Highways in the Wilderness
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
December 5, 2004
Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12
Isaiah 11 1 ¶ A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2 The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. 3 His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. ¶ He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; 4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
6 ¶ The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
10 ¶ On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.Matthew 3 1 ¶ In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 3 This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” 4 Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
7 ¶ But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9 Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
11 ¶ “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
I. INTRODUCTION
In the 1950’s, the Federal Government began the process of building the Interstate Highway System. The system had two main purposes. The first was national defense—a roadway that would mobilize the army to and from any corner of the country. That’s why the highways are all wide enough to accommodate tanks and personnel carriers and why one out of every five miles of the interstate is straight enough to land an aircraft on.
But the other major purpose of the highways was to facilitate commerce, and boy did they. Goods could be shipped far and wide with great ease on the roadways of the nation.
It was around this time that a lot of states and cities went a little highway crazy and built highways right into all the downtowns and along all the waterfronts. The Southeast Freeway and the Whitehurst Freeway here in D.C. are examples of that. Later on city planners would regret the loss of the waterfront areas of these cities and sometimes, drastic measures would be taken, like they did in Boston where they submerged their waterfront highways in a never-ending project called the “Big Dig”. But, the plain reality was, people want to build highways to places of importance, to where people are, to where the money is. They don’t want to build highways to where people aren’t.
Why on earth would anyone want to prepare a highway in the desert or in the wilderness?
II. THE TEXT: HIGHWAYS IN THE DESERT
In the Gospel lesson we read tonight, we read of John the Baptist. Matthew identifies John as the one about whom Isaiah was speaking when he said, “A voice cries out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’. The verse of Isaiah that Matthew is referring to is from Isaiah 40 and reads: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’”
What are Isaiah and John talking about? What does it mean to prepare a highway in the wilderness?
Why would God want us to prepare highways in the wilderness where no one is rather than highways in the cities, or in the towns, where everyone is? It does not make a lot of sense. Perhaps not even St. Matthew really understood this. That could be why he renders Isaiah’s prophecy as “A voice cries out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord…” rather than the way Isaiah likely intended it: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord….” But why would God want a highway in the wilderness?
III. THE WILDERNESSES
So, where are the wildernesses and the deserts?
One of my favorite places in the world is the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York. Those same mountains are often referred to as “the Adirondack wilderness”. But despite a provision in the New York Constitution that keeps state land in the Adirondacks “forever wild” it’s not quite the wilderness it used to be. For one thing, there’s an interstate that runs through it and there are towns and villages scattered throughout it.
Of course, the term ‘wilderness’ in the Bible is probably more like large tracts of uninhabited land, and the parallel being made in Isaiah is much more akin to a desert. There are a number of deserts in this country, in the desert southwest, in Texas and California, in various places in the nation. There are also those great deserts of the world: the Sahara, the Arabian, the Gobi. Those are the kinds of deserts that can kill you so devoid of water or life are they.
There is a great scene in the movie Lawrence of Arabia that tells the story of real-life British Army Officer T.E. Lawrence’s campaigns against Turkish forces in Arabia during World War I. Lawrence seeks for his Arab army to take the Turks by surprise by coming upon Aqaba from across the desert—a way no one will expect them to come from. The problem is that one part of the desert is known as “God’s Anvil” and is lethal in the daytime—they must cross the entire thing at night. A place that is so barren that it can be deadly. Why on earth would anyone want a highway built in a place like that? (unless of course you want to attack the Turks, I suppose)
A. Our Wildernesses
There are plenty of wastelands out there, plenty places barren. Not just the obvious places like the southwestern deserts, the Arabian deserts, or the mountain wildernesses of the east, or the broad expanses of plain in the west. But those places closer in that seem desolate.
There are places not three miles from here where there are great desolation. Burned out buildings—some left from the riots that devastated neighborhoods in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968. There are crumbling buildings, empty blocks, devastated neighborhoods. Is that the kind of wilderness God is talking about? Maybe.
What about places like Sarajevo, or Baghdad or Fallujah. The World Trade Center. Beirut. Ramallah. Jerusalem. Hebron. Chechnya. Rwanda. Places devastated by war and violence. Are those the wildernesses God is talking about? Perhaps.
B. The Personal Wildernesses
There are other wildernesses. There are our personal wildernesses, too. Wildernesses of doubt and despair. Of depression. Of guilt and shame. There are all kinds of desolations that exist within us.
