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Sermon Archives  
Sunday, December 07, 2003
Malachi 3:1-4, Philippines 1:3-11, Luke 3:1-6
Second Sunday in Advent
Rev. Kwanza Yu

In the Wilderness, a Voice

A number years ago when we lived in Chicago, the Kennedy Expressway was being rebuilt. I would drive through the construction zone at least a couple times a week. It was always interesting to see the heavy construction going on, as the new roadway seemed to grow each day. I liked to take quick glances of the work as I traveled at 50MPH between the temporary concrete walls.

It was a sight: hundreds of men and women at work, heavy equipment, mounds of moving earth it was all quite spectacular. All those resources put to the very important of building a new super highway before the onset of winter.

This is the same image that Luke sets before us in today’s Gospel reading:
     Prepare the way of the Lord.
     Make his paths straight.
     Every valley will be filled.
     Every hill and mountain will be brought low.
     The crooked shall be made straight and      the rough ways shall
                 be made smooth;
        And all fresh shall see the salvation of God.

Luke uses the image of building a road through the wilderness in
order to tell us how to prepare for the coming of our Lord. The Gospel
reminds us of the words that Isaiah wrote so many years before.
You see, in Isaiah’s time; God’s people had been carried off, across
the desert to serve as slaves in pagan Babylon. In Babylon they longed for their homeland and desired nothing more than to return to the land of their ancestors to worship their God. When the time came for them to return home, they wanted nothing to stand in their way.
     Build a road straight through the desert,
     Straight across the wilderness.
     No turns, no distraction
     No ups and no downs, no curves, No rough spots.
     Prepare a road, straight and true.   

Now today’s readings are not suggesting that you and I pick up a
shovel or hire a bulldozer and begin to lay asphalt. The Bible is not
concerned with highway construction, but it is concerned that we
prepare a way for Christ to enter our hearts and our minds. We are asked to look at those rough spots in our lives. We are to keep off
those sidetracks and avoid those detours that make it so difficult to welcome Christ into our lives in this Advent season.

Today’s gospel opens with John the Baptizer who is way out in the
wilderness—he is calling people to prepare the way of the Lord,
make the Lord’s paths straight.

A friend of mine who had studied in the Twin Cities and I had had lunch before he returned to Africa. By my estimation, he has suffered
greatly in recent years. His country has gone through terrible turmoil.
There has been political oppression. Along with this came grave civil
strife. He was even in prison for a time.
Thus when he came to the United States to study, I welcomed him
with open arms and did what I could to help him. After all, as I said he
had been through some terrible times in his church, in his country,
Africa.

But I was surprised, when his study was ended and we were talking
about the desperate situation to which he would return. I was
surprised to hear him say, “Actually, I have more sympathy with your
situation.”

My situation? My church is not beset attacked by political enemies; I have no friends who have been jailed for their convictions. None of my people suffer from pervasive poverty. How could he have
sympathy with my situation?

“There is just so much here in America. You have so much freedom, so many things. What is left to offer the people? What needs do they have for which the gospel could be fulfillment? I have great respect for those of you who preach the gospel and who minister in the situation of North America. There is so much, so much fulfillment, and so little emptiness. In Africa the people are empty and in the midst of emptiness the Gospel feeds them.”

I think that our church must take seriously my friend’s critique. Here there is so much fulfillment. What is there left for the Gospel to say?
How many of you remember that in the church of your childhood, there was a phenomenon known as Sunday evening church? By the time you entered adolescence, with the advent of color TV and the “Ed Sullivan Show,” and “Bonanza” on TV on Sunday evenings. Sunday evening at church simply could not compete with Sunday evening in front of the color television set.            

Last month a woman made at our monthly meeting at Luther Seminary reported that her church youth group had a weekend retreat called, “Unplugged: Alone with Jesus for 48 hours.” When I asked her the meaning of the title, she said, “We can do nothing with these kids unless we can first get them unplugged – detached from the CD players, the TV, the computer, the email, and all the rest. Until we can get them unplugged, for at least 48 hours, there is no way to find enough room to speak to them about Jesus.”

As my friend from Africa said, here, there is just so much of everything. We not only have so much electronic stimulation, so
many material goods, we also, as my friend said, have so much
freedom. We tend to think of freedom as a good thing. We have
freedom of choice. We are not enslaved to other people’s decisions
for our lives. Rather, we can choose, can choose for ourselves. More
choices are available to us than any other people in history. We do
not have to follow a certain line of work, simply because of our
parents. We can choose.

Back in the 1970s, Alvin Toffler published the book called Future Shock. There, in looking toward the future, Toffler predicted that we North Americans might come to suffer from too much freedom and too many choices. In a chapter called, “The Peril of Overchoice,” Toffler predicted that we would become overwhelmed by our choices, numbed by the dizzying array of possibilities set before us. It is one thing in life to choose between two and three options, but a dozen? He predicted that increasing numbers of us would simply withdraw from the fray, would retreat into private enclaves where we would be safe from having so much choice, so much freedom.

Today in North America, especially here, we are privileged to live in a situation of great affluence. We certainly have more food than we can consume, larger house than we need, more material resources than we deserve. And yet there is widespread unhappiness. Many of our people speak of a sense of unfulfillment and despair. To what do we attribute that?” Which leads me to want to say to my friend from Africa, “True, there is so much here, so many things, so many opportunities. And yet, in America there is a sense of unfulfillment. There is yearning.”

It takes a certain degree of honesty to admit to our yearning. After all, here we have freedom of choice. We are free to fashion our lives as we choose. If the lives that we fashion are unfulfilling, who is there to blame but ourselves?

Why make yourself unduly unhappy? There is that fear that the answer to the question, “Is there more to life than this?” might just be the answer. “No, This is all that there is. Your world is the best of all possible worlds. Why should we think that we might deserve more?    
All of which makes rather remarkable that which we do here, in church, at this time of year. Advent is a season of yearning. In Advent, the hymns we sing are somewhat restrained. They speak of desire, of waiting, of expectation. The Advent prophets all speak to a people in exile, a people suffering from homelessness and despair, a people experiencing emptiness.

John the Baptist’s voice is that of one “crying in the wilderness.” In order to hear John’s cry, one must be in a wilderness. Is there anyway in which your life could be described as wilderness? Or are
there moments when you get the feeling that you are not fully at home, that you are on exile, that there might be more than this?

I’m sure it takes a certain amount of courage and conviction to admit to yearning. In order to see the fragile light of Christmas, one has first got to become accustomed to the dark. In order to see the stars in heavens, one must sit for a while in the darkness here on earth. Are we up to such honesty?

Hear the good news this second Sunday of Advent. To those who live in exile, in the wilderness, lost, wandering, God is making a way. You heard John the Baptist: “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.” God is making a way through our desert, a highway straight to us. Keep looking, keep yearning and we shall see the “salvation of God.” Amen.    

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