Thanksgiving week is normally a time for all of Nancy’s family to gather in Tennessee.  This year, because Nancy’s mother recently had surgery, we stayed home.  However, last Sunday was still a vacation Sunday for us and we had planned to visit our friends at Wilshire Baptist Church.  Just thought you’d like to know that I go to church even when I don’t have to.  But, last Saturday, Nancy came down with a wicked cold so, on Sunday morning, we did something we never do.  We slept in.  I have to tell you, it was wonderful!  I know now why people do that.  I figured I might as well go ahead and ‘fess up.  You’d eventually find out anyway.  What’s the point in hiding?  Somehow or another, mysteriously, the truth always gets out or, in some cases, catches up with us wherever we are. 

That’s one reason John the bug-eating Baptist bugs us.  He ruins the Advent party before it starts by dropping the truth in on us.  One colleague of mine actually refuses to use the lectionary as his preaching guide because he said that he gets tired of running into John the Baptist once a year.  And, it’s not just because John smells like a camel or because of the foul order of his breath caused by eating his low-carb, high protein diet of locusts, but, instead, because of the word of truth that comes out of his mouth.  Before John lets us go to the Advent party, he calls us to Advent repentance. 

Of course, for these people hearing the word of God from John, there wasn’t much of a party going on anyway.  John was preaching “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.”  We’ll run into some of these characters again in the gospel story.  Some of the most ruthless men to ever reign, many of them would help spill Jesus’ blood and John’s, too. 

It would have been a time when it would have been easy for even the most devout to blame their government for all of society’s ills, for its moral and spiritual decay.  With absolutely no concept of the value of the separation of church and state, at the least the Romans among them wouldn’t have exactly been the kind of politicians to rule in favor of letting local judges post granite copies of the Ten Commandments in public buildings.  It’s the government’s fault that our society is so sick, don’t you know, because it fails to help the faith community do its job!  John would eventually get around to challenging the immorality of powerful heads of government only to lose his head over it.  First, however, he went to the lowest places, in “all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” 

The first people to hear what John had to say about getting ready for Jesus were those who thought their spiritual destiny was a birthright.  And, it was not a message about decking the halls with boughs of holly, but, instead, a message of bowing in repentance as a way of personal and social preparation for the coming Lord.  Recalling ancient words of the prophet Isaiah, John modernized the call to repentance for his audience.  “‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

It’s a two-sided sword kind of message.  It cuts one way with hope.  It’s a word of promise that the coming of Jesus certifies God’s commitment to ultimately redeem humanity.  It reaches forward to a time we cannot know now and our imaginations cannot possibly fathom.  “‘All flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”  Those words give me the same goose bumps I get when I hear the Hallelujah Chorus.  I can’t imagine what all that must mean.  What does it mean?  “‘All flesh,’” Isaiah first promised and John repeated.  All of humanity, past, present and future, no social, ethnic, racial or religious boundaries.  “‘All flesh,’” will witness God bringing to completion through re-creation what he started in creation.  What that will mean for any one individual in all of creation we do not know.  What we do know is that no one will miss seeing what God is up to in Christ.  Even Paul later wrote, that eventually, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11, NIV).”

Think of what that means for the oppressed people of the world, the starving people, the people brutalized by man’s inhumanity to man but also people imprisoned in their own sin and depravity and hopeless moral decay.  It’s a time when our faith will be made sight, when we finally know as we are known and the mysteries of evil give way to the reality of eternal hope.  It’s a promise for the hundreds of thousands buried in mass graves by the henchmen of brutal dictators and even for those who were buried with dignity in places like Laureland or Restland.  It’s the promise without which we could not take even one step after we close the grave of someone we loved more than our own life.  “‘All flesh shall see the salvation of God,’” John came preaching. 

That’s only side of the two-edged sword, the one that cuts through sin’s death and hopelessness and despair and poverty and injustice.  Frankly, that’s our favorite part of the Advent story and the one we spend the most time telling.  John has given us another side.  “‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” John said.  Get ready, he was preaching.  Just as there is something God is going to do in the coming of Jesus there is also something we must do to prepare for what God wants to do in our lives.  Get ready! 

In ancient times, when a dignitary would visit a community, all of the people, the rich and the poor, no matter their social status, would prepare the roadway.  The road would be leveled, potholes would be filled in, crooked ways straightened, rough places smoothed out.  The people wanted the blessing of those in power when they came to visit.  They prepared for the king’s coming.  “‘Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.’”  On the turn of a dime, John personalizes this message for his audience, using the promise to spur repentance.

It would seem that there is an element of social consciousness here.  That we should concern ourselves with leveling the ground that all stand on.  That we should be involved in making all of what is good and hopeful accessible to any and all.  There is also something very personal here.  John’s message was a call to personal repentance.  God does call churches and nations to repentance, but true repentance is not something that can be done corporately.  Repentance happens one person at a time as we not only change our minds about the ways we are living that do not honor God, but we actually begin the work of confessing the potholes and crooked places in our ways of living and, in the presence of the living God, make the crooked paths of our lives straight.  That’s what it means to celebrate Advent, to get ready for the coming of our Lord.

