Isaiah 40:1-11 | 2 Peter 3:8-15a
Jeremy Richards
Earlier this week, I was sitting in my office, reading over our scriptures for today, and I wasn’t really getting anywhere. I kept running into dead ends. I would get a bit of an idea, but it wouldn’t really take off. So I did what I often do, if the weather allows, when I’m going round and round in my head: I went for a walk in Grant Park.
As I walked out the door, I was thinking of our passage from Isaiah, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” I stepped out the front door, went down the ramp, then stepped onto the sidewalk. Hm. Then I walked down the sidewalk toward the park until I came to...Knott Street. I crossed the street and found myself back on the sidewalk. I walked down the sidewalk until I got to the park, where the sidewalk turned into a path. Already, I knew the route I would take around the park, because I’m very familiar with the walkways that weave their way through the park..
As I walked, I started to realize that paths of one kind or another -- sidewalks, roads, trails, walkways, etc. -- are everywhere. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that as long as I’m outside, I’m almost always on some kind of path. When I drive home, I use roads. When I walk through a neighborhood I use sidewalks. If I take the Max, it runs along rails. Even if I leave the city to go on a hike in the woods, I end up on a trail. Most of our yards have a path to the front door. It seems we can’t even make it from our driveway to our house without some kind of established, intentional walkway. I would guess that most of us spend at least 95% of our time outside on some sort of road, path, or walkway.
Paths, roads, highways, walkways, interstates, trails, sidewalks, are everywhere. We rely on them, though we rarely take the time to think about it. Yet, when they are absent or blocked, we notice right away.
The first summer I worked for the Forest Service as a college student, only a few weeks into my new job, I was alone, driving my boss’ truck on an old mountain road when I came to a section of road that was covered in snow that hadn’t yet melted and was blocking my way. The snow didn’t look that deep, and the truck had 4WD. I’d been with other Forest Service folx in similar situations, who put their “rigs,” as we called them, into 4WD and drove through snow. It was just a matter of determining how deep the snow was, and if we could make it. I decided, looking at the snow in front of me, that I could make it.
I put the little Ford Ranger into 4WD and drove toward the snow, trying to find the balance between having enough speed to carry me through, and not so much that I might hit the snow and lose control. Well, as I made my way into the patch of snow, the back of my truck started sliding toward the edge. Oh yeah, there was a drop off to the right. Did I mention that? And the back end was fishtailing toward the drop off. I hit the breaks and stopped. I sat there and wondered what I should do. I was almost through, but I really didn’t want to be the guy who totalled a government vehicle only a couple weeks into his Forest Service career. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to call in on the radio for the whole forest to hear, admit that I had gotten stuck, and wait for a group to come save me. I put the truck in 4WDL, gently accelerated, and, twisting and sliding, the wheels spinning, eventually made it through the snow and onto the dry ground on the other side.
I learned that day that a seemingly small road blockage has the potential to become a catastrophic problem.
Likewise, we probably don’t think much about the amount of work that goes into creating roads, trails, walkways, and other avenues. But building them often requires workers to cut through dirt, rock, and vegetation. Sometimes they have to plow right through the center of hills and mountains. They weave along dangerous ravines, they climb high mountains. They require bridges to cross rivers, lakes, and lagoons.
Though I got to bounce around within various departments during my time at the Forest Service, I was hired to be a Youth Conservation Corps Crewleader, which basically means I was hired to babysit teenagers for 8 weeks (something I was not good at), as they worked for and learned about the various departments within the Forest Service.
Each week we would visit a different department of the Forest Service and help with various projects. That first summer, the same summer that I almost drove my boss’ truck off the road, our last week was spent with the trails crew, and we literally cut a hiking trail through the side of a hill. It was awful. We used a tool that had an ax handle with a hoe on one side and a pic on the other. We all got in a line with enough distance between us that we wouldn’t impale each other with the pic, and then we would put our backs in the direction we were going and we would use the hoe part of the tool to smooth out the path underneath us, walking backward as we went. The first person would take off the first layer, the second person would go a bit deeper, the third a bit deeper, and so on. If we hit a rock we would use the pic part of the tool to dig it out.
It was back breaking. We would be bent over the whole time, there was no shade, and it was August. It was also monotonous and boring.
And it’s not just hiking trails that take a lot of work. Roads and highways are expensive and labor intensive as well. We all know what it’s like when a busy road is under construction. It’s never a quick fix. It usually lasts months.
