Isaiah 40:3-5, Mark 1:1-8; Prepare a Highway (11-30-14)
By the Rev. Bob Gochenour
The line at the Post
Office was of a December length, too long to wait for a simple errand.
But there he was…waiting,
waiting, waiting!
When he got to the window
he asked for a sheet of Christmas stamps.
The clerk offered a
brightly colored set showing lots of candles emblazoned with the word “Kwanza.”
“No,” he said, “I’d like
some Christmas stamps.”
The clerk said, “Oh, yeah”
and rummaged through the drawer and pulled out some jolly snowmen stamps and
made ready to ring up the transaction.
“No,” he said again, “I’d
like some religious one.”
Out came more candles,
this time saying “Hanukkah,” and also lovely blue ones with Arabic calligraphy
proclaiming “Eid—a Moslem holiday of sweets breaking
the fast of Ramadan.”
By now it became clear
that this was not such a simple errand after all.
“Actually, I was looking
for the ones with the mother and child. I’d like some Christian Christmas stamps.”
What a radical idea:
Christian Christmas stamps.
Have you ever had this
problem?
Perhaps this
points to a bigger problem: how we do we prepare for Christmas?
Do we have plans to keep
Christ is Christmas?
Do we let the culture
dictate our schedules, routines, our gift lists, our party schedules, our
family gatherings, and our church attendance?
Our society is certainly
willing to dictate our responses for the next month.
Holiday stores, culture
wars, shopping malls, and cyber sales certainly have a clear plan for your
life.
On Christmas-eve, one busy
woman was doing a final check of the things-to-do-before-Christmas list and
discovered she had forgotten to send any Christmas cards.
Though the time was short,
the clock had not yet struck midnight.
She rushed into a store
and found two boxes of cards –already marked 50% off. Without reading or even
really looking at them, she feverishly began addressing the cards. Dashing to
the post office, she shoved them onto the counter just as the clerk was
reaching for his “This window closed” sign.
On Christmas day, when things had quieted down a
bit and some semblance of order had been restored, she noticed that one of
those last minute cards had been left over.
She wondered: what was the
message I sent to my friends? Opening the card, she stared unbelievingly at the
words:
“This card is just a note
to say ... A little gift is on the way.”
I have a pretty good idea
what she was going to be doing on the day after Christmas.
In many ways, the
commercialization of our times has stripped Christmas of its true meaning.
I have been struggling
with this ever since I was a child.
I come from a big family:
my mom and dad, 2 brothers and 2 sisters.
We developed our own
Christmas traditions: making gift lists for ourselves and for our family
members, waiting for the Sears wish book to check out the toy section (that was
our version of the Internet in the 60’s), visiting Santa Claus at the downtown
park.
Even though my parents
tried their best to resist the commercial demands of the season—Christmas
always seemed to get bigger each year.
My dad always played the
role of the “Grinch” warning us kids that we need to cut back this year. He
prepared us not to expect as many gifts under the tree as we had last year.
His love and generosity
always seemed to get the better of him and Christmas got bigger every year.
With 7 people, the space
under the tree got pretty crowded.
Each of us also gave gifts
to our siblings, so there was a lot of wrapped boxes and a lot of opportunity
to give and receive.
The anticipation for
Christmas morning was great: as each of us hoped for the perfect present from
our Christmas list!
I was much like the boy in
Bud Blake’s “Tiger” comic strip.
One boy said: “We got an
artificial Christmas tree this year.”
Second boy said: Doesn’t
that bother you?”
First boy answered: “No,
not as long as the gifts are real!”
Sadly, I learned over the
years, that even REAL gifts are not very satisfying.
There was an empty feeling
even after all the gifts were opened.
It felt like the song that
Peggy Lee made famous: “Is that all there is?”
You may know that feeling
too.
Christmas has come and
gone—is that all?
Don’t get me wrong—I was
happy to get the gifts.
I just discovered that
there was an emptiness in this celebration.
Every year seemed to be a
let down
One novelist captures my
feelings in his story of starving Irish peasants.
They were put to work
building roads into the wilderness.
This was done not because
the roads were needed but only to keep them busy and furnish an excuse to feed
the workers.
So they built roads that
ended in dreary bogs and deserted wilderness places which served no useful
purpose for anyone.
The author writes: “The
road that leads to nowhere is difficult to make, even though starving men are
engaged upon it—for a man to work well there must be an end in view.”
Many Christmas
celebrations and observances lead no-where.
Too often, we become like
starving peasants building roads to nowhere.
There is little joy, little
peace, or fulfillment
Instead we are filled with
emptiness, anxiety, stress and exhaustion.
Perhaps we need to ask
ourselves whether our Christmas celebrations are real.
Gifts alone do not make
Christmas.
What matters is what the
gifts point to: our love for one another!
What matters most is the
supreme gift of God’s Son—Jesus Christ.
Our scripture lessons
provide some direction for our Christmas preparations.
While our culture tells us
to prepare for Christmas with gift lists, addressing cards, buying gifts, and
giving parties—
The Gospel tells us to
prepare for Jesus.
