Thursday, December 24, 2009

Eve of the Nativity, Year C

"PROVE IT!"
A sermon by Fr. Gene Tucker given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Christmas Eve, December 24, 2009.
Isaiah 9: 2 – 4, 6 – 7; Psalm 96: 1 – 4, 11 – 12; Titus 2: 11 – 14; Luke 2: 1 – 20

Perhaps by now, you’re sick and tired of Christmas. It’s just possible that you’ve had enough of Christmas decorations that have been in the stores since Labor Day. Maybe you’ve heard enough jazzed-up versions of Christmas carols (don’t they just make you long for the simple, original versions?), and it could be that you’ve seen enough showings of movies like “White Christmas” and “The Grinch who stole Christmas” on the AMC channel to last for the next year. With Ebenezer Scrooge, you might simply want to say, “Christmas? Bah, Humbug!”

But, having waded through all of these past months’ attempts to overdo the whole Christmas “thing”, you now find yourself here in this church tonight. And what brings you here – hopefully – is the real reason for this Holy Day, the birth of Jesus Christ.

Now all of us here know the basics of the Christmas story. We could recite it in the Luke version we heard tonight, perhaps verbatim (albeit many of us would be able to do so in the language if the Authorized – King James – Version!). We know the facts of what happened 2,000 years ago.

Both of these realities make the preacher’s task on Christmas a very difficult one. For one thing, the preacher’s congregation has most likely “had it up to here” with Christmas, for Christmas has been all around us for the past three or four months (it wasn’t like that when I was young: We actually had Thanksgiving, and then came Christmas!). For another, the texts from Christmas to Christmas don’t change much, and the congregants are very familiar with them. It might be easy for us to say, “Yeah, I know all that,” about the events in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.

So tonight, let’s consider two important questions that have to do with the theological importance of this wonderful day, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. These two questions ought to be foremost in our minds as we read any passage of Holy Scripture. These two questions are:
  • What is God doing?

  • What do God’s actions tell us about who He is?

As I said a minute ago, these two questions consider the theological meaning of the passage, and it is always the theological implications that are the ultimate goal of any writer of Scripture. The writer wants us see what God is doing, and to draw conclusions about just who God is, by observing (along with the writer) those actions.

So, the title of this sermon is simply “Prove it!” Prove to us who you are, God, in the sending of your Son, Jesus Christ.

“Prove it!” Maybe those words rolled off your tongue, or came flying out of your mouth when you were a child. Oftentimes, in my own childhood, I could recall saying or hearing those words when I was locked in argument with someone. “Prove it!” I would say. Maybe you did, too.

But life beyond childhood is full of requests for proof, and it is in the proving of what we need to know that we can order our lives.

Two examples will suffice to illustrate my point: We go to apply for a mortgage, and the bank wants us to prove that we have sufficient income to pay back the loan. We have to prove the facts of our situation, and in so doing, we are telling the bank something about ourselves (like our income level and sources, and our trustworthiness, credit-wise). Or, when someone comes and tells us something, we want proof before taking actions that are in response to the report we’ve just heard (priests get into this sort of situation quite often, for someone will tell us something, for while they are being truthful in accordance with the facts as they understand them, it’s often very important to seek proof of the situation from other sources, as well).

So, we go through life offering proof, and seeking proof.

The same is true with regard to our life with God: We seek proof of God’s nature, and God’s actions.

And so, we come to the Christmas story, and we ask our two questions:

What is God doing? At its root, the Christmas story has everything to do God’s breaking into the world, in a new and powerful way. That’s the “bottom line” of Christmas, and of Christ’s birth. Now, it’s odd: God did not come in the person of Jesus Christ by arriving in a fiery chariot, nor with the blast of a trumpet, nor with a royal procession into the capitol.

