Prepare the Way

Preached at Prescott Baptist Church

December 9, 2012

Luke 3:1-6

In October, my partner, Anna, and I took a week of blessed and beautiful vacation time with our friends, Michael and Steve. The four of us stayed in a condominium in Palm Springs, California. Palm Springs is a desert town at the base of huge sharp desert mountains. Rock, sand and cactus greet you everywhere. Desert palms adorn the city and line its streets. 

We took a day trip and drove about an hour to see Joshua Tree National Park. The park covers 800,000 acres of desert: the Colorado Desert on the east side of the park and the Mojave Desert on the west side. The Mojave Desert is where the Joshua Trees are found. The park is surrounded by tall mountains and covered with huge rock formations. Dry, sandy, hot.

But we rounded a corner on the highway and were stunned to see an oasis. They really exist! We got out of the car and walked under tall green palms that shaded huge areas. There were lush green bushes and flowering plants. So many birds sang and flitted from branch to branch. A refreshing pool of water sat in the shade under palm fronds.  An oasis like that is formed by a crack in the earth’s mantle, a broken place.  The rock beneath the surface splits and water springs forth, nurturing life right there in the middle of the desert. Amazing!

The Word of God came to John in the desert, a wilderness around the Jordan. The Word came to John and set him free to focus on a baptism of repentance as a way to prepare for what was coming, as a way to make room for perfect love. The desert seems like a good place for encountering the word of God. “Prepare the way!” A place full of open spaces and surprises.

I have wondered all week what it would take in my own life to make room for the entry of perfect love. I need to let go of my self- doubt and insecurities. There’s something inhospitable about my fear that I am not worthy of hosting perfect love in my life. Part of my preparation needs to be not only creating time for love’s arrival but also opening my heart to trust that the light in my life shines just as brightly as the light of any other human life, beckoning to love and inviting love to make its home with me. My preparation for the birth of Jesus includes repentance for my own sense of personal unworthiness. It is starting to feel like a wall between love’s presence and me.

I grew up in a home where humor was cruel and laughter had a hiss and a sneer attached to it. Humor was always at someone’s expense. Dinner time was seen as an opportunity to make fun of people: church people, school people, neighbor people, each other. The way people walk, talk, eat and how they dress. People were mocked and ridiculed at our house. There was the ever present terror that I might be the next target. So I learned to make fun of people too.  It was a defense, a desperate effort to avoid becoming the target myself. But my best efforts were not always successful. My brothers had several names for me besides the name I was given at birth. My brothers called me Blimp, Petunia and Fatty. These same names were attached to my friends when they came over.

I remember once when Debbie Griner came home from church with me. We were eating Sunday dinner and someone knocked on the front door. My oldest brother jumped up from his seat and pointed at my friend saying, “Don’t open that door until we hide her! We wouldn’t want anyone to think that pig belongs to us!” My parents laughed as though that was very funny. But Debbie ran to my bedroom and sat on my bed. She refused to come back to the table. She couldn’t quit crying so she called her parents to come and take her home. I was angry with her for being what I called “too sensitive!”

There was no tenderness in our house, no grace. And I internalized a sense of unworthiness. This happens to so many of us. We are mistreated as children, before we have developed the capacity to see our lives from any perspective that comes with age and experience. We think it is our fault that we are mistreated. And we learn to mistreat ourselves. And others.

Prepare the way of the Lord. Make paths straight. Fill the valleys and level the mountain peaks. Straighten the crooked; smooth the rough places. So that all flesh might see God.

Somewhere and someday it becomes the next thing for each one of us to clean house and get rid of the clutter that keeps us from inviting perfect love into our lives.  There was no room at the inn for Mary and Joseph because people had not paid attention to John. A crazy man crying out in the wilderness and they ignored him or made fun of him because they were looking instead for a man in a nice business suit, a powerful and dignified guy who walked with his back straight, looking like he owns the biggest bank in town. They might have paid attention to a man who owns Fed Ex.  But most people ignored John because he looked like somebody too many people were afraid of becoming: a lunatic, a weirdo, the next target for cruel humor. 