Mark views John the
Baptist as a fulfillment of Isaiah 40:
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
3the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”
For the full impact of this passage we must look to the
passage that Mark is quoting from Isaiah 40:3-5:
A voice cries out: “In the wilderness
prepare the way of the Lord, make
straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4Every
valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven
ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. 5Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it
together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
In the Old Testament, the desert is a
powerful image and a place of danger.
The desert is a hostile and
threatening land.
The desert is desolate and barren.
Israel knew the dangers of the
desert—they followed Moses through the desert for 40 years seeking the promised land.
They suffered from lack of food and
lack of water.
Many of them got lost in the
wilderness and perished.
This passage speaks of a different
kind of desert—the exile in Babylon.
They were prisoners to the armies of
Babylon in a land far from home.
They also felt like spiritual
prisoners stuck in a time of God’s silence and punishment.
Isaiah expresses their great hope of
escape from the desert.
The day is coming when Israel will be
set free from their Babylonian bondage and travel across the desert to their
homeland.
God in His steadfast love will allow
Israel to return to Jerusalem; to rebuild their lives, rebuild their homes,
restore the temple of God, and restore true worship.
For me, this is a modern day image of
the commercialized Christmas—Christmas has become like a desert; empty, barren,
and meaningless.
Our culture’s materialism has become a
spiritual desert.
John the Baptist gives us the answer
to this desert.
Prepare for Jesus by building a
highway through the desert.
Don’t waste your time building a road
to no-where—a road that is useless, empty, and meaningless.
“Make straight in the desert a highway
for our God.” (Is.40:3)
Build a road through the desert which
provides a meaningful Christ-filled Christmas.
John provides two steps to build this
highway.
1. “Every mountain and
hill will be made low”
Every
engineer knows that one has to remove all the obstacles, the mountains and the
hills to make a smooth road in the wilderness.
The same
is true for Christmas! We must get rid of the spiritual mountains and hills that
block the building of our spiritual highway.
These are
a few of the mountains and hills we need to remove!
EXPECTATIONS
Clinging
to past experiences of Christmas;
Attempting
to recreate the ideal Christmas;
Romanticizing the memories of the past.
STRESS
Endless
lists of projects;
Insisting
on shopping, parties, baking, pageants, to-do-lists;
Have you
ever noticed how many shoppers look happy? NONE
Fighting
for parking places;
Fighting
with customer service;
Fighting
with children, grandchildren, parents;
Fighting
with the public;
FINANCIAL PRESSURES
NOT
having enough to buy the perfect present;
Not
having enough credit to buy them anyway;
Manipulating
your credit to have a “perfect” Christmas;
Being in debt the rest of the year because of your generosity.
GUILT
Do you
wonder if you got the right gift for your friend;
Do you
buy gifts that you really don’t want to buy?
Do you
feel obligated to reciprocate your gifts—buy one for everyone who sent you a
gift?
We need
to knock down these mountains and hills:
REDUCE
OUR EXPECTATIONS—LIVE REALISTICALLY
REDUCE
STRESS—SLOW DOWN, LIMIT OUR SCHEDULE
ACCEPT
FININCIAL LIMITS—PRACTICE CONTENTMENT.
BE FREE
FROM GUILT—FOCUS ON RELATIONSHIPS AND NOT THINGS.
2. “Every valley shall
be filled up”
John the
Baptist tells us the next step in building a new highway through the wilderness
this Christmas.
The same
engineer knows that you must fill in the valleys in order to build a smooth
road.
The same
is true of building a spiritual road.
We must
fill our valleys with spiritual traditions and activities.
When my
wife and I were new parents, we decided that we wanted to begin a new Advent
tradition in our family.
When our
daughter Marie was born, we decided to buy a home advent wreath and use it
every day before Christmas.
This was
not something either of us were raised with, so it was
a new tradition for all of us.
We place
the wreath on the dinner table.
Every
night as dinner, we lit the Advent candle and reminded Marie of the true
meaning of Christmas.
The first
week of Advent we lit one candle.
The
second week of Advent we lit two candles, and so on.
We read
her parts of the Christmas story every night as we gathered around our evening
meal.
This
family ritual helped mark the days until Christmas.
This also
anticipated the final act of Christmas—we told Marie that on Christmas morning
we would light the center white candle to signify the coming of the Christ
child—Jesus’ birth.
On
Christmas morning, we lit the white candle before Marie woke up.
When she
did wake up—she ignored the tree, the presents, the stockings, and even the
toys brought by Santa Claus which were unwrapped and by the tree.
She ran
straight to the Advent wreath, saw the Christ candle was lit and said: “Jesus
is born! Everybody wake up! It’s Christmas!”
John the
Baptist tells us how we should prepare for Christmas: build a highway through
YOUR desert.
Make the
uneven ground level.
Make the
rough places a plane.
Then we
will find the true meaning of Christmas in the birth of baby Jesus.
The words
of Isaiah will come true for us:
“Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it
together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”(Is. 40:5)