The interstate highway system as we know it today took about 36 years to build and the modern equivalent of $500 billion. And that’s with modern technology! Think about how much more work it would’ve taken to make highways in ancient days. The section of Isaiah that we heard read today is thought to have been written in the 6th century BCE, long before our modern age.
This all goes to say that when God tells the exiled Judeans, through the prophet Isaiah, to “prepare the way of the Lord, and to make straight in the desert a highway for our God,” we should recognize that highways do not come about without intention, and they will not last without maintenance. It only takes a little bit of snow to make a road impassable (or, almost impassable :) ).
Vv. 3-4 seems to imply that building this “way of the Lord” is a cooperative project between the people and God. Though God will do the bulk of the work, the people of Israel are also responsible for their part. There’s an implicit “you” in v. 3: “(You) prepare the way of the Lord, (you) make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” But v. 4, without warning, switches to the future and seems to imply that God will ultimately accomplish the project: “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plane.”
In this passage we see a common theme that pops up throughout scripture, and that is the interplay between God’s divine action, and humanity’s active response to and participation in that divine action. God is coming, but there is work to do in preparation for that coming.
V. 9 throws us for a loop, though. Because the earlier section was all about how God will be coming, but then, all of a sudden, God is here! Like a dinner guest who shows up early, before the food’s cooked, the table’s set, or the house is even cleaned!
Just look at v. 9: “Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings...do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’ See the Lord God comes with might…” God is here! But then the prophet switches back to the future tense, “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” God is here, at the gate, and yet not fully realized, Isaiah seems to be saying. What’s going on? Is God there or not? Is God here, with us in 2020, or not?
Well, maybe v. 5, along with our reading from 2 Peter can help us make sense of this question. After speaking of the way of the Lord being prepared, the valleys being lifted up, the mountains being made low, and the rough ground being made level, the prophet says, “Then (after those things are accomplished) the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together…” In other words, before God’s glory’s going to be revealed, we’ve got to prepare the way.
Our reading from 2 Peter makes a similar claim, though even more surprising. We often assume that we are waiting on God. During this season of Advent, especially, we wait for God. We wonder why God hasn’t fixed all that’s wrong, why outwardly injustice continues to exist, why physically we suffer from disease and sickness, why inwardly we continue to struggle with fear, anxiety, isolation, and other forms of mental and spiritual illness. But 2 Peter 3:9 says it’s not that we are waiting on God, it’s that God is waiting on us. “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” God doesn’t want to show up too early, before we’re ready. God doesn’t want to be that early dinner guest. God’s waiting for us to get our rears in gear, to quit messing around with all that clogs the path between us and God, to turn toward God and make room in our lives for the Divine, who is already here, already present, but waiting for us to make a way for Her.
Waiting has been the theme of our scriptures for weeks now, maybe months. And it’s been the theme of our lives, ever since Covid hit. We’re sick of waiting. We want to know what to do in the midst of waiting.
As I’ve sat with these scriptures over the course of the past week, I’ve come to see that this season of Advent isn’t really about waiting, at least not in the sense I’d been thinking it was. It’s not about twiddling our thumbs and anxiously looking up every few minutes to ask, “Is God here yet?” It’s not about waiting so much as it’s about preparation. The question is not, “Is God here yet?” but “What are we doing to prepare for Her arrival?”
Could it be that She is closer than we think? Could She in fact be near, but we haven’t prepared the way for Her? Could it be that, again, Christ is waiting to be born in us and in our world, and again the inn is too full, there is no place for him. “The birds of the air have nests, and the foxes have holes,” Jesus said, “but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Is this just as true today, in us - in our inner, spiritual lives, in our busy personal day-to-day lives, in our social, communal corporate life together?
The early 17th century German mystic Jacob Boehme was asked why so few people seem to experience Divine Love, though they desire it, and he answered, “Though it offers itself to them it can find no place in them.”
Without roads, paths, sidewalks, and walkways, we couldn’t get anywhere. We couldn’t get to work, couldn’t get to the grocery store, couldn’t visit family. Roads are everywhere, but they didn’t spring up without intention, planning, and effort. The same is true of spiritual roads.
God is not a steamroller. She won’t barge in where She’s not invited. It will be difficult for God to get to us if we don’t create any space for God, if the road to our hearts is overgrown with worry, busyness, anger, consumerism, greed...whatever it might be.
During this season of Advent, the question is: how can we prepare the way for Christ in our own lives, how can we make room for Divine Love, amidst everything else that vies for our attention?
Maybe Christ isn’t coming. Maybe he’s already here. Maybe we’re not waiting on God. Maybe She’s waiting on us.
Amen.