I was on the 405 a few days back, over the Sepulveda pass … where the 405 is being widened … Big machines moving lots of dirt … retaining walls being built … steel and cement for bridges and barriers … so that traffic will flow better on the west side of Los Angeles.
It’s a lot of work to build a road … low places have to be filled in … mountains cut down … uneven ground made level … rough places smoothed out …
Sounds almost biblical, doesn’t it?
Well, it is biblical.
From the prophet Isaiah …
Chapter 40 … the very chapter that Matthew quotes, to describe the work of John the Baptist … a cry to the people, Prepare the way of the LORD, make his paths straight.
Get busy, build roads … build roads for God … build roads for one another … you see those high and rocky places over there? … take ‘em down a little bit … you see those dark and narrow valleys just across the way? … fill them in a little bit … you see all that rough, uneven ground ahead? … smooth it out … make it easier for people to meet God …
I can’t think of a better image to describe the Christian life than road building … that’s what you and I are called to do … build roads in the rough and tumble places of life.
On Thursday, our Presbyterian Women held their annual Christmas Luncheon … with a special guest from the Angel Interfaith Network, the Rev. Ann Mills, who presented to us a certificate of appreciation.
Let me read what was written about us:
“The Deacons, Presbyterian Women and members of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Westchester have assembled and donated hygiene kits in decorative bags, blankets, baby supplies, greeting cards, and funds for food-assistance for Angel Interfaith Network to distribute to patients every year since 1995, under the leadership of the Rev. Frank Marshall, now an Angel Interfaith Network board member.”
Frank Marshall served Covenant for 32 years and is our pastor emeritus.
In other words, road building.
Smooth out the rough places.
Fill in the ditches.
Make life a little easier for folks who are having a hard time of it.
Friday afternoon, I made a pastoral call on a family where there’s been some illness … and when folks are ill, folks are often cold, even when it’s warm … during the course of our conversation, the sweetest thing: they told me of a friend, whom we all know, who knit a cap and sent it to the husband to keep his head warm and to make him feel a little more comfortable.
Yesterday, two memorial services here … for Dr. Ed Ricketts and Richard Brubaker … men who embodied the very best of road building … their careers and their vision and their faith made life a little easier for a lot of people.
But not all roads are built easily.
In Friday’s LA Times, columnist Hector Tobar writes about Orange County in 1947 … the struggle of Latino families for integrated schools … prior to their efforts, Latino children had to settle for separate and often poorly maintained buildings and second-rate programs.
Mr. Tobar writes of brave and loving parents who went to bat for what was right and good.
They confronted school administrators, held community meetings and eventually went to court, and in 1947, they won the case.
Their victory changed education throughout California and impacted the nation.
These parents were road builders for their children.
In the town of Orange, just a block north of the Plaza is an old theater that today houses a religious center. In the 1940s, it was the Orange Theatre.
Whites sat in the orchestra section, Mexicans in the balcony — until a Mexican American soldier returning from World War II refused to obey the rules.
"If you don't move up to the balcony," an usher told him, "I'll have to call my manager."
"I just came from fighting the Nazis," he said. "I'm pretty sure I can handle your manager."
The soldier was a road builder. In the war, he built a road for freedom.
When he refused to sit in the balcony, he built a road for justice.
I think of Rosa Parks, a seamstress on her way home after a long day’s work, who refused to give up her seat to a white man and sit in the back of the bus.
She was tired.
Tired of the humiliation.
And she became a road builder for a new generation of Americans who would no longer sit in the back of the bus, or drink at “colored only” drinking fountains … or be denied a hamburger and French fries at the local lunch counter …
All of these examples, from hygiene kits to the knit cap to the solider home from war - illustrate Isaiah’s image of the road builder … take down the mountains … fill in the low places … make it easier for folks to find their way through life.
As our story goes, John was a man of the wilderness … he wore the clothing of the poor and ate their food … and gained the respect of many.
Folks came out to hear John.
And he baptized them in the Jordan River.
It seems that a lot of people came to see what John was all about … including a good many Pharisees and Sadducees … read: “important people” … dignitaries from Jerusalem … muckety-mucks and big-shots.
They wanted baptism, too … but John doesn’t welcome them … calls ‘em a bunch of snakes, a brood of vipers … what are you doing here? Who warmed you about the wrath of God?
Whoa … “wrath of God”? … when was the last time we heard anything about that?
God is all love, right?
Well, yes, God is all love.
But tell me, is love blind?
Does God not see religion when it has no heart?
Churches that love themselves more than their neighbors?
Does God not see our cruelty and war and oppression and discrimination?
The financial shenanigans of nations and corporations for whom enough is never enough?
Lying and envy and strife and jealousy and quarrels and factions?
Is God’s love blind to all of that?
Of course not!
The wrath of God is God at work in hard places and tough times.
God’s wrath is proof of God’s love … a love that works hard to make all things new … and sometimes things don’t want to be made new; sometimes you and I don’t want to be made new.
The world may need a savior, but the world is often quite content with the way things are; the world has little interest in being saved, especially that part of the world that sits on top of the heap.
John doesn’t mince words.
Nor is John buffaloed by these dignitaries.
He cuts to the chase.
And says to them, Bear fruit worthy of repentance … getting wet in the Jordan isn’t enough … God needs to see something real!
I find myself going back to the letter of James … a small letter with a giant message … worth reading this afternoon.
At the heart of the letter that James wrote is a classic statement we all know: faith without works is … dead … not just injured, or weakened, or tired … but dead … flat-out dead … without a heartbeat or brainwaves … dead as a doornail.
James writes the rest of his letter spelling out what a living faith is all about and coins a powerful definition of real faith: to care for the orphans and the widows in their distress and keep oneself unstained by the world.
And what are the stains of the world for James?
Partiality to the powerful.
Contempt for the poor.
A failure to act out the realities of faith.
A tongue that doesn’t know when to be quiet.
Boasting about our own powers and abilities.
Bad-mouthing others.
Impatience and irritability.
Failure to pray.
Failure to give thanks.
Failure to join with one another in mutual assistance.
A living faith spends a lot of time listening.
A living faith honors all people regardless of their place in life.
A living faith acts out the realities of God’s mercy and God’s compassion.
A living faith restrains the tongue.
A living faith understands that tomorrow is in God’s hands, not our hands.
A living faith strives to be patient in all places and times.
A living faith prays often, gives thanks eagerly, and sustains the fellowship of faith through mutual support and encouragement.
A living faith builds many roads.
Smoothes out the rough places.
Fills in the ditches.
The gospel of Matthew gives us page after page after page of insight into how to build good roads … roads for God … roads for one another.
Because we follow Jesus.
Who builds a road for us.
Jesus takes down the high mountains of religion that human beings love so greatly – the temples and the trappings, the rules and the regulations, the dogma and the doctrine, the pomp and the circumstance, so that we can approach God with ease.
Jesus helps us out of the ditches into which we’ve fallen, ditches we’ve often dug with our own hands, and then fills them in.
Jesus smoothes out the rough places in our soul.
Jesus levels the uneven ground of our confusion.
Clears the way and charts the course.
Come, and follow me!
We follow Jesus on the very road Jesus builds for us.
So we can build roads for others.
Whether it be a hygiene kit, a knit cap, or a stand for social justice.
We build roads.
Prepare the way of the LORD.
Make his paths straight.
Amen and Amen.
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