A Major Highway Project
An Advent Sermon by Brent J. Eelman
December 4, 2005
Abington Presbyterian Church

Isaiah 40: 1-5
Comfort, O comfort my people,
    says your God.
² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
    that she has served her term,
    that her penalty is paid,
    that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.
³ A voice cries out:
    “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
⁴ Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
    the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
⁵ Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together.*  

Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
² As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
    “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way;
³ the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
    make his paths straight,’ ”
⁴ John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵ And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶ Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷ He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸ I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.* 

A week ago, I had an appointment in Jenkintown. I was running late, but thought I could make it on time.. until I got a few blocks below the church and ran into the traffic snarl. Why? Because they were busy doing something with the road. Highway construction, though needed, can be a major inconvenience. When we lived in Wisconsin and Northern New York the locals would often joke that there were two seasons: “winter and road construction”. That means detours, cones and barrels and of course traffic jams.

When we listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah, and to the gospel writers who quote him, Advent is also a time for highway construction projects. “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Isaiah was addressing the Hebrew people in captivity. They had been there for two generations and suddenly the political balance in the Middle East began to change. Cyrus conquered Babylon and he freed the Hebrew captives so that they might return home to Jerusalem.

The prophet Isaiah, when he proclaimed a highway in the wilderness, was alluding to the journey that would take the Hebrew people back to Jerusalem. This would be the second Exodus from captivity, but this time they would not wander in the wilderness for generations... they would find a straight road home. The gospel writers begin with John the Baptist echoing the words of Isaiah. With John the Baptist, the ancient voice of prophecy came alive again after being quiet for centuries. He with Isaiah spoke in clear commanding language: “Make straight the highway for the Lord.” That is the rallying cry of Advent. The words of Isaiah and John the Baptist are as contemporary as mine.... “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his highway straight.” But what highway and where?

I

The highway is the way, the road if you will, that Christ traverses, coming into our lives. It is a highway that reaches its destination in our heart, but not just the individual heart. It is the heart of the city, the heart of the nation, the heart of the church, the heart of humanity. It is the highway that Christ travels to save the world which God so loves.

In the midst of our preparations for the Christmas celebration, in the midst of all the decorations, the sumptuous feasts, the beautiful music, let us not forget that it celebrates the one who came and the one who is yet to come: the Messiah. We know about the highway that Christ walked for our salvation. It was the highway of love. It was the highway of sacrifice. It was the highway of the cross. It was the highway of the empty tomb. It was the highway of hope. Is that highway straight today? What are the roadblocks that we have erected to keep the messiah away? Where are the detours? Where are the potholes? It is time for a major highway construction project... make straight the highway of our Lord.

II

Where is that highway? This is where Isaiah is helpful to us. His was not a voice in the wilderness. It was the voice that cries out and directs us to the wilderness and says: “There! In the wilderness, the highway needs to be built.” Wilderness comes from the Greek word hermos which is translated as desert. It is the dry barren areas of our spiritual, social and psychological landscapes. John the Baptist was probably an Essene, part of a desert community that lived away from civilization, and waited there for the coming of the messiah. They believed that the messiah would appear there, just as manna and quails appeared to Moses and the tribes during their sojourn in the wilderness. Where is this highway? The wilderness... Where is our wilderness? Look around. T.S. Eliot's masterpiece, “The Wasteland” was an examination of the very soul of humanity, and there he discovered the modern wilderness:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.

We do not have to look far to see the wilderness. It is a wilderness of pain and neglect. When we saw the pictures of people left behind and waiting to be rescued in New Orleans: we witnessed the wilderness. When we read the statistics that 15 per cent of the children in this nation do not have health insurance, we experience the wilderness. When we take the train downtown to work, and look out at the empty homes, the broken factories, the places once vital and alive, now abandoned and decaying, we see the wilderness. When we are on our own roads, driving with the millions of others and some cuts us off, another person rages with language we cannot hear and gestures we would rather not see, we witness the rage that is endemic in our wilderness. When we look into our own selves with honesty, we know where we have neglected and come up short. We know our own nature and our own motivations. There is a wilderness that is in our very soul. These are the places where we are called to build the highway of the messiah. This is where the prophet beckons to go, to prepare and to wait, for the messiah will be found not in the palaces of power, but in the wilderness of neglect. “Make straight a highway in the wilderness!”

Yesterday, Karen and I decorated our home. The tree is up, the holiday decorations are out... the music of the season was playing as we were going through our preparations for the celebration of Christmas. The prophets, Isaiah and John the Baptist remind us in the midst of our preparations for the holidays, that there are other preparations that we need to make. We are called to build a major highway construction project. It is the way into our hearts for the messiah: the one who came and the one who is yet to come. This is the good news and challenge of the Gospel Amen.

*The New Revised Standard Version Bible, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989.

Abington Presbyterian Church, Abington, Pennsylvania,  www.apcusa.org