No, the Lord’s arrival comes quietly, silently (as the carol says), in a backwater town (Bethlehem) of a backwater province (Palestine) of the Roman Empire, born to a very young (probably) mother from an even more backwater town (Nazareth), which was located in that other-side-of-the-tracks area called Galilee.. No hospital birth here, for Jesus was born in an animals’ shelter. There wasn’t even room in the inn for them there.

None of this describes an auspicious beginning. Quite the contrary.

But, break in God did! God’s love and care for this world is seen in this breaking in.

God cares enough to send the very best: Himself!

Here, we come to the answer to the first question: Jesus’ birth, by which He who is both God and Man, demonstrates God’s love and care for the world He had made.

Now, we turn to the second question:

What do God’s actions (in Jesus Christ) tell us about who He is? The circumstances of Jesus’ birth tell us a lot about God’s nature.

For one thing, God often comes into our world quietly, silently, and unobserved.

For another, we see heavenly power and the rights that belong to God being set aside.

Let me say that last point again, a little differently: God stoops down from His position as God and takes on our humanity. God comes down to us. We don’t have to try to reach up to get to Him (we couldn’t, anyway, but that’s another story).

God seeks us out. God takes the initiative. God is the actor in this play. God is the originator of this divine drama.

“OK,” you might be saying, “I get the point.”

“But – if all these things we read about in our Christmas gospel are true, and if you are right, preacher, about what God is doing, and what God is like, then where is the proof that these things matter to us today? Where is that proof?” you might be saying.

I offer – in response – the following…..

Jesus’ arrival, His teachings, His miracles, His life, death, burial and resurrection, all served to change lives. His original 12 disciples’ lives were completely changed, forever. We see this most clearly in St. Peter’s life, as we see it before the resurrection and afterward….Peter went from being a bumbling idiot who couldn’t keep his foot out of his mouth before Christ’s rising from the tomb to an eloquent, powerful preacher. No more doubting, no more verbal gaffes, just the power of a man who now had God’s reality stamped all over his heart, mind and soul. All of that was gone once Peter had seen the risen Christ.

For proof of these things, I cannot offer scientific proof. But I can offer human proof. Peter is human proof.

I offer the proof the witness of the disciples-become-apostles. Their eyewitness to the things of Jesus went out into the world with power, and it began to change lives, many lives.

Their witness, the witness of the apostles, continues to change lives today. I think of many in our own congregation here whose lives have been changed, have been healed, either spiritually or physically, or both, as a result of Jesus Christ’s presence in people’s hearts. I see people whose life experiences were leading them to separation from God, and even death, but whose lives were completely turned around. I think of a friend who has stage four cancer, whose oncologist said, earlier this year, “your healing can only be the result of God’s intervention.”

“Prove it!” we say. If we ask that of God in a prayerful and sincere way, He will prove it to us. Sometimes, the proof that God offers comes silently, quietly, and slowly, in much the same way that our Lord Jesus Christ came to us this night in Bethlehem.

So, pray for this proof. Wait for it. Expect it. God – the God who loves the world and the people in it – will offer the proof we need in order to believe.

May it ever be so among God’s people, as we watch, and wait, for God’s proof of who He is in our lives today.

AMEN.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

4 Advent, Year C

"TEAM BUILDING"
A sermon by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, on Sunday, December 20, 2009
Micah 5: 2 – 4, Psalm 80: 1 – 7; Hebrews 10: 5 – 10; Luke 1: 39 – 56

Remember playing a pick-up game of ball with your friends when you were young? It may be that the group was just the neighborhood kids, young and older, siblings, small and great, just anyone who was “around”.

Many times, the group would get together, and someone who suggest playing a game. Then, two people were chosen from the group to be captains of the two teams, and they would stand apart from everyone else, while the choosing up of the two sides would be done by the two captains.

Now, usually, I was near the end of those chosen. And, as things went along, it was sometimes a little embarrassing to be one of the last ones chosen. For, you see, I was B Team material. Or, we might better say I was Z Team material. The truth is that I wasn’t very good at any game involving the handling of a ball. Baseball, softball, stickball, football, I was never very good at any of them, and the other kids knew it. So, usually I was one of the last ones chosen. Sometimes, I was the very last one chosen.

