Preparing the Way
Malachi 3:1-4   Luke 3:1-6
An Advent Communion Meditation
by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
 

You will not see John the Baptist on too many Christmas cards. A locust-eating wilderness dweller crying out “Repent!” doesn’t quite hit the right note for Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas, or Macy’s “Believe!” campaign.  Actually, Jim and I received one Christmas card that did have John the Baptist on the front of the card. Inside it said, “Merry Christmas ... you brood of vipers!”
 
John’s cries to prepare the way of the Lord wake us up to the unsettling, startling season of Advent during which we wait for, long for Christ to be born anew and for the radical change that birth brings. Awaiting radical change can be scary.  
 
You’ve probably heard the popular prophecy, “Jesus is coming – look busy!” Unfortunately that is how many of us spend our Advent. But John’s cry from the wilderness is not “look busy!” John’s cry is, “Look!”  Take a hard look at our world and ourselves ... and change.
 
Change is unsettling and threatening to people and to powers.  John the Baptist was beheaded; Jesus was crucified because the love that came down at Christmas threatens power.  As Michael Eric Dyson puts it, “Justice is love when it speaks in public.”  And the Gospel of Jesus Christ speaks in public to powers of injustice and souls in turmoil.
 
The love that came down at Christmas threatens our assumptions, and the denial that can seem to help us live with ourselves.  If we say we have no sin, then we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we say we are too unworthy to be loved and forgiven, then we deceive ourselves and we will not become the people God created us to be!  
 
The prophet Malachi said.  “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to the temple. Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? ... For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.”
 
John cries “Prepare the way of the Lord!” with Isaiah’s prophecy: “every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.” Getting ready means getting leveled. If you think so highly of yourself that you place your self-interest above God’s justice, you will be brought low.  If you live in a valley of oppression and depression so low that you cannot even look up, you will be lifted up.
The repentance offered by Jesus and announced by John isn’t that of a child forced to say “I’m sorry.”  It’s not a grim resolve to “do better.”  It is not hell fire – it is refining fire.  
 
It hurts to go deep, to be made new, to let go, to be refined and cleansed.  When we repent we go to the root ... digging ... clearing ... cutting back ... stopping to dis-cover, re-cover, reveal. We perceive living shoots of new growth, and discern a way of life abundant.
 
Repentance, the Greek word metanoia means... turning around. Repentance, metanoia, means transformation, discovering new ways where there seems to be no way.  It means confessing the truth of our lives and our world, and claiming the power of healing and hope to change our lives and to change the world.
 
Our United Methodist Council of Bishops has sent a pastoral letter to all churches titled “God’s Renewed Creation:  A Call to Hope and Action.” We will make the full text of the letter available to you in the coming days.  The Bishops identify three ways in which “God’s creation is in crisis.”  They write,“our neglect, selfishness, and pride have fostered:  pandemic poverty and disease; environmental degradation, and the proliferation of weapons and violence.”
 
Then they continue, “Despite these interconnected threats to life and hope, God’s creative work continues.  Despite the ways we all contribute to these problems, God still invites each one of us to participate in the work of renewal.  We must begin the work of renewing creation by being renewed in our own hearts and minds. We cannot help the world until we change our way of being in it.”
 
Metanoia, transformation, preparing God’s way ... whether in the global community, in local settings, or in our personal lives, means daring to look at deep, difficult, and even painful truths, and being open to grace, forgiveness, and change.
 
There’s a Peanuts comic strip in which Charlie Brown is lying in bed and he says to Snoopy, “Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, ‘where have I gone wrong?’ ... ... ... Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’”
 
Transformation ... turning ... isn’t a single or simple project.  It is confessing all of who we are because the assurance of God’s grace and forgiveness frees us for new ways of living and being in the world.
 
Very small shifts can alter the course of lives.  William Herzog wrote in New Proclamation, “Metanoia is something like the mid-course corrections that were part of the Apollo space program. The space capsule would burn its rockets only a few seconds, but the course change was immensely significant.”
 
This Advent, as we meet for Sunday morning worship and Bible Study, Sunday evening communion, Wednesday evening meditation, films and fellowship, Caroling and Christmas Eve services, as we come to this table, let us pray for willingness to change our course, guided by cries from the wilderness and a star in the night.

Thanks be to God!