Advent 2, Year B
December 4, 2005
Christ Church, Covington
“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Is. 40:3 & Mk
1:3).
In the Summer of 1907, the Italian adventurer Prince Borghese and his chauffer
Ettore, along with journalist Luigi Barzini, traveled from Peking to Paris in an
Itala motorcar, in a race sponsored by the French paper Le Matin. No one had
ever made this journey before by automobile (Gobi Desert, Ural Mountains, Volga
River). Far off 1907 seems fairly remote today: the Imperial family still lived
in the Forbidden City, and the great twentieth century wars and revolutions were
just a dream (or more properly, a nightmare). And of course China itself was
alien to Europeans; it seemed immutable and fixed to Barzini, immoveable in
fact, while the 40 hp Itala seemed the very symbol of speed and progress. It
seemed likely to Barzini that the race would never begin, that the Itala would
be overcome by Chinese inertia, transformed into a monument of stone. But of
course, the race did begin, won handily by Borghese and Barzini in about three
months, well ahead of the pack.
Keep this image in mind, and place it beside our Gospel today. John the Baptist
borrows the words of the Old Testament prophets by announcing that God is to do
a new thing in the world, by bringing restoration, renewal, and reform. The
broken, ravaged world is no longer going to be frozen, stock still in its
decline; instead, God is going to bring it along to where it needs to be. God
himself is going to lead the way by traveling at the head of his People,
journeying with them through the desert to the Promised Land. He’s going to show
them the way.
By contrast, the pagan world in which God’s People lived centuries ago had a
hard time believing that anything really new could ever happen. To them, the
world seemed cyclical, with progression balanced by regression. No matter how
far you moved, you always ended up in the same place. Salvation was purely
theoretical, by escape from the world. Like Barzini’s China (itself a great and
intact pagan civilization), the world seemed immutable, unchanging, stuck hard
fast in stone. So the message of the prophets, and John the Baptist, was
revolutionary when it hit the pagan world. A Messiah is coming to shake things
up. Freedom’s on its way. Salvation is coming near, coming into the world.
Nothing will ever be the same again.
Now, of course, we are much more likely to believe in progress. The influence of
the Christian Gospel is such that today’s pagans (and even some church folk)
make an idol of progress! If we’re moving, we think, it must be in the right
direction. But I suppose in “Hurricane Land” we face the opposite temptation,
which is to see the real obstacles to positive change in our society and our own
situation and to think that we’re stuck. That’s just not true. We might think
that sin has turned us to stone, left us paralyzed in the face of the things
that beset us, but this is not the case. There is a distance ahead, surely,
(remember Borghese and Barzini) from where we are to where we need to be, but
the journey has to start at the beginning.
Meanwhile, there are a couple of journeys to recognize today, ones that relate
to the journey I’m talking about. First is the “Journey in Christ” ceremony that
we’ll celebrate in a few minutes. These folks are embarked on a journey of
faith, reminding themselves and us that God has entered the world and renewed,
reformed, and restored it by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Second
is the journey some other folks have made from Christ Church, Woodbury, NJ, to
Covington, LA, to help to do the work of renewal, reformation, and restoration
at the Caritas community in Abita Springs. They’re helping to remind us that the
work that God does in the world, effecting real change, calls for human
cooperation and faithfulness.
The message is that there is a journey ahead, for all of us. It will mean that
we have a distance to cover, a race to run, but God will be with us along the
way. Through desert or mountain, Jesus himself will be at the head of our
company. Salvation is drawing near, and it falls to us to prepare the way.
John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.
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