“Let’s build a highway”

Sermon Transcript

by Terry Lesser

O

ne of the telltale signs of spring in Winnipeg is the beginning of major construction.  It seems that there are orange signs, big yellow machines, the smell of tar, and a construction worker with a cigarette drooping with ash hanging from his mouth around every turn.  Men and a few women walk into the downtown food courts with mud and tar stuck to their feet.  The conversation in workplaces almost without fail begins with the sentence, “Ya know how much time it took me to get to work today?  It seemed like there was construction the whole way.”

By now many of you are no doubt wondering why I am talking about road construction three weeks before Christmas.  Well, you might have noticed in the readings today a recurring theme of the messenger. 

Luke 3:4-6 reads, “As it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice calling out in the wilderness: ‘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; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

These verses are paralleled in the words of Isaiah 40:3-5, “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.  Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

I would like to give some attention to the metaphor of construction of the highway.

In ancient times, kings would send representatives ahead of them to build or repair roads and make sure that the subjects were prepared for his arrival.  It is kind of like when the Queen visited Regina.  The Saskatchewan and city governments had to make sure that her highness would not experience a single bump.

John the Baptist was called to prepare the LORD’S way.  John the Baptist is the messenger of the King.  His own father prophesied that he would “be called a prophet of the Most High; for [he would] go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him.” 

But John the Baptist did not intend to build physical roads.  John the Baptist knew the message he was proclaiming was about a heavenly king, not an earthly one.  To quote the commentator William Barclay: “The preparation on which he insisted was a preparation of heart and of life.  ‘The king is coming,’ he said.  ‘Mend not your roads, but your lives.’  There is laid on every one of us the duty to make life fit for the King to see.”

Let’s look at our highway metaphor again.  Close your eyes for a second and imagine something for me.  Imagine that your life is a highway, what does it look like?  Is it a divided highway, does it have shoulders?  What about the scenery, is it nice to look at or is it unimportant?  Now, where is your highway going?  Is it stopping at every town, or is it focused on its destination?  Finally, look at the road surface.  Is it smooth and black, or are there loose stones and pot holes, maybe some black ice?

I don’t think that very many of us can say that we haven’t ended up in the ditch on our highway of life. 

There is an animated film from Disney.  It’s called Cars.  The story brings us on the journey of a young racecar.  Our hero, Lightning McQueen, gets lost on the way to a big race and finds himself in an old rundown town on route 66 where hospitality is still a lifestyle, not just a business plan. 

The problem is Lightning McQueen ruined the town’s only street when he unintentionally became attached to the town statue which he tows behind his car tearing up the asphalt.  McQueen is sentenced to fix the road he wrecked.

As the film progresses, we witness the life changing experience McQueen goes through as he fixes the street.  When McQueen first arrives he is a high octane race car with a have-it-now attitude.  This attitude is illustrated in his first attempt at paving the road.  It is bumpy and crooked and unfinished.  McQueen is made to try a second time, to fix his mistakes.  This time McQueen starts the road knowing that he needs to finish the job properly before he can go.  But as he rebuilds the road properly, he learns some valuable lessons.  He learns not to put himself first all the time.  He learns the value of caring for other people.  The finished road is as beautiful as McQueen’s new attitude.

John the Baptist calls God’s people to make the Lord’s paths strait.  I find this a helpful metaphor for that connecting point between us and God.  Each of us are at different places in our relationships with God.  Some of us have very strait paths or highways, with good foundations and smooth, black asphalt.  Some of us have degrading highways with potholes and cracked pavement.  And some of us are just building our highways.  Our scripture today is calling us to improve our highways. 

Those of us who have smooth highways may need to expand them.  While we might be very good at coming to church and talking to God, we may need to get better at listening, or following God’s commandments.  Maybe our highway needs more signage.

Those of us who have potholes and cracked pavement may need to reconnect with God.  Maybe we need to fill some of those potholes and cracks in our lives.

Those of us who are just building our highways—I’m talking about young people and new Christians—are discovering what it means to connect with God.  Maybe there is a growing excitement or maybe the excitement has worn off and we need to do some work.  Either way, maybe we need to connect with some engineers and contractors, people who have build highways before, people who already have a strong connection with God.

Whether our life highways are smooth and straight or in the earliest stages of construction, we have some work to do.  John the Baptist not only calls Christians to make strait paths, and to fill every valley, lower the mountains and hills.  John the Baptist calls us to prepare the way of the Lord so that he can be with us in our daily lives and we can receive eternal life. 

Our theme today is Love Invites Repentance.  The King who is coming is one who has built his kingdom on Love.  A major part of our life highway improvement is repentance.  Love invites repentance.  As we engage ourselves in the project of improving our highways, we are already in a relationship with God.  And part of that relationship is Repentance from us and Forgiveness from Jesus Christ.

This is where our Old Testament text comes in.  Malachi 3:1-4 tells us that the Lord has announced the coming of a messenger.  This messenger is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap.  And he will purify and cleanse his people until they present offering to the Lord in righteousness.  We believe that God was talking about Jesus.

The images of the refiner’s fire and fuller’s soap speak to the thoroughness of the purification and cleansing.  Those of you who know what a refiner’s fire is know that it is used to separate out the impurities in precious metals.

A fuller shrinks, thickens and sometimes dies newly cut wool or cloth.  The fuller removed the oily and gummy substances from the material before it could be used by washing it in some alkaline such as white clay, putrid urine, or niter—the fuller’s soap.  The alkaline was washed out by treading on the material repeatedly in running or clean water.  The material was then dyed or bleached by the sun.

This is the thoroughness of God’s forgiveness.

We must be clear about one thing regarding forgiveness.  It is not so much the remission of penalty as the restoration of a relationship.  Nothing can deliver us from certain consequences of our sins; the clock cannot be put back; but estrangement from God is turned to friendship, the distant God has become near and the God we feared has become the lover of human souls.

We know that it is not true that “love means never having to say you’re sorry.”  In the wilderness of our sin, God prepares a way for forgiveness and entry into the paths of peace.  Our response is to repent and, in turn, to offer God our love and righteousness.  The challenge is to “prepare the way of the Lord.”  How can we make such preparations in our everyday life?

As you consider this question, I would like to leave you with these words from Philippians 1:3-11:

³I thank my God every time I remember you, ⁴constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, ⁵because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. ⁶I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.

⁷It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. ⁸For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.

⁹And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight ¹⁰to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, ¹¹having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.