Baruch 5:1-9 God means to show your splendour to every nation
Philippians 1:4-6,8-11 May
you become pure and blameless in preparation for the day of Christ
Luke 3:1-6 The
call of John the Baptist
Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
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You
don’t have to go far at the moment, in and around Croydon, by car or by bus to
find a road closed and a diversion in place.
Even
on foot, pavements are blocked and you’re forced to go around barriers,
stepping into the road, often putting life and limb at risk from traffic.
Diversions
can be a real pain and nuisance.
They
delay and frustrate us from our intended destination.
Worse
still is a roadblock with no sign of a diversion route.
We
often speak of the spiritual life as a journey, and reflect on the meanderings
of faith, but the message of the readings today is ‘prepare the way of the Lord’.
It
is the Lord who is coming, as the prophets and John the Baptist tell us, he is
coming and we are to clear the diversions and roadblocks that we put up in our
lives.
What
are those diversions and roadblocks?
Advent
is the time to ask that question of ourselves: how do I block God’s grace and
presence in my life?
Often
it comes down to our pride: when we place ourselves at the centre of things and
pay little attention to God or neighbour.
It
can come down to lack of trust: when we just don’t believe that Jesus Christ
would even deign to come to us, that can be a genuine sense of unworthiness, or
another form of spiritual pride.
‘Lord
I am not worthy’ is not a lot of use without the follow up, ‘but only say the
word and I shall be healed’
It
can come down to a sheer lack of expectation that the Lord will come, will
break into our lives, will transform us and lead us to the ultimate destination
of what is known in the spiritual masters as the Beatific Vision – the vision
of heaven.
The
task of the prophets is to smash our illusions and pretences such that we are
spiritually purified so that we ‘may be’, as St Paul put it in our second
reading today, ‘pure and blameless for the day of Christ’ (Philippians 1.10)
This
‘day of Christ’ he refers to is what the prophets point us to, the day when, ‘all
flesh – everyone - shall see the salvation of God’ (Luke 3.6).
It’s
what we profess in the Creed when we declare, ‘and he shall come again in
glory, to judge both the quick (the living) and the dead’.
The
overarching prayer of Advent, par excellence, is ‘our Lord, come’ (1
Corinthians 16:22) ‘Amen. Come, Lord Jesus’ (Revelation 22:20)
If
you are praying that someone will come to you, the last thing you would do is
then put in place diversions, roadblocks or send them on the wrong path.
‘Prepare
the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’
How
can you do that?
If
pride, lack of trust and lack of expectation are the roadblocks you put up –
and you may identify more – then the way to make straight the Lord’s paths is
humility, fostering faith and an expectant heart.
The
greatest barrier to the coming Saviour is, in the words of St Augustine, living
life turned in on itself, in the Latin
incurvatus in se.
If
I am turned in on myself then I am declaring myself self-sufficient in no need
of a Saviour, and so actually utterly unable to entertain the presence of
Christ.
And
that takes us to the habits of sacrifice, patience and service, when we give up
our own preferences, curve outwards not inwards, to make way for our neighbour and
for God.
At
the heart of this is love: love clears the space in our lives to look beyond
self and to the life of God and needs of others.
Love
is the fulfilling of the Law, a person receiving and reflecting the love of God
can never be a roadblock to the coming Saviour.
‘Prepare
the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’
As
the famous painting by Holman Hunt, ‘The Light of the World’ shows, Christ
stands at the door knocking: are you ready, first, to hear his voice and then
to open the door of your heart to him?
Let’s
live lives of humility, trust, expectation and love, turned out to God not in
on ourselves, for then we are unblocking the way, allowing Christ to enter, allowing
the flow of his grace to run down the channels of our lives bringing life, and
hope, truth and peace.