Advent Pilgrims

Church of the Incarnation

December 12, 2010

Isaiah 35:1-10

Matthew 11:2-11

“On the road again.  Just can’t wait to get on the road again.  The life I love is making music with my friends.  And I can’t wait to get on the road again.”  If Isaiah 35 had a soundtrack, this might be it.  The prophet Willie Nelson echoes the prophet Isaiah.  God’s people live on the road.  Americans have something of a love affair with the road.  The road is a symbol that we’re free.  We’re not tied to any one place.  We fear stagnation and stillness.  We fear boredom and routine and obligation.  Being on the road is a way of escaping all of that into freedom. 

But life on the road doesn’t always feel like Willie Nelson says it should.  Have you ever driven across Pennsylvania?  I have.  Once.  And I don’t have any plans to do it again.  It was 1994.  Stephanie and I had just gotten married.  We loaded up a Uhaul trailer with our stuff and set out for New Haven, CT.  The first part of the trip went well.  You feel like you’re making progress because you occasionally cross a state line.  Then we hit Pennsylvania and drove and drove and drove.  Near Breezewood, PA, I felt something shift on the trailer and I pulled over.  I assumed we had a flat.  We didn’t have a flat tire.  In fact we didn’t have a tire, or a wheel, or an axle.  The state trooper who pulled up behind us reassured us that the other guy was OK.  What other guy?  we asked.  Turns out our axle snapped in half, the axle and wheel then bounced up and over the concrete median and smashed into the windshield of an oncoming car.  Luckily, it narrowly missed the driver and he was able to pull the car over with a few cuts and bruises.  And I feel bad for that guy.  But this is really a story about me.  We spent the rest of that day and night and all the next day in Breezewood, PA, waiting on the mechanics to install a new axle.  

Now we had a rough trip.  But let me tell you something.  Looking back I am so glad to have traveled that road.  This third Sunday in Advent is all about travel, about journey and pilgrimage.  The text of Isaiah imagines good news coming in the form of a new highway.  “A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way” (v. 8).  Traveling this highway towards joy is not always easy.  But you’ll never regret this road trip.  This highway appears before us as good news.  For those of us who get stuck.  For those of us who feel trapped.  For those held captive by forces stronger than we are.  If you’re lost and don’t even know which way is home, a road can be good news.  A big, broad highway laid out for you can be a cause for real rejoicing. 

Roads are for arrivals.

Isaiah’s first bit of good news is that God is on the road too.  If you get lost in the dark.  If you fall into a pit.  If you find yourself far from home.  God will road trip.  God will come find you.  God travels.  

The word “Advent” means “coming” or “arrival.”  Advent is the season when we mark God’s arrival into our world and lives, especially in the birth stories of Jesus recorded in the gospels.  The first road that Isaiah imagines is the road that God travels to find us in our great need.  “Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God.  He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.  He will come and save you’.” (v. 4).  

When I was in grade school, we lived outside the city limits and rode the bus to school each day.  While we ate breakfast, my dad would stand at the living room window and watch for the bus.  From that window, he could spot the bus a quarter of a mile away on Horton before it turned down our road.  So when Dad hollered “Bus!” we were out the door and up the driveway just in time for the bus.  But once in awhile, Dad would miss seeing the bus on Horton.  On those days, the bus crested the last hill right by our house and dad would scream, “BUS! BUS! BUS! IT’S HERE!”

I think of my dad, eyes peeled at the window, watching the road for the bus, when the gospels describe John the Baptist.  John was “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’.” (Mt. 3:3).  John the Baptist is the one, says Jesus, called by God to “prepare the way” (11:10).  His job was to watch the road.  During Advent we stand next to John so we can watch the road with anticipation.  For all of us who live far from joy, Isaiah says, you have not been abandoned.  You will not be left there forever in a land far from home.  Your God will come and save you.  You may think you’re unreachable, all the way across the sandy desert.  But God will make a road and come and find you.

Roads are for leaving

This leads us to Isaiah’s key insight.  Life with God requires that we take to the highway.  Faith in Jesus Christ is setting out on a new path towards joy.  I personally am delighted that the life set out before me is a road.  Life as a journey or pilgrimage is life in movement.  It’s life in a continual process of unfolding and becoming.  It is filled with excitement, trepidation, adventure, and discovery.  This is an active and engaging life for people who do not want to sit still.  This is not for those who are smug or self-assured or comfortable.  This is for those who want to go on a quest to the heart of God’s joy.  It requires lots of hard work, lots of practice at paying attention to God.  But it really is the way towards joy.  It is a pilgrimage that begins with baptism and continues with practices of worship, eating, praying, giving, helping, and serving.  And the more we lose and empty ourselves along the way, the more full our joy becomes.

We made the mistake of taking our kids to Hawaii a few years back.  Henry was five and Oliver two.  How bad can the plane ride be, we thought?  Answer: really bad.  It’s a long way from Dallas to Oahu.  And if you are wrestling a two year old spinning and scratching like a coked up raccoon for the entire flight, it feels even longer.  One day, we took the kids to the Pineapple Plantation for a tour.  The fine people at Dole are happy to sell you pineapple in about a thousand different forms, along with any number of pineapple themed paraphernalia.  Towards the end of that day, when we were all tired, Henry stomped his feet and reminded me that we hadn’t yet done the maze.  

