Advent 2
December 10, 2006

Highways and Bypasses
by Anne Le Bas

“What have the Romans ever done for us?” When the Jewish revolutionary
leader in The Life of Brian asks that question, he doesn’t get the answer he
expects. His comrades start to think…”aqueducts, sanitation, education” they
suggest. “and roads, of course” “Oh yes, the roads go without saying…” they
all agree.

Roman roads. They go without saying. We all know what they are like. In fact
you can still see their ghosts in our landscape, their dead straight lines
preserved in the lines of some of our modern roads.

But have you ever wondered how the Romans built them? Not the engineering –
the stones and gravel and ditches - but the diplomatic and political process
that went into the construction of those dead straight lines.

Think about what it is like to build a new road now. There’ll be public
enquiries and reports, campaigns for and against, political debates. All
sorts of people will demand a say; homeowners and businesses, conservation
groups and environmentalists. There’ll be demonstrations and arrests. It
will all take years, and there’s no guarantee that the road will ever be
built even then.

The country wasn’t as densely populated in Roman times as it is now, but
there were plenty of people here. There were farms and villages, people who
regarded the land as theirs. So how did those Roman roads end up so
straight? What happened when they wanted to build across someone’s fields or
woodlands? What happened if you were a local whose hut happened to be in the
way? I think we can all guess. Rome won. And if you didn’t like it you could
argue with the lions in the arena. Building those roads was a way of
stamping their authority on the land – “this is ours to do with as we
please”, the roads proclaimed.

In today’s Gospel reading we hear of straight roads too. “Prepare the way of
the Lord, make his paths straight. 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.” John the Baptist uses the words of the
prophet Isaiah, his famous promise to his people that God was coming to save
them.

These words are famous and familiar to us, but the words that began today’s
Gospel reading probably aren’t. Just a rather dull list of people and places
that probably seem irrelevant to us. In fact, though, they are vital if we
really want to understand the power of John’s proclamation.

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius
Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his
brother Philip ruler of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanius ruler of
Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…”
What is Luke doing? Partly he is telling us when these things happened but
that’s not all. There is more to it than that. His list of rulers and their
territories tells us that this was a part of the world where the every
square inch had its ruler. The land had all been divided up, everyone knew
who was in charge of their patch. There isn’t any “no-man’s” land here.
Spiritual power is all sorted out too. Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests,
are firmly in charge in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Messiah whom John
foretells isn’t coming into a power vacuum, but into a situation where
everything seems to be nailed down already.

Where in this tightly drawn map is there going to be room for a road – a
straight road, into the heart of Jerusalem? Where in this map of power is
there going to be room for another ruler? For God. For the Messiah.

John’s words are a direct threat to the powers that have carved up this land
between them. “God is coming, build him a highway!” But there’s nowhere to
build it except in the lands that they think they rule. God’s rule will mean
the end of their own.

You can just imagine Tiberius, Pilate, Herod and all the rest standing
spluttering with fury  “you can’t build that road here….this is our
land…we’re in control …!”

Luke is a wonderful storyteller. There’s nothing accidental about the way he
puts his Gospel together. First he paints a picture of the status quo, the
rulers and their territories, and then he shatters that picture with this
image of the highway of God, coming straight into the heart of the occupied
territory.  God is coming he says – build him a highway. Those other powers
will just have to make way for the true king. Welcome him in.

But all that was long ago – the Roman empire is long gone. What has this to
do with us now? It seems to me that there are two things we might like to
consider; two ways in which this picture might still speak to us.

Think about that occupied land, all carved up and held in the grip of forces
too mighty to confront. Ever felt that your life was like that? The forces
that control you might be external. Shortage of money, family
responsibilities, a job you are stuck with, disability, busyness, other
people’s expectations. Or they might be internal, but no less real; low
self-esteem, regrets, unresolved anger, habits of thought and action which
sap your energy and resolve. External or internal, these forces make us feel
we can’t change. We’d love to declare independence, reinvent ourselves, find
freedom, but it seems impossible. Our lives are all sewn up, like that
occupied territory of the Middle East. And yet, promises John, God can come
to us there if we will let him. There may be crosses involved, suffering and
hard work, just as there were when he first came. But John proclaims a God
who is more powerful than the forces that imprison us. Nothing is impossible
for him. I’m sure we can all think of people who manage to radiate blessing
despite living with all sorts of restrictions – they are living proof of
this. God will always find space in us if we let him.

