Prepare Him Room
Second Sunday in Advent
Week of Monday, December 9, 2002
Lectionary Readings
Isaiah 40:1–11
Psalm 85:1–2, 8–13
2 Peter 3:8–15
Mark 1:1–8
Last week we considered how advent is a time of waiting: waiting for Christmas, waiting for the return of Christ, and waiting for God's mighty acts of power in our lives today. This week in advent God calls us to a second discipline, that of preparation. Mark's Gospel reading this week is quite interesting when you notice the obvious: he has no birth narrative with which we might celebrate the baby Jesus but instead begins with His adult ministry on the shores of the Jordan River. He quotes our other lectionary text from Isaiah and, as we say in modern parlance, “cuts to the chase” straight away: “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him” (Mark 1:3 = Isaiah 40:3).
Christmas is a season of all sorts of preparations, some delightful and some onerous. We haul out the decorations and see if the lights for the Christmas tree will work one more year. I love playing Handel's Messiah, even though it was written for Easter. My wife always makes a special sausage ball from a recipe my mother gave us. Each year our family travels to the mountains to cut a fresh tree. Our children still enjoy the advent calendar and opening a new window each day. As a girl my wife always drove to her grandmother's in New York. And on it goes.
As important and enriching as these traditional Christmas preparations are, they pale in comparison to the more weighty preparations to which God calls us. Like what? We can take our cue from John the Baptizer in our Gospel text this week. What a frightening character he must have been, living in the desert, wearing camel hair, eating wild locusts and honey. His stern message matched his severe attire, too, for John called his listeners to confession and repentance. But this was not some guilt-inducing self-flagellation. Mark tells us that it was “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin.” Repentance signifies a change of heart leading to a change of actions. Confession means we say the same thing about our sin that God does rather than trying to deny or rationalize it. The goal is God's fatherly forgiveness and embrace, not gloom, despair, or self-hatred.
Confession and repentance for the forgiveness of sins become important, according to our lectionary texts, when we consider the brevity of our lives. Isaiah reminds us that our lives are like dry grass that withers, like a flower which, however beautiful, fades and dies. Peter reminds us that in God's perspective a thousand years is no more than a single day. A friend one remarked, wisely, that our life and good health is but a temporary condition. I remember how my college students liked to argue about when Christ would return, to which I assured them that for everyone in the room “The End Times” would come in 70–80 years. Compared to eternity, and however long their duration, our lives are as brief as the morning mist that burns away by noon.
When I was in Oxford this past October I visited the church where CS Lewis worshipped. Next to the church is a cemetery where Lewis is buried in the same plot with his brother Warren. On the stone marker below their names and dates it reads, “Every man must endure his going thence.” However long our lives, our death is certain. We can prepare for it now, later, or not at all.
When my father died in 1998, the last few days in the hospital, he made his amends with each one of us. Most touching of all was a phone call he made to my mother to whom he was married for 33 years but then divorced from for 25 years. To his credit he was “preparing the way” and “making straight his path” through confession and repentance. The sad part, of course, was that he waited. We need not wait, not should we wait, when we consider how brief our lives are. At advent God calls us to preparation by confession and repentance that we might enjoy his fatherly forgiveness and, by extension, the reconciliation between one another that forgiveness brings.
Advent preparation by confession and repentance is also important when we consider that they are not an end in themselves but means to very good ends. We have already noted that they lead to forgiveness, and that alone would be reason enough to prepare. But as I read the advent texts for this week, it is clear that God intends so much more for us when we present ourselves to him rightly prepared. Talk about a Christmas wish list; consider these gifts of grace that God wants to give us:
- Comfort us
- Speak tenderly to us
- Bless us doubly for all our sin
- Reward us
- Feed, gather and carry us
- Gently lead us
- Favor us
- Restore us
- Pardon us
- Speak peace to us
- Save us
- Deal patiently with us
This advent season it is almost certain that you will sing the classic hymn “Joy to the World” by Isaac Watts (1719). As we prepare ourselves for Christmas, it would be hard to improve upon Watts' powerful words that summarize the goal of our confession and repentance:
No more let sins and sorrows grow,The last two lines of this verse summarize the entire purpose of Christmas. Think about it: in the incarnation in which God became a man, He comes to us to bless us as far as the curse of Adam is found. Whatever sins, sorrows and thorns infest your ground today, so far and even moreso does God want to bless you. So, with Isaac Watts, I remind you, “Let every heart prepare him room.” With the Psalmist I pray, “Show us your unfailing love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation” (Psalm 85:7).
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found.
The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself Copyright ©2002 by Dan Clendenin. All Rights Reserved.