This was no kiddie maze with a manageable circumference and hedges low enough that the parents can see over them and keep their bearings.  No, this was a place designed to get you lost.  Sure enough, we got into the deepest bowels of that maze and couldn’t get out.  The other idiots wandering around were no help.  They were lost too.  If I’d had my wits about me, perhaps I could have used the angle of the sun for guidance.  But by this point I was tired and angry.  My feet were killing me.  And Henry was crying because we were lost.  He was tired of walking and wanted me to carry him.  I began to hope we’d just run into the Minotaur who would kill us on the spot.  What I really wanted was for the shrubbery wall to part and form a clear path from where we were to the parking lot.  When you can’t find your way, a clear path is good news.

God calls us to life on the highway.  Your life will be a long journey.  No matter what particular challenges we face, Isaiah tells us, there’s a way out.  There’s a way forward.  There’s a road that will get you out of here.  Now let’s be honest.  There are lots of religious communities who want nothing to do with life on the road.  They want the answers.  They want everything tidy.  That works, until it doesn’t work.

You will, undoubtedly, encounter people in your life who are dismissive of your faith.  They will belittle your involvement in a religious community, your continuing in practices of spirituality, singing, prayer, and belief.  Let’s face it.  The practice of the Christian faith doesn’t play a large role in the lives of most New Yorkers.  Practices that keep us alive and alert to God’s presence and activity just aren’t on most people’s radar.  There is too much else to do.

It’s possible that our friends have a very small view of what we’re up to.  They might imagine that being a religious person is a passive and uninteresting experience.  They probably think that faith is primarily believing a list of propositions.  So one of our tasks as a Christian community is to embody for others the risk and adventure of life with God.  The earliest Christians referred to themselves as “the Way.”  John records Jesus saying, “I am the Way”.   The classic religious texts highlight this theme of life with God as a journey.  Dante, Chaucer, and Bunyan all imagine faith as pilgrimage.  Viewed this way, every day is alive with the energy of cooperating with God so that we can go a little farther, make it to the next bend in the road, and help one another keep going.  This kind of life is already attractive to us.  Let’s make sure that others have an opportunity to experience this same attraction.

Roads are for going home

One of the most important questions we can ask is, “Where are we going?”  This is a key question for our community as well.  Isaiah suggests an answer.  God has set us on the path that leads to joy.

Isaiah pictures for us the joy of homecoming.  “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (v. 10).  For those who find themselves in exile, living far from home, there is nothing like the joy of finding your way back home.

The desire to literally go home may or may not resonate with you.  About eight generations of my family hails from a not particularly interesting or important county in Southeastern Kansas.  My great-grandfather (to the eighth degree), George Witt, is buried there in the National Cemetery.  He died during the Civil War.  That’s 160 years of Witts in one little place.  I’m delighted beyond belief that I get to live here.  This is where I want to be.  But I admit to a strain of homesickeness.  Maybe some of you share versions of that story - you and your family belong to a place that’s home.  Maybe others of you don’t.  Maybe you grew up in several different places.  Maybe your family no longer lives where you grew up.  The experience of longing for “home” will feel different for you I’m sure.

The Biblical story in its broadest scope is a story about homecoming.  All of us were created by God and for God.  We live from God and towards God.  God is our dwelling place.  God is the home that enables our happiness.  Yet the Bible begins, in Genesis, as a story of exile.  Our human ancestors were exiled from the Garden of Delight.  Sent away from the lush and nurturing environment that was their proper home.  When we have cut ourselves off from God’s love and care, we live in exile.  We live far from home.  Far from joy.  

But that’s not where the story ends.  The God whose life is lived in the fullness of joy shared between Father, Son, and Spirit chooses to leave home.  The Son forsakes that perfect joy for the painful road that brings him to us.  In Jesus, God goes into exile with all of us.  In Jesus, God freely comes into our captivity, our darkness and death.  He is the traveling, homeless peasant who has nowhere to lay his head.  Who is this Jesus who meets us in the gospels?  Who is this Jesus who invites us to eat his broken body in this meal?  Who meets us in our darkest experiences, and loves us in ways that cost him everything?  His life is the life of God, far from home.

Last week I went to the KGB Bar on East 4th.  It was a reading sponsored by the Columbia Writing Program.  And one of our friends was reading from his work.  He has been doing the hard work of freelance writing and raising kids.  He’s been able to eek out a living, to get several things published.  But he hasn’t gotten much attention.  And he doesn’t have an agent yet.

The KGB Bar is a tiny little bar on the second floor of a brownstone down on East 4th.  It looks pretty much like you think it would look.  It’s one room, very dark.  The walls are deep red and the ceiling is black.  The only decoration is a Soviet flag behind the bar.  There are maybe ten tables, with a podium and microphone in one corner.  There were maybe twenty people there total, including the four authors who were reading.  My friend read a great piece about the television shows his kids watch.  He hates Dora because she’s so bossy.  But he hates a bald little French kid named Caillou more.  Yet, he craves the twenty minute respite he can get when he plots his kids down in front of the TV.  

I almost didn’t go.  It was cold that night.  There were three of us there to hear Andy read.  His wife, one other friend, and me.  We talked and laughed afterwards.  He had a good long conversation with a potential agent.  And we went home.  He mentioned in an email the next day how lonely and solitary is the work of a writer.  And how encouraging it is to share his work with friends who support him.  He wants to share his life and work with others.  That’s why most of us are here.

Our lives are fullest when they’re shared.  And we’re traveling this new road together.  This isn’t a lonely walk.  This is a traveling caravan, full of family and friends and neighbors.  You’ll make it back to Jerusalem and joy, if you make it at all, in the midst of a parade of other pilgrims.  In fact, Isaiah pictures all of nature sharing in this new joy.  The desert will bloom with flowers.  The dry places will run with water.  This highway runs through the desert.  It ends with singing and gladness.  I’m glad we’re on this road together.