Prepare Him Room
Second Sunday in Advent
Week of Monday, December 9, 2002
Lectionary Readings
Isaiah 40:1–11
Psalm 85:1–2, 8–13
2 Peter 3:8–15
Mark 1:1–8
Last week we considered how advent is a time of waiting: waiting
for Christmas, waiting for the return of Christ, and waiting for God's
mighty acts of power in our lives today. This week in advent God calls us
to a second discipline, that of preparation. Mark's Gospel reading this
week is quite interesting when you notice the obvious: he has no birth
narrative with which we might celebrate the baby Jesus but instead begins
with His adult ministry on the shores of the Jordan River. He quotes our
other lectionary text from Isaiah and, as we say in modern parlance, “cuts
to the chase” straight away: “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight
paths for him” (Mark 1:3 = Isaiah 40:3).
Christmas is a season of all sorts of preparations, some
delightful and some onerous. We haul out the decorations and see if the
lights for the Christmas tree will work one more year. I love playing
Handel's Messiah, even though it was written for Easter. My wife always
makes a special sausage ball from a recipe my mother gave us. Each year
our family travels to the mountains to cut a fresh tree. Our children
still enjoy the advent calendar and opening a new window each day. As a
girl my wife always drove to her grandmother's in New York. And on it
goes.
As important and enriching as these traditional Christmas
preparations are, they pale in comparison to the more weighty preparations
to which God calls us. Like what? We can take our cue from John the
Baptizer in our Gospel text this week. What a frightening character he
must have been, living in the desert, wearing camel hair, eating wild
locusts and honey. His stern message matched his severe attire, too, for
John called his listeners to confession and repentance. But this was not
some guilt-inducing self-flagellation. Mark tells us that it was “a
baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin.” Repentance signifies a
change of heart leading to a change of actions. Confession means we say
the same thing about our sin that God does rather than trying to deny or
rationalize it. The goal is God's fatherly forgiveness and embrace, not
gloom, despair, or self-hatred.
Confession and repentance for the forgiveness of sins become
important, according to our lectionary texts, when we consider the brevity
of our lives. Isaiah reminds us that our lives are like dry grass that
withers, like a flower which, however beautiful, fades and dies. Peter
reminds us that in God's perspective a thousand years is no more than a
single day. A friend one remarked, wisely, that our life and good health
is but a temporary condition. I remember how my college students liked to
argue about when Christ would return, to which I assured them that for
everyone in the room “The End Times” would come in 70–80 years. Compared
to eternity, and however long their duration, our lives are as brief as
the morning mist that burns away by noon.
When I was in Oxford this past October I visited the church where
CS Lewis worshipped. Next to the church is a cemetery where Lewis is
buried in the same plot with his brother Warren. On the stone marker
below their names and dates it reads, “Every man must endure his going
thence.” However long our lives, our death is certain. We can prepare
for it now, later, or not at all.
When my father died in 1998, the last few days in the hospital, he
made his amends with each one of us. Most touching of all was a phone call
he made to my mother to whom he was married for 33 years but then divorced
from for 25 years. To his credit he was “preparing the way” and “making
straight his path” through confession and repentance. The sad part, of
course, was that he waited. We need not wait, not should we wait, when we
consider how brief our lives are. At advent God calls us to preparation
by confession and repentance that we might enjoy his fatherly forgiveness
and, by extension, the reconciliation between one another that forgiveness
brings.
Advent preparation by confession and repentance is also important
when we consider that they are not an end in themselves but means to very
good ends. We have already noted that they lead to forgiveness, and that
alone would be reason enough to prepare. But as I read the advent texts
for this week, it is clear that God intends so much more for us when we
present ourselves to him rightly prepared. Talk about a Christmas wish
list; consider these gifts of grace that God wants to give us:
- Comfort us
- Speak tenderly to us
- Bless us doubly for all our sin
- Reward us
- Feed, gather and carry us
- Gently lead us
- Favor us
- Restore us
- Pardon us
- Speak peace to us
- Save us
- Deal patiently with us
In short, God, says the Psalmist for this week, wants to give us
everything that is good for us (Psalm 85:12). Nor is this done in a
corner. Rather, God tells his servant Isaiah to shout it loudly from the
rooftops, to announce it from a high mountain.
This advent season it is almost certain that you will sing the
classic hymn “Joy to the World” by Isaac Watts (1719). As we prepare
ourselves for Christmas, it would be hard to improve upon Watts' powerful
words that summarize the goal of our confession and repentance:
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found.
The last two lines of this verse summarize the entire purpose of
Christmas. Think about it: in the incarnation in which God became a man,
He comes to us to bless us as far as the curse of Adam is found. Whatever
sins, sorrows and thorns infest your ground today, so far and even moreso
does God want to bless you. So, with Isaac Watts, I remind you, “Let
every heart prepare him room.” With the Psalmist I pray, “Show us your
unfailing love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation” (Psalm 85:7).
The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself
Copyright ©2002 by Dan Clendenin. All Rights Reserved.
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