When we human beings build a team, we want all the A Team players. We want the brightest, the best, the most inspired, the most willing, the most energetic.

In the course of life, we’ve figured out that we come out on top a whole lot better with a team made up of people like that, in most cases.

But God doesn’t work that way at all. He seems to be very content to have B Team material. He even likes – and uses – Z Team material, the lowest and least capable of them all.

Our Gospel text for today is a case-in-point, for, at its root, the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin, Elizabeth, is a scene in which team building is taking place. In this scene, we see the introductions being made, so that the future team of John the Baptist and Jesus can meet again in the waters of the Jordan River, so that the way can be prepared for God’s game plan to save the world in the person and work of Jesus Christ. In this scene are B Team – or maybe Z Team - players, meeting for the first time. In this scene meet the lowest and least capable players of all.

To understand what sort of material God has chosen to work with, we need to back up in the story just a bit, to an earlier part of Luke, chapter one.

It is Luke alone who traces the birth of John the Baptist, and then who traces Jesus’ birth putting parallel aspects of the two birth narratives side-by-side.

In each account, beginning with verse five of chapter one and the birth narrative of John the Baptist, and then skipping ahead to chapter one, verse 26 where Luke traces the birth narrative of Jesus, Luke is recording the story of the birth of two persons whose lives and presence among us would never have happened if human means alone were responsible for their arrival.

This demands an explanation: Zechariah and Elizabeth, John the Baptist’s father and mother, were well along in years, Luke tells us. Put bluntly, they were old. So, it seems that they were beyond the time when a child could be conceived. Furthermore, they’d never been able to have children, and as a result, Elizabeth was called “barren” (one of the worst conditions anyone in biblical times could experience, for barrenness often was thought of as an indication of God’s disfavor). Turning to Mary, we see that she, too, is incapable of bearing a child. We know this from her response to the angel Gabriel, when she says, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?” Mary would have been incapable of conceiving a child.

But, there’s another tie between the two mothers-to-be, and it is the announcement that each will have a child, the announcement being made by the angel Gabriel.

So, now, the team building has begun, and God has announced His choices.

These team members are unlikely players. They are B Team material, perhaps even Z Team material.

They are the more prominent and the absolutely lowest of players….Zechariah was a priest who served in the Temple in Jerusalem, so his family had prominence, and in the human scheme of things, would be qualified for a high place on God’s team. But their inability to have a child would make them B Team material.

By contrast, Mary is far lower in some ways. For one thing, though she is (probably) very young (some scholars think she might have been in her early teens at the time Jesus was born), she is from the “other side of the tracks”, Nazareth, a very small town in the region of Galilee, to the north of the city of Jerusalem. Recall with me the disciple Nathaniel’s reaction when Philip told him that they had “found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph,” Nathaniel’s response simply was “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nazareth in particular, and Galileans in general, were apparently not highly thought of in ancient times. It must have been a backwater sort of a place.

So, here we have the old and the very young, the somewhat prominent and the nobody, the socially acceptable Judeans (Zechariah and Elizabeth) and the unacceptable Galileans. B Team material, maybe less.

But God has a consistent way of choosing the B Team players to do His work.

We see His choices in the people named today.

We see His choices in people like Simon Peter, the blue collar, uneducated fisherman, the man possessed of major faults, like the ability to consistently put his foot in his mouth. So, too, with most of the other disciples who would become the first apostles: most were common folk, most were not products of the best rabbinical schools that Judaism could offer. Most were simple, everyday people who worked with their hands to make a living.

Yet God chose them over the priests, the princes, and the prominent to do His work.

God chooses us to do his work today, calling each of us into His service. At the time of our calling, perhaps most of us were B Team material, spiritually. But God shapes and forms us into A Team players. All we have to do is to do what Mary did, and say, “Let it be to me according to God’s word.”

