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:
- 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.
- 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….
- 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?
- Are there low places of despair, of worthlessness, which God could lift up?
- 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.
