Prepare Ye

So this isn't exactly a blog post, but since I've been remiss in doing much blogging recently I thought I'd put up my sermon from yesterday. To get in the right frame of mind, you might go to your CD player or iPod and put on the music from Godspell or Handel's Messiah. Got it playing? Good. If you don't have a Bible handy, here are the texts from Mark 1:1-8 and Isaiah 40: 1-11. If you'd rather listen than read, it will be available on the Stone Church website.

"Prepare Ye" - December 4, 2011, Stone Church of Willow Glen

From the moment I first reviewed the Scripture texts to prepare for this sermon, I had Handel’s Messiah playing in my head. Every va-hal-ley shall be exha-halted. Eventually, I just broke down and popped the CD in the player.

If your memory goes back to the 1970s, perhaps these texts remind you of Godspell and “Pre-ee-pare ye the way of the Lord.” I had that in my head for a while, but all I could remember was “Pre-ee-pare ye the way of the Lord” over and over. So I looked up the lyrics. It turns out that is all there is to that song, except for a couple of places where “Everybody now!” is thrown in for emphasis.

This is the second Sunday of Advent, and we’re smack-dab in the middle of the season of preparing for the arrival of Jesus. Today we lit a candle of preparation, we asked God to prepare our hearts to welcome a Savior into our lives, and we heard from Scripture a call to prepare. 

In December it is hard to forget that Christmas preparation is on the agenda; every television ad and store window screams that time’s awasting and we’ve got to get ready.

In response, all over the country today pastors are saying pithy things to their congregations like, “As you prepare for Christmas, don’t forget to prepare for Christ.”

Actually, some churches don’t do much for Advent. One of my students had never heard of it. She grew up in a church that she described as “On Christmas Eve, Jesus is born, BAM, and that’s it.”

Other Christians spend a lot of time all year long thinking about what it means to prepare for Jesus. I found a song this week called, “What would you do if Jesus came to your house?” Part of it goes,

“When you saw him comin’ would you meet him at the door, with arms outstretched in welcome to your heavenly visitor? Or would you need to change some things before you let him in, like burn some magazines and put the Bible where they'd been?”

There’s another verse that talks about serving your best food and what you’d talk about over dinner. It’s kind of a Jesus-as-Santa motif, where preparing for Jesus means cleaning up dust bunnies and being on your best behavior to get on Jesus’ “good” list.

This isn’t exactly a wrong idea; in Mark, John the Baptist does call people to repentance, turning around from old ways of being and embracing new life.

But the coming of God begin with good news, not a test. There is nothing to pay and nothing to fear.

Isaiah’s words come to an Israel in exile, wondering if the wilderness will ever lead them home again. To these exiles, Isaiah cries, “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free.” The glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all are free. All are free.

The glory of the Lord is perhaps an abstraction for us, but for Israel this would have been a known entity: throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, God’s glory is understood as the manifestation of God’s presence, God actually being there with them. It’s harder to see God’s presence when you’re in exile; it’s harder to believe God is present when you’ve been ousted from your home into a strange and foreign wilderness. But it is into the wilderness that the good news comes: the glory of the Lord will be revealed. They will see and know God’s presence again.

And that, essentially, is Isaiah’s message to us, too. It is what we are preparing for in Advent: to see the presence of God through the person of Jesus Christ.

* * *

For me, however, this is where all those cute Christian formulas, like “While you’re preparing for Christmas, don’t forget to prepare for Christ” start to break down a little. How do you prepare for the presence of God? Is it like having your house cleaned and inspected? Is it like getting out the best china and fixing a great meal and putting presents under a tree?

Or is it more like having your world turned upside down? Like feeling every overwhelming joy and fear you’ve ever felt all at once? Like being simultaneously embraced and blinded by fantastically bright light? Like standing on a mountain that suddenly drops into a valley, or in a valley that shoots up into the sky without warning?

Preparing for the presence of God should be exhilarating and terrifying, because it means coming to terms with all we are, and were, and could be, and were meant to be, face to face with the One who designed us. Most of us have a hard enough time getting our Christmas cards out before Epiphany, let alone preparing to receive a presence that might topple Mount Diablo and us with it. It’s a lot to take in, a lot to anticipate, a lot to prepare for, a lot to believe.

But says, Isaiah, it’s a promise: the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.

So there you go. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Everybody now.

* * *

That reminds me. There’s a second half to that promise. The glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people shall see it together. The arrival of the presence of God is something that comes to us together, that brings us together. Not some of us. All people shall see it together.

You know what else? Preparing the way of the Lord is also something we do together.

The first words we hear from Isaiah are, “Comfort, O comfort my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” Those verbs – comfort, speak – are plural. The command is corporate: you all comfort.

Some scholars say that decree is to the heavenly host – that God is calling on all the angels of heaven to spread words of comfort. Perhaps once an angel whispered that into your ear: take comfort, you are free. And if you heard that voice in your ear, maybe it’s your turn now to whisper it to someone else: you are free, come on home. Comfort my people, says God. Speak tenderly to the heart, to prepare the way of the Lord, that all people will see it together.

On Friday, I met a man whose son has a degenerative disease. Our conversation began with some simple questions about Campus Ministry, but I quickly realized the man was asking something else. What he really wanted to know was how to help his son prepare for his early death, which the family knows will come but can’t yet say aloud to each other. And the man wanted to know how he and his wife could possibly prepare themselves to lose a child. He wants to be strong for her. He believes she’s being strong for him. They’re both being strong for their son. And the son is being strong for them. And they are all preparing separately.

***

Advent is a set-aside time in which we take special account of how to prepare for God’s way. But we are all preparing all the time: to love, to change, to fail, to grow, to escape, to create, to believe, to die. And we are all preparing in our own ways to see God’s presence revealed. That promise of God’s presence is for all of us, and we need each other to help us prepare to receive it.

When some of don’t feel like the words of comfort are for us, when our hearts are so full of ache that we can’t prepare for anything else, we prepare together by repeating to each other words of comfort: your sin is forgiven, your term is complete. When some of us can’t hear or see the presence of God, when we can’t remember why preparing is worth anything, we remind one another: the grass withers and the flower fades, but word of our God stands forever. When some of us are too afraid to prepare, when preparation makes us too vulnerable, we prepare together saying: do not fear, God will gather the lambs, God will hold the sheep close, God will make a way in the wilderness. When some of us have seen the glory of God, have beheld God’s presence, we prepare together through the strong voices of those who can call from the mountain, “God is here. Make a path in the wilderness, and bring the people home.”

Isaiah’s word to us is a promise: The glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people shall see it together.

So go. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Everybody now.