I’ve told you more than once that I have done more growing in this past five years in my own spiritual pilgrimage in virtually every area of my life I can name than I have ever done in any other five-year period of my life that I can recall.  And, though it is not the only thing that has spurred that growth, without doubt, one of the most significant things I have come to learn is this.  There is a profound difference between saying we believe in Jesus and actually becoming a follower of Jesus.  Jesus did not call us to just believe in him.  He called us to be his disciples.  A disciple is a follower, a learner.  One who models his life, his attitudes, his behaviors, all of life, after his teacher.  Part of what that means is always looking for the potholes that need filling and the crooked places that need straightening not just in what I believe but in how I actually behave.

The potholes and crooked places are only places where we lurk in the shadows hoping God won’t see those parts of our lives.  This is a call to come out of the shadow places, to be seen for what we are, and get to work on more significant things than hiding from the God who promised never to stop loving us, more significant things like serving him.

What that means for each of us individually is something that we must work out between God and ourselves.  Only we know the shadow places, the crooked places, the potholes in our souls.  What are those places in your life?  What that means for us as a church is another thing.  Like every church, we have potholes and crooked places that need straightening.  Now, this is probably where you’re expecting me to read the list of don’t-drink-don’t-smoke-don’t-chew-and-don’t-go-with-girls-who-do list of things we need to stop doing, right?  Not so fast.

The other day, Michelle Collins, our Minister of Children, looked a little frazzled; I asked her how things were going.  She told me the same story I’ve heard from every staff person or layperson who has ever served our children.  She’s struggling to find volunteers to serve in the nursery during worship on Sunday mornings.  I’d like to think that’s because my preaching is so popular that no one can stand the thought of missing another sermon.  What do you think?  Actually, I’m willing to bet that, when it’s a contest between even the worst sermon in the world and the worst diaper in the nursery, it’s not much of a contest, is it?  Every church I know of has this same dilemma, finding volunteers to care for children.  Why is that?

Michelle says that one of the biggest problems is volunteers who just don’t show up for their assigned time.  They agree to serve and not only don’t show up, they don’t even call to say they won’t be showing up.  Then, Michelle goes out into the highways and byways of Cliff Temple looking for help only to be told, “I’ve already served my time.”  Now again, we are not unlike most churches.  But, we could be.  We should be, shouldn’t we?  Can any of us who call ourselves disciples of Jesus ever truly say of that calling, “I’ve already served my time”?  By the way, it might surprise you to know that this year we’ve spent $4,000 hiring professional caregivers to care for our children on Sunday mornings because too many of us have “already served our time.”  Did you know that?  Do we have some potholes that need filling, some places that need straightening in our church?

This past week, Scott Coleman took Jerry Spivey and me to meet Diane Presley, the pastor of the Oak Cliff United Methodist Church just down the street from us at Jefferson and Marsalis.  The short story I’m going to tell you is actually much longer and started before Diane came just a year and a half ago.  But, Oak Cliff UMC, just ten years older than our church, was in danger of dying.  Though they once had some 3,000 worshippers every Sunday, Diane inherited only 43 active members, most of them well into retirement.  It was a life or death situation.  But, those 43 people decided that this community needed their church.  They didn’t want to die and they came out of retirement.  They started a food pantry in the basement of their 1911 building, funded not by the church budget or any other source, but out of the pockets of the church members themselves who also run the pantry.  They started an after school program for neighborhood children and an all-day summer long Vacation Bible School staffed by scores of students who now come from literally all over the world to intern there.  They’ve opened their building to other non-profit organizations in our community and said “use it up.”  And, the most miraculous thing is happening.  Once they decided that they had not already served their time, the church is being reborn, just down the street from us.  Even though their numbers are still small, as they give themselves away, what they need to keep living and serving just keeps coming to them, seemingly out of nowhere. 

“‘For those who to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it (Mark 8:35),’” Jesus promised.  I’m wondering what it would cost me, and what would come to me out of nowhere, if I took Jesus literally at his word.  As I watched that beehive of activity down the street, I couldn’t help but ask myself, where are the potholes of indifference in my own life?  Where are the crooked places that need straightening?  Where have I turned my back on opportunities of service in God’s kingdom because I felt that I had already served my time? 

That’s the Advent question I find myself facing this year.  And, the second is like unto it.  Where, in my life, do I need to come out of the shadow places only to discover, yet again, how much I am loved and how much God wants me to know the joy of following him, even dying for him, so that I can find the life that only comes to those who are willing to die, like Jesus did, so that God can raise them again to new life?

Where are those shadow places in my life?  That’s the Advent question I’m facing this year.