At the close of our weekly lectionary gathering my friend said he was going golfing today. My benediction to him: may your crooked be straight and your rough places smooth!

But let’s press deeper. With the readings of the previous few weeks still ringing in our ears – the questioning between Jesus and Pilate, the apocalyptic upheavals – you can’t just receive Luke’s introduction to Chapter 3 as historical context. You have to hear it as irony that amid all the powerful people, the who’s who of the day, those featured on Oprah, the Word of God came to some guy named John, the son of Zechariah (by the way, the ruler of nothing – sometimes you are meant to hear what’s missing).

Reminds me vaguely of a couple sneaking past all the security of the United States Government. Right under your noses something that will change the world is unfolding and most of you don’t even know it. As one of my teachers would remind us students, in scripture you have to pay attention to the minority report. Remember the theme song of Jesus Christ, Superstar, also full of irony?

And as was inferred last week this is creation being redone, made new. The hills and valleys that have stood since the beginning of time, that have seen other empires come and go, they’re going to be moved by that very force that created them in the first place. This is at once concentrated and specific and huge and cosmological! What an opening to a story!

And people will be changed. It will transform everything. People like Paul will be able to give thanks in prison. The covenant of old will finally be fulfilled, in the words of Malachi.

The trouble is there’s something standing in the way. And it’s not the Emperor Tiberius or Pontius Pilate or Herod. God can move past all them, no problem. The one standing in the way of my own transformation, my own participation in this new creative movement is me. Oh yea, advent is a season of penitence, right?

(from www.goodpreacher.com/blog/)