#Prepare

Make his paths straight.

Prepare.  It’s that time of year when we are all scrambling to get things in order, preparing for all sorts of things and doing so at a frantic pace.  Did we get all of the gifts? Is the house in order?  Do we know who is coming in from out of town and where they're staying and for how long?  We have to be prepared, we tell ourselves.  But what is it, exactly, for which we are preparing so feverishly? 

Advent is the season when we prepare for Christmas, right?  It is a time to get our house in order for the greatest guest of all to come and visit us once more.  I wonder, though, if we sometimes treat Jesus less as the greatest guest, and more as that one relative who comes each Christmas and criticizes everything from the color of the wrapping paper to how dry the turkey turned out.  Y’all know who I’m talking about!  That’s not a person we’re hoping to see; in fact, it's more like a person we’re afraid to invite into home for fear of being judged the whole time.  It doesn’t exactly make for a pleasant visit, and if we know that that person is coming to stay for a few days we’re likely to prepare from a place of fear and dread, rather than hope and joy. So what does it mean, then, to prepare for Jesus?

Our preparations during Advent are not just in anticipation of Christmas Day, after all, but of Jesus’ coming into the world once again.  It’s a promise that is at the core of our Christian beliefs. Santa Claus knew that promise, which is why St. Nicholas was at the Council of Nicea, which gave us our Nicene Creed, and week after week we affirm that promise that Jesus will come again, and his kingdom will have no end.  Yet many Christians look forward to this promise with the same fear and dread as that unwanted relative coming to stay at Christmas time.  You know, it's around this time of year that I see those church signs that say, ‘Jesus is coming.  Look busy!’  We have to hurry up and get the house in order and everything just right because he’s not going to be happy when he gets here!  Is that really the kind of preparation that Advent is about? 

It’s certainly not the preparation that was illustrated in our Scripture readings this past Sunday, all three of which are urging God’s people at various points in history to prepare for the greatest guest of all.  Seven hundred years before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah was speaking to the Jews held in captivity in Babylon, calling them to prepare for a glorious day of salvation, as God was about to bring them home (Isaiah 40: 1-11).  In the beginning of the Gospel of Mark we hear John the Baptizer preparing the people of 1^st century Palestine for the promised Messiah in their midst, who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1: 1-8).  Fast forward about 35 years, and the writer of Second Peter encourages his audience to prepare for that promised day of Jesus’ coming again and to do so by being at peace with one another and through patience and repentance (II Peter 3: 8-15a).  Any of those messages of preparation sound fearful to you? 

John the Baptizer.  He got it.  

I wonder sometimes why the thought of Jesus coming again is so scary, resulting in some fear-based modes of preparation.  I suspect it is because, as we look around us we see a world that, quite frankly, doesn’t look much ready for Jesus.  It’s a world that has gotten so far away from Jesus’ message of hope and salvation, and many Christians end up scapegoating others as a result, pointing the finger at this group or that group and saying, accusingly, "They are the problem!  They need to prepare for Jesus' judgment!"  I reckon if Jesus came back and saw us acting like that then yeah, he'd be pretty unhappy, and maybe we would have every right to be afraid.

But that, brothers and sisters, is where we come in.  We who are the Body of Christ are the very ones who must prepare this world for Jesus to be born anew.  We could use those scapegoating fear-tactics to try and get people in-line, but what good has that ever done?  That's too easy, too seductive.  It's the Dark Side! (Yes, I got a Star Wars reference in this week!)   Instead, we do the actual preparing ourselves.  We prepare for Jesus first and foremost with prayer, which is always an active engagement with God. We prepare by feeding the hungry and not just during the holiday season—plenty of folks go to volunteer at soup kitchens this time of year—but year round.  We prepare by clothing the naked, and not just with our ratty hand-me-downs that we’ve been meaning to throw out, but with the kind of clothes that we ourselves would wear.  We prepare by welcoming those who feel estranged or unwanted, not just by handing them a bulletin at the door of our church, but by sitting with them, asking them to tell their story, and inviting them to coffee hour or to one of the many Christmas parties we have planned.  We prepare by loving our enemies, not just by saying that we hope they change their ways, but by genuinely praying for them, commending them into the care of the God who loves them, even when our hatreds are so very fierce.  We prepare by striving for justice and peace for all God’s children, not just by hoping for change but in action inspired by prayer, by speaking up against the sins of racism, misogyny, and systemic violence and oppression.  We prepare, in the words of St. Augustine, by praying as if everything depended upon God and working as if everything depended upon us!"

These are ways that we prepare the way of the Lord.  Not with gloom and doom, or with fear and dread, but with energy, excitement, and the same hope we hear in Isaiah, Mark, and Second Peter.  How can we be so hopeful in our preparation when the task seems so daunting and the world seems so insane?  Because of Jesus!   What we do we do with the very love of Jesus in us, stirring our hearts and calling us into action.  It has been said that God is a woman, and that her house is a mess!  Well then, if that's the case, let’s get out there and clean it up and get it ready for the greatest guest of all to come in and take up residence once again.

Prepare, brothers and sisters.  Prepare your hearts for Jesus to be born in you anew this year, but what's more, prepare this world for his coming in real and meaningful ways, by praying as Jesus prayed and doing for others exactly the things that he himself did when he was here the first time around.  He is the greatest guest of all, the one for whose coming we should be hopeful, not fearful.  Together, let us prepare this world to meet him.