December 9, 2012 – Baruch 5:1-9; Luke 3:1-6
Baruch 5:1-9; Luke 3:1-6
The Journey Home
Second Sunday of Advent – December 9, 2012
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
When I was going to university in Regina and I wanted to get home for Christmas to
where my parents were living in British Columbia,
I’d have to drive over the mountains and through valleys,
in some treacherous road conditions.
I would often do in one stretch in the interests of both time and money,
about a 17 hour drive in my mighty ’66 Valiant.
Those were the days!
How much nicer it would have been if all those mountains had been levelled and
those valleys filled in.
The prophet Baruch this morning addresses the people of Judah who are in exile in
Babylon in the 6th century B.C.
But the prophet promises restoration and a return home from exile.
From slavery they will emerge as free,
and from destruction and war they will enter justice and peace.
God will prepare a way for them, and God will make it easy:
mountains will be made low and valleys filled in:
God will bring them home and God will lead the way.
God will lead the way from and through wilderness to home:
this is the promise and it is full of hope.
600 years later, John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, quotes Isaiah’s version of these words.
John is here declaring his intention: he is announcing that God is going to act decisively to
bring the people home from their exile.
John is announcing that God is about to lead the people on a great journey,
the greatest journey of their lives, the journey home to their intention as God’s people.
Even though the people are not literally in exile, they are living as exiles in their own land.
Under the seven people named at the beginning of this passage,
they have not become who God intends them to become.
Luke names the political and religious rulers in his introduction not just to situate John in time,
but to show that the way of God he points to will be in contrast to the way of these rulers.
These were not good rulers: they were ruthless, corrupt big deals whose concern was more often
their own welfare rather than the people’s.
And into the mess these human political and religious rulers have made,
the word of God comes to . . . none of them.
The word of God that seeks to change everything comes to a seemingly unhinged nobody
named John in a crazy nothing place called the wilderness
in the middle of exactly nowhere.
In the midst of seemingly insurmountable problems of violence and inequality and
injustice and poverty and hunger created and maintained by powerful people backed by
religion and the military, God’s world changing begins through two
insignificant cousins from backwater Nazareth traipsing through Galilee.
Uh-huh. Right.
As the Lutheran professor of preaching David Lose notes,
This is the way it is with the Gospel – it seems so small it’s easy to miss. More than that, God’s mercy comes disguised in human weakness – two vulnerable children who will grow up to change the world. (http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=646)
God, John announces, is going to lead you home.
Home to what you were meant to be:
an alternative community of justice-doing and peace-making and manna-sharing.
Through the one who is coming,
God is going to lead you from the exile of who you were not meant to be to
the home of who you are meant to be.
God is going to change everything and everyone through the one who is coming.
The things that are ruling now will not always rule.
They will come to an end.
Even they will be changed.
The change begins in the wilderness.
The wilderness where the people first learned about what it meant to live in God’s way as
God’s people.
In confirmation class we call this “Wilderness School.”
Wilderness School is where the people learned that everything – like the manna they received –
is a gift of God and that it is meant to be shared equitably for everyone’s benefit.
Wilderness School is where the people learned that the true meaning of life is to be found in
relationships of friendship: friendship with God, friendship with one another,
friendship with nature.
Upon graduation from Wilderness School, the people walked through the River Jordan
led by God to a home where they could live what they’d learned in the wilderness.
But by the time John came along, the people had for long been in exile from this intention,
from the dignity of being God’s partner people.
It is out of this exile John calls the people this morning.
He calls them to the wilderness to re-school them, to change what they care about.
That’s what the word “repentance” really means: to change what you care about.
The people commit themselves to changing what they care about and
coming home to God’s intention for them by wading through the water and
making a new start, free from the slavery to their former rulers.
The change begins in the wilderness, but it leads home, home to God’s reign of
friendship, and beauty, and care for the earth, and care for the vulnerable:
it leads home to mercy.
Through John, God wants to prepare a way for the people out of the exile they’re in.
Were John to come this morning,
he would still find us in exile from so much that God hopes for us.
But this morning, through these words, God has a great hope he wishes to give to you.
If you’ve found your way here today, there’s a stirring in you,
a stirring for home, a stirring for God’s reign of mercy,
a recognition that this world is in exile from its true intention and that
we are often complicit in this intention.
A recognition that we desperately want we care about to be changed so that
we can now be the change John was.
And you can be: remember that in the midst of seemingly unchangeable circumstances
held in check by apparently powerful rulers, God is at work in the weak and vulnerable.
I know that your own exiles – for you or for those you love – are profound and real:
poor health, addiction, emotional drainage, depression, loneliness, grief, financial
difficulty, feeling lost at school, drained by family, overwhelmed by work.
These powers can feel like they are ruling.
But they are not what you were made for.
You were made to be part of a community of joy and thanksgiving,
a community of grace and mercy and life and generosity and sharing.
You were made to be part of a salvation and a home-coming that everyone – all flesh – shall see.
God wants to lead you out of the exile you’re in into something
grander, larger and more beautiful: you have begun a great journey,
the greatest journey of your life, the journey home.
Baruch’s words and John’s words promise warmth in the depth of winter; return for the lost;
renewal for the defeated. (G. Lee Ramsey Jr., New Proclamation:Year C 2013, Advent through Holy Week, 10)
God wants to lead us home. And God has already made a beginning.
See God’s salvation now:
Home is food bank: anyone who’s come can tell you that.
Home is where the Christmas Hampers are put together.
Home is where Palm Cross rehearsed and performed,
sharing their gifts freely for your delight and pleasure.
Home is making and serving home-cooked meals for our neighbours in the West End.
Home is sharing God’s peace together and wishing one another shalom.
Home is binding our voices together in sung thanksgiving.
Home is sharing the bread of manna and the wine of mercy with one another.
Home is where you have brought those from the exile of refugee status in Africa,
making low the mountains of bureaucracy and the valleys of distance and hopelessness.
God has led us all home here, where he reigns in mercy, where mercy has made a home.
Our exiles from God’s intentions in mercy are not ultimate.
Our exiles will pass.
God will make a way.
In Advent, the waiting can seem hard.
The way can seem difficult.
The good news is, as pastor Craig Barnes has written, all of the roads belong to God.
The truth is, Jesus can use any road to bring us home.
God can even use the wrong roads to take us to the right places.
(quoted by Dan Clendenin at http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20121203JJ.shtml)
God can even use you.
For the same Word of the Lord that came to John and changed so much –
that same word comes to you: you have been called from exile,
through the waters, to this congregation where God seeks to home,
among you, in this people.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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