The contribution that Zechariah, Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary made to God’s game plan is over. Their work has become the stuff of God’s record book, the Bible. They are remembered for their willingness to allow God to shape and use them for His work, His game plan to save the world.

Now, it is our turn. We become players on God’s team through baptism. Then, the training begins, as we are shaped into the members of the team that God needs. And as we carry out God’s plan, our performance is recorded in God’s record book, the Book of Life. Our task as team players is the same as the one that Elizabeth and Mary undertook: to bring the Lord into the world, and to make Him known.

AMEN.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

3 Advent, Year C

"LIVING A BALANCED LIFE IN CHRIST"
A sermon by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, December 13, 2009
3 Advent, Year C -- III Zephaniah 3: 14 – 20; Psalm 85: 7 – 13; Philippians 4: 4 – 9; Luke 3: 7 – 18

Remember learning how to ride a bicycle?

If your experience was anything like mine, it was a harrowing and puzzling experience. I recall my learning process quite well: it consisted of some one who was older and more experienced at riding than I was (a friend), who put me up on the seat, told me what to do, and gave me a shove.

Off I went, the friend running alongside me. He’d say, “steer”. Then he’d say, “pedal!” Then he’d say (when I forgot to do one thing or the other) “pedal and steer.” Occasionally, he’d have to prop me up when I began to fall one way or the other.

Did you have an experience like that?

Well, of course, most all of us eventually got the idea of what we had to do in order to be able to stay upright, steer enough to stay on course, and pedal enough so that we could keep moving and so that the front wheel would assist us in keeping our balance.

But at the beginning, it was hard to remember to do everything we had to do (steer, pedal and stay upright) in order to be a successful bike rider. It was hard to master all of those necessary tasks, and to balance all three so that we could be on our way.

The walk with God is a whole lot like learning to ride a bike….it is a balancing act, one that involves a close and intimate relationship with God which nourishes us. It involves learning about the truth of God as we hear it in Holy Scripture, and it involves reaching beyond ourselves in God’s name and for the benefit of others.

But our walk with God differs from the task of learning to ride a bike in that the balancing aspect of it – the mastery of all of the tasks needed – never ends. Eventually, we get the “hang” of riding a bike, and we never forget how to do it (or so the old adage goes). But the Christian walk with God never ceases to call us into deep reflection about our success or failure with respect to keeping all aspects of our spiritual life in play at all times.

John the Baptist’s preaching called his original audience – as it calls us today – into a life of spiritual balance. John emphasizes three aspects of our relationship with God, all of which must be present in our relationship with God. They are:
  • Prophetic teaching which acknowledges the truth of God

  • Living a life of repentance

  • Social outreach to others

A key aspect of Luke’s understanding of the Gospel is outward movement. We see it in today’s passage, in John the Baptist’s preaching, for John addresses first of all the inward disposition of the heart toward God, moving then into concrete actions which take us outside of ourselves.

We also see this outward movement in the identities of the three groups who come forward to ask John about their own actions. The identities of the three groups foreshadow the movement of the Good News outward from Jerusalem into the wider world.

So, let’s trace this outward movement. We will mention the larger movement only briefly (because it’s important to be aware of), and we will tie it to the three groups who come forward to ask John what they ought to be doing in order to be doing the will of God.

We begin with the larger picture of the outward movement of the Good News (the Gospel) of God:

The Acts of the Apostles: In Acts 1: 8b, we hear Jesus’ instructions to His disciples, who are about to become Apostles, when He says, “and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Luke understands that the center, the locus, of God’s redeeming acts is Jerusalem. But from there – the city where Jesus suffered, died and rose again, the city where the Holy Spirit descended upon the believers at the beginning of the Church’s work, the Good News goes forth into the surrounding countryside around Jerusalem, which is Judea, then northward into Samaria, and from there into the world itself. Outward movement is discernable in the geographic movement of the spread of the Good News.

