The Advent Highway: A Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent

The Advent Highway:  A Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent.  Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Sunday December 10 2023 

Readings - Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8 

 

 

A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  (Isaiah 40:3)

Throughout Advent, the voices we hear from scripture urge us to prepare, to be ready for comings and goings.   

Last Sunday, we heard Jesus say in a parable in Mark’s gospel (Mk 13:24-37) that he would come again like the master of a house, unexpectedly, at any time of the day or night.   We in the parable were the master’s servants, expected to be ready and to the house ready and in good order.    Thus, when the Advent hymn tells us to “trim the hearth and set the table”, it is urging spiritual preparation, and not just home decorating.

So comings and arrivals we can prepare for.   We know the date, we prepare to welcome the babe as God made flesh, and with the Spirit’s help we do what we can to set our souls and lives in order.

But what of Advent goings?  There’s that highway that Isaiah speaks of.  What must we take with us?  When must we leave?  Where will it take us, and what will we find there?

Now as Canadians, we don’t know much about highways in the desert, but we know something of preparing for travel at this time of year.  In the warm months, as we drive about in the highlands and see those signs that say “Road Closed When Lights Flashing Due to Winter Conditions”, we may not think much about them at the time, but we know that in a few months, it will be time to prepare for travel.

We know when it’s time to put on the snow tires.   We fill up with winter window cleaner, stock the car with blankets and, as Rev. Sharon said in her homily last Sunday, a candle or two for warmth.   Mostly we do a good job of getting ready, though there was the guy in the rectory driveway on the first icy day of winter, scraping his windows with a wooden spatula.   The less said about that guy, the better.

While we can try to imagine the dangers of a travel in the desert - getting lost, thirst, wild animals - we know all too well the dangers of winter travel.   Who hasn’t been caught in a snow squall, gripping the steering wheel until the knuckles ache, peering through the whiteout to try and discern the road ahead and the terrifying ditches on either side?  Who hasn’t breathed a sigh of relief to see the blue lights of a plow up ahead, and followed the plow like a gosling follows its mother?  And who hasn’t thanked God when the lights of home or hotel finally come into view and the long scary trip is done?

Our words from Isaiah today are words of promise and freedom to a displaced and captive people.   Israel has served its sentence for disobedience, its time in Babylon has come to an end.   But how will the exiles in Babyon get home to Jerusalem?  The good news that Isaiah holds out is a metaphor that sounds like a miraculous engineering, a highway through the desert, level and smooth, an easy way for God’s people to go home and be free again in their own land.

³A 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.

Perhaps if we wanted to transpose Isaiah’s metaphor to a Canadian context, keeping in mind our earlier thoughts about winter driving, it might go something like this.

“A voice cries out:  “In the winter prepare the way of the Lord, plough the highway for our God.   All the black ice will be sanded, every drift shall be cleared, the snow fences shall be fixed firmly in place, and the hills and corners made safe.”

But where will these now safe winter roads bring us?  Will they lead us back home to our old lives and comforts, or will they bring us to some new place where we are willing, even brave enough, to find a God who will make us new?

Isaiah promised a day when the exiles would return home to a new relationship with God.  The people had been taken to Babylon because they had forgotten their covenant with God.   They would return as a changed and redeemed people.  Thus when Isaiah uses the word “comfort”, as he does repeatedly, it means more than just “console” or “cheer”.   As the biblical scholar Anathea Porter-Young notes, the Hebrew word naḥămû has a range of meanings including “change”, “be sorry”, and “repent”.   Thus the road home to Jerusalem will be road to a restored and repaired relationship with God.

 In today’s gospel, the cry of Isaiah is taken up anew.  Now the voice has a name, John the Baptizer. He is dressed like one of the great prophets (Elisha) and he speaks with the words of another.  John tells us that the highway is open, the road is ploughed, and again God’s people can travel, which they do:

And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. (Isa 40:5)

Mark, ever laconic, doesn’t tell us what sins the people want to confess.  Their particularity doesn’t matter.  What matters is that there is need and urgency; tthey desperately want what John promises.  

And what does John promise, but Jesus, the one far greater than himself, the one  whom John isn’t even worthy to stoop before as a servant?   John admits that his baptism is water, a temporary cleansing.

By contrast, Jesus offers a baptism of spirit, an internal cleansing, a remaking, a new beginning, and a making clean of what has gone before.  Confession, baptism, forgiveness, making clean, new beginning - these are all bound up in the first words of Mark’s gospel, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk 1.1).    The good news is that we the Advent highway brings to the one who knows us, hears us, judges and forgives us, and makes us new.

Rowan Williams has written of Advent that it is about our need to know that we are not alone.   “We live as human beings, in an enormous hunger to be spoken to, to be touched, to be judged and loved and [forgiven]”.    We cannot judge ourselves.   Who can judge us and forgive us for homelessness and poverty, for war and genocide, for environmental and nuclear destruction?  We cannot forgive ourselves, and yet without the voice of God we are left alone in our flawed humanity.

And so we long for a God who restores our humanity and makes it new.   The Advent highway brings us to this God, whether it leads us through the desert or through the winter storm.   The Advent highway brings us to Jesus, who knows exactly who and what we are, and who, nevertheless, offers us absolution and new life.

Shortly in our worship today, when we get to the Confession and Absolution, I invite you to imagine yourself having driven safely through a winter storm.  The danger’s past.  You’re safe.   You can unclench your hands from the wheel.  Outside the car is light and warmth.  The Advent Highway has brought you home to Jesus.