Somewhere I read about a meeting of a group of software designers. They were using typical technical jargon to discuss a data exchange interface with a vendor.
One engineer said the programming that had been ordered was delayed because the vendor was suffering from a “severe nonlinear waterfowl issue.”
Curious, the team leader raised his eyebrows and asked, “What exactly is a severe nonlinear waterfowl issue?”
The engineer replied, “They don’t have all their ducks in a row.”
On this second Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist comes to ask us if we have a severe nonlinear waterfowl issue. Do we have all our ducks in a row for the coming of the Messiah? Luke tells us that the coming of John the Baptist is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah, “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all people will see God’s salvation.’”
Whenever a king was going to enter a city, the people who lived there would build a special entrance that was always straight and smooth. According to Dr. Craig Barnes, one of the most exciting archeological digs going on in Israel today is in Beit Shean which is uncovering a great Roman City. If you go there, you can see the main entrance into the city which is a wide, straight, even road, with magnificent columns on either side. That city is located at the juncture of the Jezreel and Jericho valleys.
John the Baptist must have been by this impressive road all the time. Anyone traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem would have seen it. Everyone knew that a wide, straight even road was what you made when a king was coming. (1)
We’re experts at building roads, are we not? Our land is covered with ribbons of concrete designed for our cars. And we have miles and miles of road projects underway in every nook and cranny of our republic. The most expensive highway project in our nation’s history was known as the Big Dig. It is in Boston. It involved building a buried highway through the heart of the city. It is about 3.5 miles in length and, by the time it was finished, it cost a staggering twenty-two billion dollars.
Rep. Barney Frank, a congressman from the area, said it would have been cheaper to raise the city instead of lowering the road. (2)
John the Baptist wanted his people to build a road for the coming King not a road made of asphalt, bricks or concrete, but a road built out of righteousness, repentance and justice. His goal was to prepare the people of Israel for the coming Messiah. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. On this Second Sunday of Advent, as the celebration of Christ’s birth comes near, John the Baptist confronts us with this critical question: have we built a straight highway into our hearts for Christ’s coming?
For some of us, it is very difficult to focus on the meaning of Christ’s coming, especially during this season of the year. The sheer busyness of the season is daunting the presents to buy, the parties to attend, the attention to so many details.
One chaplain was talking about the common practice today of replacing the Christ in Christmas with an X Xmas. He said that when people use Xmas, they really mean Xhaustion, Xcuses, Xchanges, Xcesses, Xtravagances, Xasperations, Xhibitions, and worldly Xcitement. (3)
It is significant that the secular world begins the celebration of the Christmas season the day after Thanksgiving with a bonanza of holiday sales. The day, of course, is appropriately named Black Friday. This ominous name seemed even more appropriate in November 2008 after a Long Island Wal-Mart store employee was crushed to death in a stampede of early morning shoppers. (4)
I’m told that before the beginning of the Christmas season many retailers hold anger management seminars for their employees, and conflict management training to deal with difficult customers; some stores now keep their top selling items off the shelves on Black Friday so people don’t fight over them.
The secular world has almost taken over the celebration of Christ’s birth. It is difficult for us to stay focused on the real meaning of Christmas. I’m glad you’re in worship this morning. This is a time for you to take a deep breath and relax. Tune out all the responsibilities, all the busyness, all the claims on your time and attention of this hectic season and listen to the voice of God. Are you prepared internally to properly celebrate the birth of the Messiah into our world?
Preparation is the key to success in almost every endeavor. You wouldn’t invite friends to your house for a Christmas celebration without making adequate preparations, would you? The house must be clean, decorations hung, the food and beverage prepared, the silverware polished, etc. You know that preparation is the key to the success of your party. That’s true in all of life.
When baseball legend Casey Stengel was managing the Boston Braves, he spotted a speedy rookie during the spring training. The kid couldn’t play very well, but he could run like a deer, so Casey carried him along for use in an emergency.