Those who question John the Baptist: Three groups of people come forward to ask what they each should be doing. Present among the three groups is the same outward movement we see in Acts 1: 8b. Follow with me the three groups:

  1. The multitudes: Presumably, those in the multitudes who come forward are Jews, for John the Baptist addresses them at the beginning of our passage today, telling them that they should not lay claim to a special status because of their descendency from Abraham. So this initial group is most likely composed of Jews who live in the Jewish homeland.

  2. The tax collectors: In many cases, tax collectors were Jews who collaborated with the Roman occupiers of the Holy Land. So, in this group we begin to see the outward movement from the Jewish world into the pagan world, through the connection of these tax collectors to Rome and its army and to its governmental system.

  3. The soldiers: If the soldiers are mercenaries (as they might well have been), then it’s possible that they were Gentiles. If so, then the outward movement we’ve been tracing is reaching out into the pagan, Gentile world in its fullness.

These three groups (if I am correct in my hunch about the identities of the three groups) foreshadow the future reach of the Good News once the Holy Spirit has come, moving from the Jewish homeland into the wider world.

Now, let’s turn to the inward aspect of this outward movement. And to trace this motion, we return to the text before us today.

The first thing to notice is John’s call to outward movement. It comes in the form of a call to “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” Bearing fruit has everything to do with producing something which comes – in the plant world - from a relationship of the plant to the soil, to the water and nutrients in the soil, to the sunlight, and so forth. From this relationship springs discernable, outward fruit. Applying this principle to the spiritual life, we can see that being grounded in God, in an intimate relationship which is unmarred by the presence of sin and which allows the spiritual “nutrients” that flow from God alone, creates the conditions necessary for the discernable, outward fruits that God desires.

Now, notice that John the Baptist addresses the inner disposition of the heart. He begins by brushing aside any claim to be in a special category of people that God might favor, admonishing his hearers that they should not claim to be “children of Abraham”, for God could raise up children out of the very stones themselves, John says. So, by reminding his listeners of this reality about God’s nature, John preaches the truth of God (the essential meaning of the word “prophecy”) which says that God will, first of all, destroy all the defenses we might want to erect around ourselves.

(Next, John reminds his listeners that every tree which does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.)

John’s prophetic preaching must have been very effective. The questions begin to come, and they seem to have an air of urgency about them.

All of the answers John supplies have to do with outward, visible fruit, fruit which springs from a right relationship with God as the starting point for being able to produce anything at all.

All of the answers John supplies carry a person outward, beyond themselves, into the world in direct, discernable actions which are the mark of a fruitful life: give someone else your coat (John’s words, put into modern terms) if you have two coats, be honest in your dealings with others (the root application of the admonishment to the tax collectors) and don’t exploit others (the “bottom line” of the instruction to the soldiers).

It’s worth noting at this juncture that each of these actions fit well into Luke’s understanding of the Good News. For Luke is deeply concerned with living the everyday life of God in the world. Luke’s concerns are deeply practical ones. He seems to be wrestling with a question which may well have been on the Church’s mind at the time he wrote, which might be characterized this way: “What does God want us to be doing, as God’s people if we are going to be in the world for a considerable length of time?”

Indeed, what does God want us to be doing today, as God’s people in the world and in this place? How might we bear “good fruit” for the kingdom of God?

And this concern brings us back to the question of balance.

Remember that we began with the idea of learning to ride a bicycle. At first, remembering to do all the things a person has to do to be able to ride is difficult. It’s hard to balance everything that one has to in order to make the machine go forward.

Recall also that we said that, eventually, most people get the concept of balancing the various tasks so that riding a bike becomes second nature. But, we also said earlier on, that the spiritual life we live with God isn’t like that. This walk with God requires constant attention to the balancing of all the aspects of living the Christian life.

And it is to this question we turn, as we look into the wider Christian world. There, we can see some churches that focus their attention and their energies on the proclamation of God’s truth (prophecy). Others tend to hold in high esteem a person’s private life with God, while others tend to put lots of time and attention into practical, social outreach projects.

