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It probably started mainly because of drought. A desert-like drought has gripped the foothills and mountains from the golden corner of upstate South Carolina over the borders of North Carolina and Georgia, across the Appalachians and over the Tennessee line, well into the state. Atlanta saw the worst of it last summer, and after a few years the lack of water has taken its toll. This week heavy rains began to fall, and after even moderate drought for so long, all those inches of water pouring over the rocky mountain terrain was enough to wash loose chunks of boulders and earth.
If you were driving on I-40 this week between Asheville and Knoxville, you might have been in the right place at the right time to see it: the giant rock slide which resulted, hurtling tons of rocky debris down the side of the mountain, taking with it trees and vegetation. It has totally closed the interstate to traffic for all of the advent and Christmas seasons, to be sure. Like those visiting wise men, you will need to go over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house by another route this year.
When we read again these words which have been repeated throughout the Old Testament and are presented to us twice in our lection today, we might recall the lovely solo sung by a deeply beautiful male voice in Handel's Messiah. The serene and gorgeous music provides an unforgettable image of the prophetic words, "every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill be made low, the crooked shall be made straight, the rough places shall be smoothed, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." It is a satisfying image. It is exceptionally beautiful music. It is a lovely picture.
But as one look at the I-40 rockslide will make clear to us, what actually must happen to move earth like that is horrible upheaval. It is the trauma of bulldozers, earthquake tremors, floods of biblical proportions, tsunamis, avalanches and rockslides. So when you think of the place where these lines originally appear in the canonical order of our scripture, Isaiah 40, you might just as well think of I-40, too. Because the same kind of earth-moving that produced the Great I-40 Roadblock of 2009 is what it takes to produce the Isaiah 40 smoothed pathway in the desert, a highway for our God. That kind of smoothed, easily traversed passage doesn't just happen by itself! It takes great effort. Just ask the engineers who are stroking their chins trying to figure out how to clear the interstate.
The first person who used these words after the writer of Deutero-Isaiah was the secretary and amanuensis of Jeremiah, a man whose name derives from the same Hebrew word as the name of the American president: Baruch. Our passage is attributed to Baruch, writing during the Babylonian exile, sending a message back into Jerusalem. At the end of this message some Bibles have attached a letter from Jeremiah himself.
The writer uses these beautiful images to assure those still in Jerusalem that God is going to forgive them, and will bring their exiled sisters and brothers back into the holy city on those aforementioned straightened and smoothed paths. They will live to see the glory of God, and their enemies will see the glory of God's people, too, because God will restore justice to them. Those armies of Nebuchadnezzar don't stand a chance against that. Their name will be called "peace of righteousness, and glory of godliness." Peace and justice go together. This gives us a glimpse of the real meaning of those words of Deutero-Isaiah.
Now skip about five centuries to another place where the writers of scripture have used Isaiah 40: when John the Baptist is being introduced from out of the desert as a prophet. John himself was not a smooth-looking, TV anchorman sort of guy. He didn't own a razor or nail clippers, and he was accustomed to life in the desert cave areas of the Qumran and Essene communities, places that look a lot like the caves where Osama bin Laden has been hiding for the last decade. If you've ever been on an extended camping trip then you can imagine the unrefined way John presented himself all of the time. When he started preaching, he was a big draw, just because people wanted to look at him. After they heard what he was saying, they got even more interested.
At the time John began to preach repentance and baptism, the rulers of the regions of Palestine and the Pax Romana had been in place for some time. Luke takes great care to give very explicit information to his readers about the rulers of the day. In fact, scholars can date the baptism of Jesus more precisely than just about anything else in all the gospels due to the information given here by Luke about those office holders. So maybe we should pay attention:
It was in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, who succeeded Augustus as sole emperor on Aug 19, AD 14, and reigned until AD 37, even though he spent these last years in semi-retirement on the lovely island of Capri. It is good to be king, always has been, always will be. So the 15th year of his reign is the year AD 28-29, and since the writer of Luke used a Syrian method of calendaring, we can put Jesus' baptism toward the end of the year 27, at the beginning of year 28.
While he was living the high life on Capri, Tiberius' affairs of state were in the hands of an unscrupulous guy named Sejanus, until about AD 31. Pilate was prefect of Judea from AD 26 to 36. Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, was tetrarch over Galilee and Perea for over a third of a century, from 4 BC to AD 39.
Next Luke identifies the religious rulers of Palestine. Annas was high priest from AD 6 to 15. His dominance and scheming family insured the appointment of his sons and son-in-law, Caiaphas, who was high priest for almost two decades, from AD 18 to 36 (The Jerome Bible Commentary, 44:45-47, p. 126-7).
Why does Luke give us these exquisite details? He wants us, or really his original readers, to remember the oppression of these people, and to recognize the dismal picture he is painting! He sets a brooding, scary stage for his story. These were not names of great heroes of the common man. These folks ruled with an iron fist and a sharp sword.
And onto this brooding, rocky, oppressive stage of upheaval and misery, John strides fresh from the wilderness in his smelly, leather-belted camel hair cloak, and with grasshopper breath, speaks his real message: the words of Deutero-Isaiah, the words of Baruch, the Messiah words we can all hum the tune of thanks to our pal G. F. Handel:
What makes everybody see salvation is… path-straightening. The thing that will save you is …filing and smoothing where the rough edges are. The savior is the one who … fills up the holes and planes off the sharp peaks.
What in the heck does that mean? Well, John's original congregation could think of some things. They lived lives of injustice, poverty, oppressive lawmakers, unfair hiring practices, famine, inequitable trade regulations, war and rumors of war, disease, un-checked crime, and absolutely lousy highway maintenance.
When they heard John's preaching, they heard something revolutionary for them. This guy was advocating Isaiah 40 upheaval. He and his God understood what they really needed, and he was saying that relief and salvation were coming. I bet they were motivated to help it along.
When we hear John's words, some of us are in the congregational group who hear them as relief. But some of us are part of the problem; there are some ways we participate in building the rocky road that makes life harder for everybody else.
So use this week of advent to examine what you are doing that could use some I-40- type straightening out. How can you be a more just person? Can you be a listener to your children, a comforter to your spouse, a forgiver to your friends? Can you be less selfish, and give more money to the offering plate, more time to the Boys & Girls Home, more attention to the people in our current culture who are neglected and marginalized?
What about the groups in which we operate: how do they keep highways crooked for their own benefit, rather than filling potholes and easing sharp corners for the sake of somebody else? In church, is there one way you could make a different choice about something, so that it favors outsiders instead of insiders?
When we make big decisions, or small ones, what effects do they have on people who can't afford to bear any more burdens, whether it is emotional, physical, financial or social? How do our decisions fill valleys and bring mountains low, or do they do just the opposite?
We light a candle of peace today for advent. Luke's message today, brought on the grasshopper breath of John the Baptizer, is that it is justice that brings peace. Help to bring salvation closer, and become a part of John's congregation of I-40 path-straighteners in every way you can imagine. Gentlemen and gentlewomen: watch for falling rocks, and start your bulldozers.
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