The emergency came during a game with the old Brooklyn Dodgers. The score was tied going into the ninth and Boston had a runner on second. Casey waved the rookie in to run for the batter. The next man up slammed a hard single between third and short. Stengel heaved a sigh of relief; the fast-running kid could make it easily. As he rounded third, though, the rookie started stumbling and slipping, and he just barely made it back to the bag. Because the young ball player failed to score the game went 23 innings and ended in a tie.
When it was all over, Stengel asked the youngster how he happened to stumble and to turn the game into a tie and one of the longest games on record. The rookie was heartbroken. “Casey,” he said, “I figured I wouldn’t get to play anyway and I wore shoes without spikes so I’d be comfortable.” (5)
How sad, but how human. He didn’t think he would get to play anyway, so he didn’t do what he needed to do to get ready for his big moment. “Spectacular achievement,” someone has said, “is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.”
Speaking of being prepared, former President Jimmy Carter in his book, Living Faith, tells about our friends of the Amish faith and what preparation means to them.
The Amish do not believe in an ordained ministry. All their religious services are held in private homes. Whenever a worship service is held, a big black wagon full of benches is driven to the designated home, and the worshipers gather. No one knows in advance who will preach the morning sermon; the leader for the day is chosen by lot or by last-minute consensus.
Carter asked an Amish bishop how people could prepare a sermon if they didn’t know when they would be called on, and he replied, with a genuinely modest attitude, “We always have to be prepared.” (6)
Wow! Imagine coming to worship never knowing when you may be called on to give the sermon. It’s hard enough to prepare yourself to listen to a sermon, but what if I unexpectedly called on you to deliver the message for the day? You would probably come to worship better prepared. So, let’s do a check list and ask once more, are we prepared internally to celebrate Christ’s birth?
Is your relationship with God intact? John the Baptist came preaching a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sin. Sin has to do with our relationship with God. Have you kept your relationship with your heavenly Father as strong as you long for it to be?
John the Baptist spoke of building a straight road. The opposite of a straight road, I suppose, would be a maze. Have you ever been in a maze? Author Max Lucado has. In one of his books he tells about a trip his family took to the United Kingdom. They visited a castle. In the center of the castle garden sat a maze with row after row of shoulder-high hedges, leading to one dead end after another. If you successfully navigate the labyrinth, you discover the door to a tall tower in the center of the garden.
He says that if you were you to look at their family pictures of the trip, you’d see four of their five family members standing on the top of the tower. Hmmm, someone is still on the ground. Guess who? Lucado says he was stuck in the foliage, lost in the maze. He couldn’t figure out which way to go. But then he heard a voice from above. “Hey, Dad.” He looked up to the top of the tower to see his daughter Sara, peering through the turret. “You’re going the wrong way,” she explained. “Back up and turn right.”
Do you think he trusted her? He didn’t have to, he points out. He could have trusted his own instincts, consulted other confused tourists, sat and pouted and wondered why God would let this happen to him. But do you know what he did? He listened. Her vantage point was better than his. She was above the maze. She could see what he couldn’t. (7)
Are you lost in a maze this Advent season? Isn’t it time you paused for a moment and listened to God’s voice? God’s perspective on your life is flawless. There are several things God probably would ask you about if you were to listen: your relationships with your family and friends; your priorities with regard to your use of your time and money. Maybe that secret sin that you run to every time you’re feeling bad about yourself. We don’t like to talk about sin at Christmas time, but sin always complicates our lives. It drags us down. It causes us shame when God is trying to nudge us toward our highest potential. It causes us to drift out of range of God’s voice.
The people of Israel were not the only ones who needed to repent to make ready for the coming King. We need to take stock of our lives, particularly our relationship with God.
Are your relationships with others what they ought to be? We can’t build a straight road into our hearts if we have to veer around lots of obstacles caused by deteriorating relationship with our family and friends.