Relatively few are the churches who manage to balance all three of these aspects of the Christian life. Indeed, the church I grew up in during my youthful years probably did an excellent job at teaching, preaching, and prophecy. But it did a poor job in the areas of social outreach. Inward, personal values were highly esteemed in the church of my childhood, but meeting the needs of people around us who were in need in some way almost didn’t reach the radar screen of our consciousness.

And we could cite other examples where just the reverse is true.

Luke’s understanding, as we hear his record of John the Baptist’s teaching, would be that we must bear good fruit for the kingdom. But we can only do so from a life of repentance which allows a firm rooting in God’s soil. Furthermore, if we are to bear good fruit, then we must remain solidly rooted in the Lord in order for good fruit to appear. For the bearing of fruit is not optional. Every tree which does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire, John reminds us.

Fruit which is fit for the kingdom will be outward, observable, good fruit which bears testimony to our relationship with God in the innermost parts of our being. Good fruit is the outward-and-visible-sign-of-an-inward-and-spiritual-grace , the grace of God, present within us. Put another way, this would be “sacramental living”.

Today’s text calls us into reflection, and into a comprehensive life in God which has as its core an intimate and deep relationship with God, which acknowledges the truth of God, and which bears good fruit for the kingdom.

May it ever be so with us.

AMEN.

Sunday, December 06, 2009

2 Advent, Year C

“GOD’S INTERSTATES”
A sermon by F. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, December 6, 2009
Baruch 5: 1 – 9, Psalm 126, Philippians 1: 1 – 11, Luke 3: 1 – 6

My wife says that I have a “sixth sense”. She says that I can find something related to railroads whenever there’s something around to be noticed.

For example, if we’re driving down the road and a truck passes, going the other way, I might say, “Oh look, there’s a good looking load of rail going the other way.” (She groans in response.) Or, I might say, “Look, there’s a track machine on that truck over there.” (Again, she acknowledges my passion for trains and railroads.)

But one of the aspects of this love of mine that amazes her the most is my ability to find old railroad rights-of-way in the woods, you know, those places were the track used to be, which are noticeable because they are pretty level compared to the surrounding landscape. She maintains that I can find them anywhere, under almost any circumstances. When I do, she simply says, “You’re amazing!”

But to me, finding these old rights-of-way is an easy task, for the folks that created them years ago (in many cases, the hard way: with shovels and picks and horses pulling drag pans) managed to lower the high places in the landscape, and they managed to fill in the low ones. In the process, they created a highway made of iron or steel that was as level as was practically possible.

Let me repeat those words again, the ones I used to describe the creative process by which this highway-of-steel was created: I said that they “managed to lower the high places, and to fill in the low ones.”

Notice that this is the language we hear from John the Baptist, as he stands on the banks of the Jordan River, proclaiming the words from the prophet Isaiah, “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places shall be made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” The image I’ve used to begin this sermon and the biblical language are quite similar.

(Notice further the similarities in the language that we hear from Baruch this morning, “For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God.”)

The need for a spiritual highway was evident many times in Israel’s ancient history. Surely, Baruch longs for such a highway, so that Israel might return to the Promised Land, to a rebuilt Jerusalem, out of captivity in Babylon.

The sense was at that time that, because of Israel’s sins, the people of God were separated from God’s presence, from the land which was promised to Abraham and his offspring forever, and from the Temple which was the seat of God’s presence.

Similarly, Isaiah’s words, recorded in chapter 40, verses 3 – 5, struck a deep resonance in the hearts and minds of God’s people as they longed to return from Babylon to rebuild Jerusalem, and to re-establish their relationship with God.

Sin was the cause of Israel’s deportation to Babylon. Jeremiah makes this connection clear, and Baruch, Jeremiah’s secretary, draws the same conclusion.