But that is the problem – will we let him? It is easy to identify ourselves
with the oppressed land, the victim, but the truth is that often we are
Tiberius, Pilate, Herod. We are the ones who are resisting change and
resenting challenge. Like them, we hear John’s prophecy of God’s arrival as
a threat of invasion rather than a promise of rescue.

Change is often disturbing, not something we always welcome or want. The
territories of our lives may be quite comfortably arranged, suiting us fine,
thank you very much. We don’t want God to come rumbling into them with his
earth moving machinery, cutting a swathe through our settled ways, with his
inconvenient calls to justice, integrity and mercy. We are the ones standing
by the road works spluttering indignantly “you can’t build that thing here…!”

Next year we commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave
trade. It seems obvious to us now that slavery is abhorrent- we wouldn’t
dream of trying to defend it. But Wilberforce and the other anti-slavery
campaigners had a long and exhausting struggle to convince people that it
should be abolished. People who faithfully went to church, called themselves
Christians, read their Bibles and prayed simply refused to see that slavery
was a problem. They had far too much to lose. Slavery underpinned the
economy, making possible a lifestyle they didn’t want to give up.

We can be just as blind to reality, just as deaf to the voice of God. “If we
say we have no sin” says the Bible, “we deceive ourselves and the truth is
not in us”, but deceiving ourselves is something that most of us are quite
good at. The cheap goods we buy in the shops – who made them, why are they
so cheap? We don’t ask. Paying taxes – that’s for mugs – let’s find any
loophole we can to avoid them; never mind the weakest in our society who
depend on the services they provide. The racist, sexist, homophobic comments
we hear in casual conversation or in the media; we ignore them, or even join
in – they don’t really matter. We buy what we want, consume what we want –
we can afford it; so what if it damages the environment? People can justify
even the most obvious personal sins to themselves if they have a mind to –
infidelity, emotional cruelty, fraud -brushing them aside as if they really
didn’t matter. We just don’t see what we don’t want to see. We’ve got our
lives arranged as we want them; woe betide anyone who suggests that we
should give up our comfort and ease.

We’ll build God a road. Of course we will. We want him to be part of our
lives. But so often that road is a bypass, not a highway. It skirts the
issues, goes round the obstacles, instead of going to the heart of the
matter. We keep faith out there in the territory of private spirituality,
personal salvation, the ticket to heaven, instead of letting it really
change the here and now, the heart of us.

Prepare the way of the Lord, says John. Prepare his way through lands that
are occupied, in the face of resistance from those who think these lands are
theirs. Prepare his way by daring to believe that we can change, that things
can be different. Prepare his way by opening our eyes to our own moral
compromises, the lies we tell ourselves to maintain the status quo. He calls
us to see that we are both victim and oppressor. But he also calls us to see
that there is one coming who is more powerful than both our helplessness and
our sin.

God, in Christ, put himself into our hands both as a fragile baby and as a
man on a cross, naked and dying. He didn’t look much like a king, and yet he
changed the world when he first came, and he still changes the world as he
comes again, day by day, into lives that are open to him. He comes to us so
that “all flesh shall see his salvation” – not just for our own personal
spiritual comfort, but to bring hope and healing and peace to the whole of
his creation. Whether we are victim or oppressor, we need to be set free
from the forces that imprison us. The true king comes to us, to rule with
justice and mercy. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” cries John. “Make him
welcome”

It is up to us whether we respond fearfully, “not in my backyard,” or
whether we cry out in h faith and hope “Come, Lord Jesus!” Amen.

(Comments to Anne at annelebas@DSL.PIPEX.COM.)