Prepare the Lord's path

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.