And so, Baruch longs for the time when God’s people will travel, unobstructed and unhindered, on the highway that is created by the leveling of the hills and the filling of the valleys, on their way back into a holy and intimate relationship with God.

Now, fast forward to the time of John the Baptist, who was a cousin of Jesus (see Luke 1: 5 – 80 for the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus), and who preached and baptized in the region of the Jordan roughly in the years 26 – 27 AD.

By this time, God’s people were safely in their own homeland. The Temple was being rebuilt in Jerusalem, and the seat of God’s presence that the Temple signified was rising gloriously on the eastern side of the Holy City.

So why does John use the language of Isaiah to call people into repentance for their sins? (Recall with me that John’s baptism was a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” )

The reason is that the sinfulness of the people had created a barrier which prevented them from intimate relationship with God. Oh yes, we might say, they went to the Temple regularly to worship, but the people’s actions and their inclinations proved that they were a people who “honors me (God) with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”

The issue seems to be one of outward, formal observance of a relationship with God, but an inward disposition that betrays any relationship with God.

Sin creates a barrier between us and God.

Sin creates a barrier that we cannot remove ourselves. We need God’s help to level out the high places of pride that make it impossible to share in an intimate life with God.

But if the high places of pride and stubbornness, the hard and rocky summits of our own self-worth and arrogance block our ability to return to the Lord, so do the low places.

The low places are places of despair, of self-loathing. The low places provide a home for depression and a sense that no one could descend into the depths of our unworthiness, to lift us out of our unacceptability before God and others.

Both the high peaks and the canyons share one thing in common: they exhibit the human trait that says “This is all about me.” For, you see, if we stick the high mountains of our heads and our hearts into the skies and proclaim, “I have no need of forgiveness, nor of God,” then no highway can be built in such a landscape. But neither can a way be created if the low spots won’t allow it.

At its roots, the high places of pride and arrogance and the low places of self-doubt and despair become the center of attention, for they block any progress.

When the railroad rights-of-way were being created, such obstacles were overcome by hard work, determination, and the unwillingness to allow these obstacles to stand in the way of progress.

Not so, in most cases, with the spiritual landscape of our hearts and minds…For, you see, God’s Holy Spirit is, oftentimes, a gentle spirit which respects our ability to allow God to work in our lives, or not. Simply put: we can reject God, shutting Him out of our lives, even to the point of doing so entirely.

But if we do allow God to enter our lives, and to begin to carve away at the high places, and to fill in the depths of the low ones, then God can create a highway in our hearts.

We must allow Him to do that work, the work that we cannot do ourselves.

Such a work is known by the word “grace”. It is God’s grace, God’s generosity, that does the work, but only if we let him.

But why, you may ask, should we allow God to do this creative work in our lives? Why allow the building of a highway in our hearts?

Two answers emerge:
  1. God wants to be in close and intimate relationship with us. To enter into such a relationship, the barriers between God and us must be removed. (Here, we return to the imagery of the return to the Promised Land from exile in Babylon that we noted earlier.) Only then can the productive business of spiritual commerce between God and us commence.

  2. God wants us to show what the highway-building process can be like, and to show what great things come about when we allow God to undertake such a construction project in our own lives, so that others will be encouraged to allow God to begin such a work in their lives, too.

So, our text today calls us into reflection, which is a very apt undertaking for the season of Advent.

Reflect with me on this text, as it calls us into repentance before God….

  1. Do I have high places of pride and arrogance in my life, which might be characterized by my attitudes, which block God’s constructive work in my life?

  2. Are there low places of despair, of worthlessness, which God could lift up?

  3. Is there lasting evidence, like an old railroad right-of-way, lasting evidence of God’s working in my life, evidence that others can see and emulate in their own lives?

May the Holy Spirit enable us to allow God’s creative processes to be active in our hearts, minds and lives, that we may be a highway of God’s grace, for our own spiritual welfare, and that others might also become highways of God’s grace.

AMEN.