Make Straight The Path Of The Lord

confession, repentance, and peace

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Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

So, here, in Advent, we wait. We wait for the Christ child, the Messiah kid, the son of God, to become known to us, to become seen. We wait for a coming, a return. We wait in anticipation, holding our breath at every moment, knowing that it is pregnant with the possibility that this might be the time of arrival, the time of coming, the time when Jesus is here.

But the days are getting longer. Years are passing. Seasons come and go, and still there is no God come to us. We begin to feel alone, complacent, empty. It’s hard to keep hoping when that hope feels so deferred. When will we see Jesus? When will the light break in?

We don’t wait in passivity or silence. As we wait, we act out our anticipation, our hope. We act with compassion towards our neighbors, toward family and friend, and even enemy—at least we try too. We are acting out the love we know is coming. We are preparing the way of the Lord.

We wait for the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world by preparing the way, by proclaiming the good news, by practicing our faith in front of the world. In effect, we are telling people that Christ is on the way. We tell people to look with expectation, to prepare themselves to receive the incarnate God into their lives, to begin living the coming kingdom now.

We are sent to the world, carrying the broken body and shed blood of Jesus with us offerings to all we meet, telling them with joy and vigor that the Lord is coming.

Except…

The world is on fire, and it is being consumed. Wars rage in Ukraine and Palestine. Poverty keeps increasing while the top one percent grow richer, fatter, and more greedy day by day. Hatred and vitriol are spewed every day through all forms of media. Here in our country, regressive laws are passed that hurt the most vulnerable while promoting and protecting Christian Nationalism. Mass shootings and violence stalk our streets. Greed and oceans rise as we consume ourselves and create nothing but a path of destruction.

All in all, it feels like there are many more roadblocks to the way of the Lord than there is preparation. How can we hope for Jesus in the face of so much destruction, so much hurt, so much pain? Where does the waiting for the incarnation fit in when we are just trying to survive moment to moment? How does the message we carry, the message of the coming—and the coming again—of the Lord make a damn of difference when poverty, exclusion, oppression, and so much more stalks and claims so many of us on a daily basis?

Here’s the thing: we talk about preparing the way of the Lord in terms of doing good deeds, in terms of growing people in discipleship, in terms of helping people love better. While these things are good, necessary, and worth endeavors, they are not preparing the way of the Lord. They are proclaiming the Lord is coming, but they aren’t preparing the road for his arrival.

When the prophet Isaiah speaks in terms of preparing the way of the Lord, he talks about making a straight road in the desert, about filling valleys, and leveling mountains. He speaks about rough places becoming flat and uneven ground becoming level. He is talking about ease of access. Accessibility. Isaiah had in mind a department of transportation project—imagine the heavenly traffic cones—that would create a highway that was nothing but a straight shot from the Lord to us.

John came as the voice in the wilderness doing this road work. John came preparing the way for the Lord, getting people ready for what was about to happen. And what did John come doing? John came preaching, proclaiming, announcing the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John came and called the people to confession.

Confession is something Anglicans and other traditions do every week in our liturgy. It is an important time before we pass peace to each other, a time to recon our hearts before God, take account of our lives, be accountable for sin, and repent, turn away from these deviations and wrong doings and toward God. Confession is a time when we can say before God, “I’m sorry.”

We come penitent before the Lord, confessing what we have done, what we have left undone, what we have said and what we have left unsaid, and the sin done on our behalf—things we can’t escape in our society and culture that happen on a daily basis but grieve God continually. We confess these things, and in doing so, prepare our hears to receive the Lord in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup.

And that, right there, this is why confession prepares the way of the Lord: confession breaks down what we use to hide behind, either trying to impress or avoid God. These sins are the mountains, the valleys, the uneven ground. Confession removes their power in our lives.

Adam and Eve hid in the garden after sin came crashing into creation. They hid from God, from each other, and tried to hide from their sin. As they hid, sin dominated them. They began to blame other people, other things, even each other when God confronted them. They didn’t confess and repent, so they were driven out of paradise, and we’ve all been hiding—and hiding from—sin ever since.

Jesus comes into the world, incarnate and crying. God is finally here, finally come, finally with us. God is here, and God is coming. So, in a stunning reversal of the garden, John the Baptist calls people not to hide their sin before God and each other, but to drag it out into the light, receive forgiveness, and practice repentance. In the river they are ceremoniously washed clean, rising from the waters with a new purpose, a mission, a calling: make straight the path of the Lord in your life and the world around you. Put away sin. Put away shame. Put away that which makes for uneven ground.

Now, after we prepare the way with confession and repentance, now is the time for proclamation. See: here is your God! God is here, and he has come to gather us to the divine heart and to baptize us with the Holy Spirit. We proclaim this boldly… but only after we prepare.

See, when we proclaim without preparing, announce without confessing, we become hypocrites who continue to hide our shadows, our deviations, our sin. We don’t want to hurt the proclamation, so we put on a show, pretending we’re better than we are, pretending we have overcome our sin instead of having God take it away. We feel the pressure of getting found out, so we add to the lie, add to the deceit, add to the secrets. And this is how sin crouches at our doorsteps, catching us in its web of deceit and pain. We create fissures between ourselves and others, not letting people too close so that they won’t, so they can’t see what I hide, so I won’t get found out.

That’s not peace though. When we confess, we prepare the way of the Lord to come and bring reconciliation, bring wholeness and healing, bring peace. It is time to us to give up this charade that we have it all together. We are a mess, and that’s ok. We lie, cheat, hide, and let others lie and cheat and steal in our name. We’re all caught in this web of deviations, this net of sin. But there is a way out.

Confess, repent, and receive peace as God comes near.

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