Oh the traffic!

Advent 2

Fr. Tim Nunez

Traffic. We all agree it’s bad and getting worse. Meg and I have started to avoid Highway 64 between Avon Park and Zolfo Springs because it’s getting too congested and dangerous with people passing and so on. And yes, you heard that right; between Avon Park and Zolfo Springs. They’ve approved 8300 new homes inside the city limits of Lake Wales, which means about 24,000 new people, and the only road construction north to Disney, west to Brandon, south to Clewiston and East to Vero Beach is right here in Lake Wales.

If John the Baptist showed up today talking about making paths straight, I’d be tempted to send him out to 60 & 27. (If you know how to navigate that intersection right now, I’m impressed. But we all know it could change at any time.) Or maybe I’d send him to Champion’s Gate.

Imagine if you had all the authority and resources to just fix it as soon as possible. You could add lanes, resurface pavement, widen bridges, expand rail service or bus service, and add bike lanes, all while taking care of the environment, whatever it may be, wouldn’t that be great? I’m sure we all feel like we could at least make it better. But few of us have the expertise to truly dictate transportation infrastructure, so we’d do much better to turn it over to the very best planner we can find.

When John the Baptist showed up, God had not sent a prophet to Israel in over 400 years. The last one had been Micah, who we heard in our first reading this morning talking about a new age which God would initiate by coming in person. When he did, he would refine and purify the Levitical priesthood, burning or washing out any corruption that had set in.

Luke sets the context of John the Baptist’s arrival in detail. The 15th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, while Pilate was governor and so on, and while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. These will each play pivotal roles in Jesus’ crucifixion, and Luke contrasts their positions of authority with the word of God that has come to John: not to the religious authorities, but to John. That should not surprise as prophets always come from outside the system, outside the structure.

Here is the new prophet of God. He is out in the wilderness, just as Israel was in the wilderness when God gave his word to Moses in the law. They were formed as a people in the wilderness. He’s performing his baptism of repentance in the Jordan. Israel had to pass through the Jordan to enter the Promised Land. The Jordan valley is itself a highway of sorts. People traveling north & south through that region would go along the Jordan to be near water and it is much more level than the area around it.

“Prepare ye the way of the Lord” is a theological infrastructure project. Good roads and bridges are critical to commerce, delivering what we produce and receiving what we need and want. They are vital to markets and jobs. We tend to think of that here, but Fr. Victor in Honduras shared a video with me a few months ago of a rickety wood bridge that had washed out in a flood. That cut him and others off from some small nearby villages. It took them awhile to rebuild it, such as it was. But it was critical to them.

Preparing the way of the Lord for followers of Jesus Christ is not, for us, preparing the way for our eventual salvation. We’ve been saved by grace through faith. In baptism our sins are washed away AND we are sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever. We proclaim that bond is indissoluble and we claim it with our adult minds and proclaim it to the Church in Confirmation and/or by simply having and living that saving faith.

When we hear John the Baptist’s cry for repentance for the forgiveness of sins, we are reminded of the ways we do fail and the ongoing work of sanctification, that burning away or washing away of impurities. This is vital to our walk. God doesn’t want us to wait until we die to experience all the joy he holds for us. Forever includes today.

But we’ve got work to do. There’s a lot of traffic and it seems to be getting worse. Here is some good news! God is well aware of the traffic going on inside your head and your heart. He has put you in charge of the project of fixing it, giving you the free will to manage it. But our wisest course is to set aside our plans and invite the supreme planner to manage the project. That may mean diverting some of the traffic or adding some lanes to your capacity to handle it. It may mean finding you some help.

Take time and ask Jesus to help you identify and burn away whatever is in you that needs to be gone, to wash whatever needs to be healed. Where is the stress? Where is the strain? Where is the pain? Lift it to Jesus in prayer. Invite the Holy Spirit to work in you.

I’m reminded of this verse from Peter’s first letter.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9)

“That you may proclaim his mighty acts.” This ties in directly our passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Paul is confident of the good work Christ is doing in the Church at Philippi, but he adds that his prayer is for their “love to overflow more and more.” To overflow means that it spills out all around them, into their families and community, spreading Christ’s love more and more.

That is my prayer for each of us and for Good Shepherd as a family, that the joy and love we share would overflow and transform our community.

AMEN