We don’t recognize the sacredness and the dignity of all human beings because too many of us have not yet repented for the ways we devalue ourselves. Too many of us have been willing to tilt the toxic cup and drink from it. We believe that we are not good looking enough, not smart enough, not wealthy enough, not cool enough. And we don’t prepare for the arrival of amazing love in our life because we don’t really expect it for us.

We no longer need mean older brothers to feed us this kind of poison. We have television advertisements blaring at us loudly like fog-horns in the night: Stand back! Keep away! You have not yet purchased the high priced products that would allow you to enter the gates of joy, peace, hope. You do not belong to the family where love comes to live.

The evangelist, John, says “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Free from what? Free from fear. 

Sooner or later it is the job for all God’s children to wash their ears out, purge the poison from their self-esteem and forgive: Forgive the past for its pain. Forgive others for their failure to respect our need for nurture, kindness and affirmation. Forgive the present for its full schedule that pretends to keep us from discovering new ways to connect with and nurture our own soul. Forgive ourselves for taking so long to let go of injustice and old wounds. Let go of our fear of being absolutely authentic before God. 

My father was a Nazarene preacher. Every Sunday evening the worship service concluded with an altar call. Sinners were urged to come forward and repent. I understood sinners to be people who smoked cigarettes, drank beer, got divorced, stole money or killed somebody. We were always hopeful that sinful outsiders would attend worship on Sunday evening, somebody we could bring to their knees and pray through to victory. We knew nobody in our church family was a real sinner. There was a hypocrisy that kept us from being real with ourselves and with each other. I think that hypocrisy is what made it easy for us to be cruel to each other. We were not capable of being vulnerable with each other and we had no way of knowing that other people could be.

It’s interesting to note in the third chapter of Luke that there were emperors, governors, rulers and high priests named. The rich and powerful people were all around in their palaces, dressed in royal robes and eating fine foods with gold utensils. But the Word of God came to John, the lunatic in the desert.  A man described in the book of Matthew as one who ate locusts and wild honey, a man who wore camel’s hair, a man worthy to receive the Word of God, a man who knew what his gifts were and what his purpose in life was. He was a man called to prepare the way for love: a Savior, a king, a baby who would be nurtured and grow up to model for us what it looks like to live in love, to be perfect love on earth.

All of us are worthy to welcome the love of God in our souls, our daily lives and our relationships. And all of us are broken in some way. And it is in those broken places where God tends to arrive and make a home.

For me—I know that my passion for social justice, my drive to nurture those people who have been abandoned by our society, my undying energy to give voice to the voiceless at the county jail comes from the wounded place within me. I know what it feels like to be dismissed and humiliated. I also know what it feels like to be redeemed from that kind of experience.

I’ve grown and healed in therapy sessions. I’ve grown and healed by seeking education. I’ve grown and healed by having good friends, supportive people in my life. But I look back and mark the beginning place of my deep healing on the day I found First Congregational Church here in Memphis.  That’s when and where my soul began to shift from a place of unworthiness. I was seen and treated as a person of worth. My gifts were acknowledged. I was invited to tell stories at church. My light began to shine and pointed me toward a new way of being in this world.

I came back around to my best self, to that innocent place back before the cruel humor at my family’s table made me so afraid. Faith communities can be authentic and affirming. They can be part of the healing circle in life. I was surprised and delighted to discover that truth. I began to let go of my unworthiness and I am still letting go and finding light for my life.

The Celtic theologian, John O’Donohue, says that the one who created the universe loved circles. Our longing and our belonging are fused in never-ending circles, he says. We live our lives in circular cycles, going around and coming back to where we started over and over again. Yet every life, every soul has a broken place, a fracture, a secret opening in the soul’s circle. This brokenness makes us vulnerable and human. Our prayer, creativity and joy come from this place. 

Once again we have come around to the season of Advent and we wonder how can we prepare our souls and lives to receive the gift of perfect love? 

Look to the broken places in your soul, the fracture where the heart has been broken before. That’s where the oasis will spring up, where the blossoms will bloom in a variety of colors, where the green will provide shade and the birds will sing. There will be refreshing waters to drink. It will be the place where the Word of God comes.  In this place your own light will shine most brightly.

Walk in that light, carry that light and chase away the shadows of fear and doubt. You will lead yourself and others to a manger in Bethlehem, to the miracle of birth and new life in love.  

Amen