely hindering us; it’s just that I’d rather be praying, “Settle down, O God, so that we can have a peaceful and happy holiday season. Settle us down, O Desire of Nations, so that we can read or listen to the news without anxiety, fear, rage, or despair. Dear Jesse’s Branch, please don’t stir us up too much, because we’ve already been through it this year, between the ravages of COVID, the ravages of racism, and the ravages of weather-related disasters.” Here, however, is John the Baptist bearing witness to the powerful brightness of the coming Christ.

You know, the first part of the Gospel passage we just heard comes from the prologue to the Gospel of John. We’ll hear it again soon and very soon — at Christmas and again on the Sunday after Christmas! It starts with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It’s a magical song about the timelessness of the Word of God, made flesh in Jesus: “The life that was enlightenment for all people.” Timeless as this Truth is, John the Gospel-Writer wants the reader to know that this truth is “anchored in human history.” [1] John the Baptist, a real person in human history, was sent from God (also known as Love), in a particular time and place to witness to testify that one who would enlighten everyone was coming into the world.

John the Baptist’s approach, it seems, was shouting at people to make the way clear: to clean up, smooth down the rough places, soften the hard places, build up the soft places, level the high and low places. He was shouting out a song he knew because the prophet Isaiah had shouted it out many years before him, and it had been written down as holy words, words understood to be inspired by God. He was shouting out words that he knew from the Holy Scriptures: words about building houses that people would inhabit, about planting vineyards and eating the fruit, and about not laboring in vain or bearing children for calamity.

Several generations later, as the writer of the Gospel was telling the story of Jesus, it got written down again. In fact, all the Gospel writers thought that John the Baptist’s shout was important information for their stories of Jesus. They were writing to convince people that if they wanted to see and know the Holy One, they should look at Jesus. They were writing to testify that Jesus had come to show God’s desire for abundant life, and that following Jesus was the way to experience that abundant life, where people would have what they needed to eat and places to live where they could be free from harassment and abuse by other people. The Gospel writers all found John the Baptist’s message essential. That’s kind of amazing, because in fact, there’s not much they all considered important in the story of Jesus’ ministry before the Passion narrative, and even that has variations. Each one has John the Baptist quoting Isaiah, and in each one you can’t get to Jesus’ ministry without going by John the Baptist.

I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to look at John the Baptist; he’s wild, uncivilized, and I’d rather not listen to someone who is shouting. I’d rather say, “Look, talk to me when you’ve calmed down and you’ve had a shower and put some real clothes on,” but John the Baptist never calms down. I don’t want to look him in the eyes any more than I want to look people in the eyes who are homeless and wild and eating whatever they can find out of garbage cans on Newbury Street.

John the Baptist reminds me of a stalwart member of our community. He’s regularly here at the church at least three days a week. In fact, as I walked up the ramp this past Wednesday morning, he was coming out the door. I said hello, smiling behind my mask. He threw his arms in the air and yelled (expletives deleted), “I am so sick and tired of trying to help churches.” In the moment, I was speechless. I wasn’t even sure if he was yelling to me, or he was just yelling. By the time I’d climbed to the third floor, however, I wished I’d said something like, “Me, too; I just can’t find anything more worthwhile than the work of helping churches, and I’m no longer qualified to do anything else.”

I don’t know what set him off, but I feel sure that he was yelling in frustration, shouting out a call for God’s justice and mercy. It was painful to hear God’s call for justice coming out of his mouth as he stood on our steps, and to have to acknowledge my own participation in unjust systems: you know, “the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf”, as my favorite version of our confession goes.

In order to follow Jesus, John the Baptist says, indeed our own community member says, we’ve got to prepare the way – clear out a lot of obstacles, things that trip people up and hinder or block access to abundant life. The reference to action here is building the highway for our God: lower the high places, raise the low places. level the fields, straighten the crooked places, move the boulders.

Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor says that, while paving a highway may not be our idea of holy preparation for the coming of Christ, for someone traveling through the desert it must have seemed like a piece of heaven — no more hard climbs or knee-wrenching descents, no bandits down in that gully or wolves around that bend. [2] John the Baptist was talking about an engineering project so massive that it makes the proposed “Allston multimodal project” pale in comparison, and you know how complicated and expensive that will be. (For those of you who don’t live in or around Boston, it’s another urban-highway-rearrangement project of gargantuan proportions.) John the Baptist was talking about large-scale action on behalf of those who are the most vulnerable – actions creating equity and love. Imagine what it would take to bring about equity and love throughout just the Boston metropolitan area, let alone the world.

The thing that gets me about these important instructions from John is that they make me realize how much I want God to do what John the Baptist is saying people have to do. I am faced with how often in my prayer I’m asking God to get myself or other people out of what is difficult or unjust. I want God to prepare the way; I want God to do some path making; I want God to change God’s ways and start taking care of people who are homeless and hungry, and transform more evil into good. I get tired, I’m not that good at it, and sometimes I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere at all!

Then I remember the Alcoholics Anonymous wisdom – that life is like being in a boat rowing with God steering. You’re rowing and rowing, which seems hard, and God is steering, which doesn’t seem that hard; you get really tired, and you want to stop rowing, so you say, “God, I’m really tired; I want to stop rowing for a while.” When God says, “Okay, …but I don’t row,” it’s good to be in the same boat with a bunch of other people, and not try to row it alone. It’s good to be Church with one another, getting help from people calling out for justice and mercy.

Where is God steering us? Home. And God is there to steer whether we are rowing or resting, awake or asleep, prepared or unready. The Good News is that God has come and is coming, no matter what we do or don’t do; God’s coming is for us, but it does not depend on us, and God will not leave us.  God is loving us mightily whether we believe or not, whether we love back or not, and that is some Good News.

Advent is a time to hear God’s voice crying out, disturbing whatever complacency exists. Advent is a time to testify to the light that has come into the world and is still coming, and to clear the path, build the highway for our God. Ranier Maria Rilke once said, “The least we can do is to make [God’s] coming not more difficult…than the earth makes it for the spring when it wants to come.” Advent is also a time to rejoice – in the possibilities of smoothing out the rough places, in the privilege of having work to do to restore the dignity of the people of God, and in the incremental celebrations that acknowledge our incremental progress.

Listen again to the Apostle Paul’s encouragement to the community in Thessalonica. These are the oldest words of the Second or New Testament, and they are Paul’s closing words of advice in this first letter. Just before the passage we heard this morning are these instructions:

Respect one another. Esteem those who work among you very highly in love. Be at peace among yourselves. Admonish the idlers, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil but seek to do good to one another and to all.

Those are the instructions that immediately precede, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances.” They provide the immediate context for rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks.

Yesterday, one-time Emmanuelite Margaret Bullitt Jonas, was reminding some of us that John the Baptist’s message is fantastic news for people who are suffering, and not such good news for people who are heavily invested in the status quo or in making a profit on instruments of oppression. Sure, John the Baptist was wild-eyed and shouting, but it might just have been his way of rejoicing. Sure, the member of our community on the steps seemed gruff and frustrated, blowing off steam, but I also know that he is thankful to belong to a parish that needs his help, as am I. We all can be thankful that this parish needs our help, that we need one another to push, to row, toward greater justice and mercy – indeed, toward home. So, gaudete! Rejoice!