Isaiah
40:1-11
Mark
1:1-8
Starting last Sunday, this is the season of the church year we call
Advent. Advent is the season of
waiting. It is the season of waiting for
the coming of Jesus…And that means we wait with a real expectation that
something remarkable is going to happen.
Perhaps kids can teach us something
of what this kind of waiting is like.
Kids wait for Christmas with strong feelings. They feel impatience, wanting the day to
come, and they feel really excited, because they know that there will be a
present waiting for them on that day. In
Advent, we remember that when we wait for the Lord, we should have strong
feelings, too—strong feelings, because we are expecting God to take real and
powerful action for the good of God’s people.
But the emotions of Advent are
sometimes different than the emotions of excitement and joy...partly because
Advent is about waiting for God’s strong action in a time of sin. In Advent we remember how the Hebrew people
longed for the coming of the Messiah, and waited for the day, when He would
come and bring his salvation. Their
waiting was the kind that was filled with longing, because they were suffering,
and they wanted the suffering to end.
Of course, with the birth of Jesus,
the Messiah did come, and it turned into that amazing moment of
celebration. The Savior had come, and
God’s salvation was really at hand!
Hallelujah! But there were years
and years of waiting, before that happened.
We use these four weeks to remember that. And since Advent is a season to remember how
people waited back then, it’s a good season to pay attention to how we, also,
have important times of waiting in life.
My wife, Cindee, is experiencing a
bit of that right now. She had knee
replacement surgery recently, and she now has to go through the months of
recovery…waiting for the time when her leg will have regained its
strength. When we are healing from major
injuries or, in her case, major surgery, we know we will be strong again. But the time it takes, and the persistence it
takes to keep doing the therapy and to get our strength back, can be
frustrating. I make sure I spend time
every day encouraging her. I don’t want
her to get discouraged, and I know that family and friends can make a real
difference.
Sometimes, though, I think that we
misunderstand the message of how we participate in the arrival of God in the
world. There are really four ways, in
which we experience the arrival of Jesus, and all four are huge, Christmas
moments.
1.
There was that first Christmas, when
Jesus was born, beginning the life and ministry of Jesus, who is God, the
Savior!
2.
There is the promise in the Bible
that Jesus will come again at the end of time, to bring this world to an end
and to bring in a New Heaven and a New Earth.
3.
There is also our own experience of receiving
Jesus into our own hears and into our own lives. This is a very personal story, and there are
a lot of differences. For some of us, we
grew up in a family and a church that surrounded us with the Love of God, and
so we slowly came to realize that God was already in our lives, and what a
treasure that is. For others, they
became aware of God more suddenly, and had a more dramatic conversion
experience. Each story is different, but
each is about the coming of Jesus into our hearts and minds in a personal, and
therefore, very important way.
I think these three ways I have
already spoken of are the three ways we hear about most from Christians. All three are of vital importance, and I am
so glad the church people speak about these.
But there is a fourth that is just as important. We talk about it, but some Christians don’t describe
it as a way in which the Savior enters into our reality. It has to do with the way in which the love
of God, and the salvation of God comes to us at those times in life when we
really need it. This really is an
experience of the coming of the Savior, or at least of recognizing the Savior,
in that moment, and so we really do need to describe it as a time of
experiencing Jesus.
4.
There are moments when God’s
salvation changes something in us, or in our society, in ways that are powerful
and life-changing.
We see these moment again and again
in the Bible. It began when Moses saw a
bush that was on fire, but didn’t burn up.
When he stopped to see what was going on, he was confronted by God, and
found his life changed forever…but not just his life, all twelve tribes of the
Hebrew people changed—that was the generation that followed God’s lead, and he
brought them to freedom after 400 years of slavery!
We see it in today’s scriptures. The Hebrew people felt totally cut off from
hope. Their armies had been defeated by
the Babylonians, and their leaders and their head citizens had all been taken
away to live in far-off lands. The
Temple, the center of their religious life, had been destroyed. They knew that they had sinned against God,
and they were beginning to fear that God had quit loving them, and had
abandoned them forever.
Indeed, by the time of today’s
Scripture, the people had spent 70 years divided, with many of them living in
far-off lands, at a time when there were no telephones or airplanes. At this very moment, the prophet tells the
people it is a time for God to send a message of comfort to the people.
“Comfort, comfort my people,” God instructs the prophet. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Let them know that their time of servitude is
over. A new time of salvation is
coming!”
A new time of salvation is coming—a
new moment of seeing the presence of God, the very presence of the Savior—Is
coming!
But notice what we saw in both of
these stories—in both the escape from slavery in Egypt, and now in this moment
of salvation after the Babylonians divided their people. The people first spent generations IN slavery
before the moment of deliverance came.
And then, when the people stopped following God and therefore opened
themselves up to defeat from the Babylonians, the spent 70 years that time as a
conquered-and-shamed people. There were
400 years of waiting for God’s salvation the first time, and there were 70
years of waiting before the prophet gave this comfort the second time.
We also see these moments in history
after the times of the Bible.
· The Hebrew people were not the only ones, who had to be delivered from
slavery. We have that history in the
United States, and in many nations around the world. There is a lot to learn from that history,
about how God prepared the people, and used the people, to make a way for their
freedom to come.
· There are also examples from our own history in Alaska. Let me give you one.
The North Slope Borough was founded in order to empower the Iñupiaq people to benefit from the invasion of the arctic by the oil companies. They were coming with money, and with roads, with money, with political power, and with equipment that were going to really impact life in the arctic, and they did not intend to do anything for the people, who lived there. The visionary efforts of the Eben Hopsons, and many others, to stand up to that power comes from God, whose love is not bound by the rules that the powerful people and organizations want us to live by.