Often those wildernesses are the most devastating because we tend to view them as even greater, more barren places than the real thing. When we are wracked by doubt or consumed with depression we can imagine ourselves so devoid of life or value that we become wildernesses ourselves. The same can be said for people contending with guilt or shame, who imagine themselves to be barren of worth because of the guilt they’re feeling. When you’re feeling that way, it can be hard to imagine wanting to build a highway for anyone, particularly for God.
Maybe that’s the key to understanding these passages—because these highways we’re supposed to be preparing aren’t just any old highways, they’re highways for the Lord, paths for God.
IV. WAITING FOR CHRIST
It’s no coincidence that we read these texts at Advent. Not only is it a text that tells us to get ready for Jesus (whom we await at Christmas), but the theme of preparing a highway fits in perfectly with the theme of preparation that is what Advent is all about.
A. Waiting for Jesus
I was talking earlier this week with Father Gurnee about the scripture this week and he pointed out that this is one of the few Gospel stories where Jesus is not in it. Jesus is not in this story at all. Only John the Baptist is.
I wondered what that tells us. For me that says a lot about our Christian action. Many people are waiting for Jesus to come to fix the world. In fact, there are some Christians who think that social justice and other Christian action is useless because all it does is prop up the kingdom of Satan and the proper response is to wait it out and soon Jesus will come to set the world right.
And what is John’s response? “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make his paths straight!”
This is not a call to sit still and wait—it is a call to action. To prepare a highway for our God.
B. Preparation as Discipleship
Preparation of the highway can be seen as a model of discipleship. We are invited into being disciples of the one for whom we prepare the way. The highway we prepare is not just a way, but our way of living in anticipation of the one whom we await.
C. A Highway Fit for the King
But who is that whom we await? Because what highway we make depends entirely on who we’re making it for.
In ancient days, if you lived in a town, the only way you could ever expect to be visited by the king was to build a highway to your town. Cities and towns were not all connected the way they are today by vast networks of roads. If you wanted someone to come, you had to prepare a way.
And if you were going to prepare a way for the king, it had better be fit for the king. In the same way, we prepare a way for the Lord in a manner that is appropriate to the one we await.
1. Isaiah’s Vision
And that one whom we await is described for us in the words of Isaiah we heard earlier:
The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. 3 His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. ¶ He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; 4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
2. The Highway Prepared
And so then, as ones who await the arrival of this king, the highway we prepare reflects the king for whom it is made.
It is a highway paved with wisdom and understanding, shaped by the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. It shall be a highway of righteousness for the poor and equity for the meek of the earth. A path of righteousness and faith.
We await a prince of peace, we build highways of peace. We await the Son of Righteousness, we build highways of righteousness. We await the one who is brother to “the least of these”, we build highways where the least in our society are taken care of.
This is the highway we are called to build in the wilderness.
V. PREPARING HIGHWAYS IN THE WILDERNESS
In the wilderness. The wilderness, where our conventional wisdom tells us is not worth building a highway because there’s no one there.
Quite the contrary—for it is in the wilderness where most people are. In the wildernesses of fear. The wildernesses of violence. The wildernesses of doubt and despair. The wildernesses of inner pain and brokenness. Preparing highways in the wilderness is a highway to where people are.
A. People are in the desolated places
People are in the desolated places. Many live in areas devastated by war or poverty. God does not expect us to sit around waiting for Jesus to do all the heavy lifting. God calls us to prepare highways there.
B. People are in the wildernesses
People are in the wildernesses of their own hearts, exiled and alone on account of their fear or their guilt, or the doubt, or the myriad other reason that we isolate ourselves and cut ourselves off from one another. God calls us to prepare highways there.
God calls us to prepare the way of the righteous one, the healer, the Prince of Peace, by building highways of righteousness in the wilderness of injustice; highways of peace in the wilderness of violence and war; highways of healing in the wildernesses of suffering and affliction.
C. God is in the wilderness
We prepare highways for God in the wilderness because that is not only where the people are, but it is where God is. We prepare highways for God in the wilderness because God is in the wilderness with us.
In the Exodus, God went before the Israelites in the wilderness in cloud and flame. In the Exile, God went with his people into Exile. On the Cross, the Son of God went into the wilderness of death with his people, that he might conquer death and give to us all the promise of eternal life.
God is in the wilderness calling to us. Calling us to prepare a highway for the God who goes before us. Calling us to open our hearts, to prepare a highway, to allow God to enter into the wildernesses of our own lives. Calling us that we might enter into the wildernesses of others—into the deserts of despair and hopelessness, of violence and suffering—to witness to the love of God. Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
