FOG Road Work Ahead

Sermon 12-9-18

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

In the second year of the presidency of Donald Trump, when Tom Wolf was the governor of Pennsylvania, and Jim Kenny the mayor of Philadelphia, in the time of the iPhone IOS 12, …..During the Presiding Bishop-ship of Elizabeth Eaton, and the first year of Southeast -Penn Bishop Pat Davenport….the word of God came to Lydia Posselt, Daughter of Jeff the farmer, at her laptop, over a cup of coffee. Or at least, that his how this sermon came to be.

You may have noticed that the writer of Luke uses names and places in history that we can trace back and pinpoint, the famous and the powerful that history remembers, but we have forgotten. Honestly, I have no idea where Trachonitis is – which actually sounds like a medical term! – and I know nothing about Lysanias… do any of you? I didn’t think so!

But if John the Baptist had shown up today, here in Buckingham, Luke might have used these very same names that I did – names of people in power, names that might be familiar to us. You’ll notice though that the word of God did not come to any of these famous or powerful people that Luke listed. Instead, the word of the God came to John, the pastor’s kid, while he was hanging out in the wilderness AWAY from the centers of power.

So, where did this guy John come from, and why are we hearing about him instead of other things that we associate with Christmas… Mary, Joseph, angels, and shepherds? I don’t think too many of our nativity scenes include John the Baptist…. But maybe they should! And here’s why:

Earlier in Luke, before Mary was informed that she would be pregnant with Jesus, Mary’s relative Elizabeth also became pregnant with John. Elizabeth and her husband Zachariah, who was a temple priest, had been waiting and hoping for many years to have a child. 

When Zachariah, heard that Elizabeth was pregnant, he didn’t believe it…. and so the angel messenger temporarily took away Zachariah’s voice for doubting! The moment John was born, though, Zachariah burst into song – the very song that we read together as our Psalm for today. John is the child that arrives before the savior who will guide our feet into the way of peace. John is that prophet, who enters the scene to get us ready and prepare the way for Jesus’ arrival. Long before John, this arrival was foretold, and John is the last in a long line of prophets who have been getting God’s people ready over the centuries. Because apparently, we need a lot of time to prepare, and it’s been taking us a long time to get ready for Jesus …and that work is still going, because we’re never actually finished. In other words, the road is never completely done…

Sort of like road construction.

In Wisconsin, we have a joke about our state: there are 4 seasons, and they are winter, winter, still winter, and road construction. I think around here the joke is reversed: the 4 seasons in Pennsylvania is road construction, road construction, still road construction, and then winter.

When we see those yellow and orange cones, we all groan because we know what’s coming next: slower traffic, changing lanes, new traffic patterns, trucks and work vehicles, people standing around in yellow vests, unexpected detours, longer travel times. Until the new road is complete, we should drive carefully and patiently, and not get in the way of the people remaking the existing road into a better one.

Whenever I drive back and forth to New Jersey, I marvel that they are STILL working on that 95 bridge. Every time I drive that route, I see that they are a little bit farther, and I know that when it’s done, traffic will be – mostly – smooth sailing. I’m sure I’m not the only one who looks forward to the day when going across the river will be so much easier and faster.

What John is proposing in his preparation for the arrival of the Lord sounds very much like road construction. Smoothing out the rough roads, filling in the potholes, grading down the steep hills, straightening out the winding roads to make them more direct.  Think about driving to Allentown on the Northeast Extension verses on 313 and 309. Big difference, right? One way has hills, turns, rough patches, and takes a while, the other gets you there so easily it’s actually kind of boring.

But most of the time, our lives feel much more like 313 than 476. The road that life takes us on tends to lead us down a lot of winding detours. We face plenty of valleys and face lots of steep mountains to climb along our path. Our world feels more like a strange and scary wilderness every day – a dark, barren place where nothing is recognizable, and we feel lost. But the wilderness is also the very place that God arrives just when we are the most in need.

As the prophet Isaiah wrote, long before John the Baptism was born, as translated by Pastor Eugene Peterson in The Message: 

"Prepare God’s arrival! Make the road smooth and straight!
Every ditch will be filled in, every bump smoothed out,
The detours straightened out, All the ruts paved over.
Everyone will be there to see the parade of God’s salvation.”

God is making away through the deserts of our world and in our lives by leveling the powerful and lifting up those who have been brought low. God is making a way through the world by reorienting God’s people to follow a different kind of road than the one traveled by powerful people. God is making a way for our savior to arrive and God’s kingdom to reign here on earth to ALL people.

BUT, this road to make way for Jesus is going to take some work, too. Some rough spots have to be paved over. Some detours and new routes need to be planned. Some different road signs are going up, and some of those familiar orange cones are coming out. It might even make us drive slower and more carefully than we were expecting.

Maybe God is leading us OUT of the highways and bi-ways that are tempting us toward “Bigger and Better” Boulevard. God might be leading us TOWARD Wilderness Way… a place that for now feels lonely and uncharted but is also the place where God hangs out and causes great things to happen. God just might be leading us OUT of a rut, where we have been spinning our tires for far too long. God may be leading us away from the winding detour that we might be lost on, where our GPS of Success has misguided is to, and instead toward the correct lane that we need to be in.

If the writer of Luke were also writing our story, it might go something like this: In the year the roof was replaced, in first year of the Bishop-ship of Pat Davenport, in the second year of the pastorate of Lydia Posselt, the word of the Lord came to Family of God. But has the road been paved and ready for us to hear this word? We may have a roof over our heads now, which is both necessary and something for us to be proud of…. But what happens when we are not inviting others, who are waiting out there in their own wildernesses, to be underneath this fantastic roof with us? What good is raising $$$ for a roof and at the same time we have been short in paying our staff? What good is a dry space outside of the elements if we do not have buy-in and investment in this community by the people who come here?

We have some construction ahead of us, I think, before we can travel the way that God is calling us. It’s not going to be easy, or fun. It will probably be slow going, with new traffic patterns and unexpected detours, and lots and lots of those orange warning cones. We have the invitation from God to walk this road – the way of the Lord – together, to be part of this work of God’s kingdom, in seeing the salvation of God in our midst. THAT is what makes it worth it – so that others many see and know and love and share.

Family of God: there is some necessary Road Work Ahead. Are you ready to get on your orange vests, fire up the backhoe and the drum roller truck, and get to do the hard work here at Family of God, so that others may know that there is “a Place For all people Here”?

I hope so, because I believe that God is calling us to some pretty awesome places along this road. Thanks be to God. Amen.