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In Advent we are on a journey to the manger. The road to the manger is not like Interstate 97 or 50. Nor is the journey sentimental. The path is not decorated with candy canes. There are no shortcuts. The Advent journey begins in the darkness of the short days of winter.
In every Catholic Church this Gospel is proclaimed this week to lead us to the Jordan River and its stern prophet, John. If we could only get to the babe without having to hear the Baptist cry, "Repent!" But we cannot see Jesus without first hearing John. Repentance is hard stuff.
John quotes Isaiah, who 600 years before had spoken not to the powerful but to the powerless. Jerusalem and its temple had been destroyed, and the people taken in slavery to Babylon. There they wept when they remembered Zion. Isaiah's message was a call to hope. They were in a “valley” and their Babylonian captors on a “mountain.” But the mountains were going to be cut down and the valleys were going to be lifted up. God was going to act for the lost, the least, and the last; for the weak, the weary, and the worn. That's good news if you're in a valley, but bad news if you're on a mountain.
Luke begins today's text by ticking off a list of the powerful; those on a “mountain.” He starts at the top with Tiberius Caesar and ends with Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests. After telling us who the “powers that be” are, John declares that the landscape is about to be leveled. It is not Tiberius whose name and authority will determine how the world will be shaped, but a simple carpenter's son. Rome will be brought down, but of His kingdom there will be no end
Take a look at today's world. There's not much question that if most of humanity suffers in the valley, we, the affluent, sit on a high mountain. We may not want to hear John or get washed in his river. What if that's the only way to get from here to the manger?
Our maintenance man is from El Salvador. There the church stood with those in the valley. There were thirteen families who occupied the mountain but who owned 80 percent of the land. They felt terribly threatened. They didn't want the landscape leveled. Many church people, including six Jesuit priests, paid with their lives.
If leveling the mountains is the large international task, straightening the crooked places may be our justice ministry here at home. We've got some serious straightening to do if the road is too crooked for Jesus to travel. Think of the prejudice or hatred toward Jews, blacks, women, or people of an alternative life style. What of places which believe capital punishment deters crime and is the legitimate acting out of society's proper vengeance? What if only they execute the poor, the feeble-minded and the powerless? Is this a road which is too crooked for Jesus to travel? The ordering of national priorities, so that we provide almost unlimited money for wars but have to beg for adequate funds for schools and for children, is a network of crooked roads.
What does this mean for our daily relationships? Is there a smooth road between you and those who live around you? Are your personal relationships so that Jesus would be comfortable traveling down the paths of your life? It is one thing to think about international and national issues, but what about living happily with those in your own home, or in your neighborhood. When the Messiah comes the mountains will be leveled, the crooked made straight, but the rough places will also be smoothed out. And that's a task which confronts us every day.
Neill Hamilton taught at Drew University. He cites how people in our time lose hope for the future. It happens whenever we let our culture define how the world is going to end. At this stage of technological advancement, the only way the culture can make sense of the future is through the picture of everything ending in a nuclear holocaust. The world cannot know what we know, that everything has changed by the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus. The same Christ, who silent at His trial, is coming to judge the world and give birth to a new creation. And so, people lose hope. Hamilton’s insight is that this substitution of an image of nuclear holocaust for the coming of Christ is a parable of what happens to Christians when they cease to believe in their own eschatological and theological heritage. The culture supplies its own images for the end when we default by ceasing to believe in biblical images of God's triumph at the end. The good news of the gospel is this: when all is said and done, God is going to win. [No Box Seats in the Kingdom, William G. Carter, CSS Publishing.]
In the Peanuts comic strip, Linus and Lucy are standing at the window looking out at the rain falling. Lucy says to Linus, "Boy, look at it rain. What if it floods the earth?" Linus, the resident biblical scholar answers, "It will never do that. In Genesis God promised Noah that would never happen again, and the sign of the promise is the rainbow." With a smile on her face, Lucy replies, "Linus, you've taken a great load off my mind." To which Linus responds, "Sound theology has a way of doing that." [Charles Schultz, Peanuts, adapted by David E. Leininger]
I want to get to the manger without any fuss. I'm ready for some shepherds, for the Christmas plays, the nice animals, the wise men, the star, and the choir singing "Silent Night." I want the tree, the eggnog, and the cookies. I want all the romance and sentiment Christmas has to offer. Don't you? But first we must get to the manger, and that road leads by the Jordan River with its prophet calling us to repentance.
Perhaps there is no Interstate we can take from here to the manger. Perhaps we can never get there at all until some landscape is leveled, some mountains pulled down, some valleys built up, some crooked places straightened and some rough spots made smooth. If that is our task, we had better be about it, lest when he comes we shall miss him, and missing Him, miss life in its fullness.