The North Slope Borough was founded in order to empower the Iñupiaq people to benefit from the invasion of the arctic by the oil companies. They were coming with money, and with roads, with money, with political power, and with equipment that were going to really impact life in the arctic, and they did not intend to do anything for the people, who lived there. The visionary efforts of the Eben Hopsons, and many others, to stand up to that power comes from God, whose love is not bound by the rules that the powerful people and organizations want us to live by.
But notice how all of these
examples—the ones from the Bible, and the ones from history after the days of
the Bible—notice how all of these examples are following what our Scriptures
say to us today. The Scriptures don’t
just say, “Comfort, comfort may people.”
They say more than that.
Now, remember what is happening at
this moment. The people have been
conquered by the Babylonians, and long for their Temple to be restored, and for
their nation to be restored. But they
have no vision for how to get to that point.
They have no idea how to get from here to there, so to speak.
At that very moment, God says, build
a road! Do you feel like you are in the
wilderness, with no path to follow?
Build a road! Because that
God-moment is coming when things will be possible. Are you waiting for God to come? Well, God is surely coming! Build a road.
Are there big pits that block the path—well those low places must be
lifted up! Are there rough spots that
will stop your wagons? Well get to work
and smooth them out! The moment is
coming when God will take action, and you need to be making the preparations. God is speaking to you. Right now.
No, you can’t solve your problems now, but GOD IS SPEAKING TO YOU RIGHT
NOW! Now is the time for the right kind
of waiting for that God moment. Get busy
preparing the way for the coming of the Lord!
Now, this is different than the way
the Lord will come at the end of time, when the Heaven and Earth we know will
be totally replaced. Sin is still in the
world. The Enemy still motivates us with
greed and lust, and all the desires that turn us away from the Road God wants
us to travel.
But this is, indeed, the coming of
the Lord. Those moments when someone
says, I want my family to be a family of peace; I can’t live the way we have
been. Those moments when someone says,
joy is not coming to us out of the bottle, or out of the drug—we are not happy;
I can’t live this way anymore. The
moment when God’s Spirit touches someone, and they know that it is time for
something new.
People need to know that these are
God moments. It is God, at work in us
and around us, that calls us to change.
In the Bible, this change starts with a change of heart, and it is
called “repentance.” Repentance,
literally, means to turn around and walk in a new direction. It means to leave the path we are on and walk
a new path. “Are you in the wilderness?”
the prophet asks, “Prepare a new road, for the coming of the Lord!”
Waiting for that moment when change
can happen is about doing something active while waiting. We are preparing for that moment, when God’s
action really changes things. But one of
the strange things is that we have to build that road again and again. Not only in Moses’ day, but also in Isaiah’s
day, and also in our day.
Illustration: Every Season, We
Build the Road
This is something that we northerners might be better able to understand than Lower 48-ers. The ice roads are under construction again in the arctic. It is something that we have to explain to people, who are not from the North. We rarely build a highway across the tundra that stands forever. Our roads are built seasonally, so that the damage to the tundra is limited and, as they tell me in Anaktuvuk Pass, so that there can be some limit to the impact outsiders can have on our people.
This is something that we northerners might be better able to understand than Lower 48-ers. The ice roads are under construction again in the arctic. It is something that we have to explain to people, who are not from the North. We rarely build a highway across the tundra that stands forever. Our roads are built seasonally, so that the damage to the tundra is limited and, as they tell me in Anaktuvuk Pass, so that there can be some limit to the impact outsiders can have on our people.
Alaskans should therefore have more
insight than most about what our Scripture readings today are saying. “Build a road in the wilderness,” they
say. “Take away the obstacles and make a
good path for the coming of the Lord.”
This is not a path we build once and it’s done. This is the work that must be done in each
generation, and in each person. It’s
more like an ice road built in the arctic, than like a concrete highway, built
in some southern city. It’s something
that we each must do in our own hearts, and it’s something that churches must
do to capture God’s vision for the people.
It’s personal, and so we have to do hear the prophet calling us to
prepare a way for the Lord in our own lives, and in our own communities.
And it is Jesus, who comes to us in
those moments through the Holy Spirit.
Make no mistake, if the Spirit is present, Jesus is present and so is
God, the Father.
Conclusion
So there are some challenges to us, that we need to pay attention to as we look at this Scripture.
So there are some challenges to us, that we need to pay attention to as we look at this Scripture.
People are longing for the Savior to
come right now. Why? What are the issues that God needs to address
in your life right now? Are these
personal issues? Family issues? Community
issues?
Please understand, the Lord is
coming! Yes, the Lord will come at the
end, to bring this world to a close and to usher in a new world. But the Lord is also coming day-by-day,
blessing us along the way. Even a time
of waiting can be a good time, because it is a time for a kind of active
waiting—the kind of waiting that prepares the way for the coming of the Lord.
Are you active right now, preparing
the way for Jesus to come into the life of your family, or your community? How?
Are you keeping up your relationships with God through participating in worship,
Bible Study, and a personal prayer life?
Are there thinks you can do to help
prepare the way for God’s action to bring justice and righteousness?
Most important of all, are you
keeping your eyes open, so that you will notice those moments, when God is
allowing something new to happen, so you can join in? Are you ready?
This is Advent—a time to remind
ourselves, and everyone we know, that God does work mightily. Get ready!
God is coming…soon.
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