Who or what are we waiting for:
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
December 8, 2002
Isaiah 40: 1-11
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord…” Wilderness is important in the Bible, Old and New Testaments. There is something about the wilderness that seems to bring people close to God. In the wilderness, Moses encounters the burning bush. In the wilderness, the children of Israel begin to doubt God, only to then receive the Ten Commandments. In the wilderness Jesus encounters great temptation, but his call as God’s chosen one is also confirmed and his ministry begins. There’s something about the wilderness, about those fierce landscapes, that boils life down to its essentials, that removes the vanity of human ego and the frantic quest for self-fulfillment and leaves one open to grace, to a presence, to God’s insistent love. “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord…”
But you don’t have to be miles away in some desert to know the wilderness. Lines from T.S. Eliot come to mind: “The desert is not remote in Southern tropics…the desert is in the heart.”
Fred Craddock remembers a little girl from one of his early pastorates in Tennessee. Her parents sent her to church every Sunday but never came with her. They would pull into the church’s circular drive, the little girl would hop out of the car, and they would go out for Sunday breakfast.
The father was an executive for a chemical company, upwardly mobile and ambitious. The whole town knew of their Saturday night parties, parties given not for entertainment really, but rather as part of their whole upwardly mobile strategy. The town knew that ambition determined who was invited to those parties and the town had also heard stories of the wild things that went on there. But every Sunday, there was that little girl in church.
One Sunday Craddock says he looked out over his congregation and thought, ‘Oh look, there she is with a couple of adult friends.’ Only later did he realized that those friends were her with Mom and Dad. When, at the end of the service, the invitation was given, Mom and Dad came forward and joined the church. Craddock could hardly believe his eyes.
After worship, Craddock asked them what had prompted them to make this rather surprising decision. “Do you know about our parties?” they asked.
“Yeah, I heard about your parties,” answered the pastor.
“Well, we had one again last night. It got a bit loud, it got a little rough, and there was a lot of drinking. It woke up our daughter. She came downstairs and stopped on about the third step. When she saw all the eating and drinking that was going on, she said, ‘Oh, can I say the blessing?’ And then without hesitating she said, ‘God is great, God is good, let us thank God for our food.’ Then she turned and said goodnight to everybody and she went back upstairs. After she left, things were kind of quiet. Then people began to say, ‘It’s getting late, we really must be going,’ and ‘Thanks for a good time.’ Within minutes, the house was empty. Everybody had gone.
“We picked up the crumpled napkins and spilled peanuts, took the empty glasses on trays into the kitchen. Then we looked at each other and said, ‘Where do we think we’re going?’”
T.S. Eliot was right. We don’t have to go very far, we don’t have to leave our own homes, to find ourselves in the wilderness – the desert is in the heart. And it is right there, says the prophet, in the wilderness, even the wilderness of your own hearts, that you had best prepare the way of the Lord. In that place, which is no place, where you have lost your way, where you have wandered from the path, where you feel most confused and out of place – right there is where God just might be building a highway to you…in the wilderness.
This text spoke powerfully to me last Tuesday night during our Service of Remembrance here at the church as I watched people come forward and light candles in memory of loved ones, each candle representing a little hole in the heart, a hole that aches just a little more during this season; each candle representing some time spent in the wilderness, for some a wilderness they have never quite been able to leave. In spite of what a busy time it is, I really enjoy the excitement of this season – the trees, the lights, the carols and food, our special times of Advent and Christmas worship together. I love it all. But there is no denying that the death of my sister, Sharon, has forever changed the way I celebrate Christmas. It is always just a little incomplete now – I live with the presence of an absence. And I know I’m not alone. “The desert is in the heart.”
But, it is right there, in the seemingly endless desert, in the most barren wilderness, in the deepest darkness, that we are told… “Prepare the way of the Lord.” It’s the announcement of a divine highway construction program through the wilderness, the lostness, and the darkness - a highway from exile to home, a highway of comfort, a highway of hope.
Thinking about highways leads me to think about the second installment of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, which is about to be released in theaters. I am reminded of one of the songs of old Bilbo Baggins:
The road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the road has gone,
And I must follow if I can.
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And wither then?
I cannot say.
Commenting on the song, Frederick Buechner says, “The world of The Lord of the Rings is an enchanted world. It is a shadowy world where life and death are at stake and where things are seldom what they seem. It is a dangerous and beautiful world in which great evil and great good are engaged in a battle where more often than not the odds are heavily in favor of great evil. It is a world where enormous burdens are loaded on small shoulders and where the most fateful issues hang on what are apparently the most common and insignificant decisions. In other words, a world much like ours. And it is through such a world that the road winds.” “And whither then?” asks the singer, “I cannot say.” And nor can this preacher.
We have all been down different roads, different highways, and we all have different tales to tell of where and how we have been. Along the way, we have known what it means to be lost in the wilderness and there will no doubt be wilderness yet to come. The road truly goes on and on and we pursue it as best we can with weary feet, often with weary hearts and souls. But just at that moment when we have convinced ourselves that the road we are on will never lead us home, the prophet speaks. “Comfort, O comfort my people…Prepare the way of the Lord.” The Lord comes, and there is no desert big enough, no wilderness barren enough, no night dark enough to stop his coming.
When German pastor and scholar, Helmut Thielicke, was asked why he celebrated Christmas, he replied, “God is not merely the mute and voiceless ground of the universe; God comes to us down in the depths, down into the world of pain, into the world of homelessness and refugees, a world where there are lepers, lost sons, poor ladies, in which people die and get killed. That’s the world we live in and God is here. I’m going to remember that and try to experience him again this Christmas. I hope you will too. The haunting possibility is that God will come to us.”
I believe the third verse of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, gets to the heart of what both Thielicke and Isaiah are saying: And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
and hear the angels sing.
In the wilderness, when you feel you are most lost, prepare the way of the Lord. You can rest beside life’s weary road, you can acknowledge and share your crushing load, whatever it may be. For amidst the full range of life’s joys and griefs, hopes and fears, the Lord comes. Into whatever wilderness you find yourself, the Lord comes. Comfort my people, says the prophet, for God is building a road of hope and new life and comfort toward you this very day. Prepare the way.