One of the things we love about Christmas is how it brings families and loved ones together. One of the things many people dread about Christmas is that broken relationships become even more painful. For parents who live with the hell of having a son or daughter held prisoner by drug or alcohol addictions, Christmas is a painful remembrance of earlier times of innocence and love. For those whose families that have been torn with tragic conflicts, Christmas is a painful reminder that something very dear and sacred has been torn asunder.
A young man in the Air Force said that he and his dad were very, very good pals. His father loved him and they would play and have fun together. But one day in the heat of an argument he slapped his father, something he never dreamed he could ever do, and something his father could never, ever tolerate. Immediately he saw the anguish, the pain and the hurt in his father’s face. His father’s countenance changed. And that father who had looked upon him with compassion in the past, looked upon him now in desperation. His father went out of control. He was so out of control that he tried to kill his own son. His mother pleaded and wrestled and tussled with the father for almost thirty minutes to try to calm him down, to keep his father from destroying him.
At the end, his father said, “I will let him live for your sake, but as far as I am concerned he is no longer my son. No son of mine is going to hit me and live.”
And this young man, years later with tears in his eyes said to a friend, “I have never been able to make up with my father. My father is cold and distant to me. And I can never go back to where I was before with him.” (8)
Can you imagine the pain this young man feels when he hears the sounds of, “I’ll be home for Christmas, you can count on me; Please have snow and mistletoe And presents under the tree”? Christmas is a particularly difficult reminder of broken family relationships. Is there someone in your family with whom you need to be reconciled this Advent season?
What is it that you need to do to straighten that road into your heart that the Christ child may be born anew in you? Is your relationship with God intact? Are your relationships with others as they ought to be?
Are you focused this year on the true meaning of the Savior’s coming? Charles Schultz, the wonderful creator of the Peanuts cartoon could always see to the heart of things. Charlie Brown’s younger sister Sally is sitting in a beanbag chair watching television while Linus tries to read to her about the real meaning of Christmas from a scholar’s point of view:
“Listen to this, Sally. It says here the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem which is said to have been to all the world probably just means the Roman Empire at the time. And listen to this. When we read that there was no room in the inn, the word “inn” is better translated ‘guest room.’ The intention of course is to contrast a place of human lodging with a place for feeding animals. Not only that, Sally, listen to this the name Bethlehem itself is interesting. It means ‘house of bread’ or it can mean ‘house of fighting.’ That’s fascinating. What do you think, Sally?” asks Linus.
At this, Sally stands up, looks at Linus and says, “I think if I don’t get every single thing I want for Christmas this year, I’m going to totally gross out.” (9)
It’s clear that Sally wasn’t ready for the Messiah to take residence in her heart. Christmas obviously meant something entirely different to her. How about you? Has your preparation so far this Advent season been pretty much superficial? You’re getting your shopping under control. Your calendar is full, but you’re starting to get a handle on all of the busyness of the season. Now it’s time to deal with the bigger issues. How’s your relationship with God? How about your relationships with those closest to you? A voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all people will see God’s salvation.’”
Has the road been made straight for the coming of the King into your heart?
1. http://www.natpresch.org/sermon.php?d=1997-12-14%200000
2. The Rev. Dr. B. Wiley Stephens, http://day1.org/1610-uncluttering.
3. Dr. Daniel Lioy, Tarbell’s Lesson Commentary, September 2004‑ August 2005, (Colorado Springs: Cook Communications).
4. Michael Slaughter, Change the World: Recovering the Message and Mission of Jesus (Kindle edition).
5. Sam Molen, They Make Me Laugh (Philadelphia: Dorrance & Company, 1947), p. 43.
6. (New York: Random House, Inc., 1996), p. 260.
7. The Lucado Inspirational Reader: Hope and Encouragement for Your Everyday Life (Kindle edition).
8. Dr. John McNeal, When Black Preachers Preach, Vol. 2 (Kindle edition).
9. Rev. Charles Schuster, http://www.fcfumc.net/sermons/docs/12-16-07-ChristmasCouldDisappointUs.pdf.