God’s DOT Chief

Dec. 10, 2006
Rev. David C. Huffman
Luke 3:1-6

I think most people in the Triangle are road weary these days. Since I moved to Raleigh in 1981 the DOT has constantly been building new roads and widening old ones to accommodate the 175,000 people who have moved here, bringing their cars and trucks with them. Every morning for the past two years I have driven down 540 East to Triangle Town Blvd. and watched with keen interest the progress, or lack of it, as they have worked on the next link of 540 to US 64 east. In September I heard that it was going to open it in November; in October I heard it was going to open in December; in December I heard it was going to open in January. No wonder we are road weary.

Anyone who uses I-40, the Beltline, or any major artery at rush hour knows how important good roads are in getting people from point A to Point B without an ulcer or road rage. Roads are essential to economic progress and to civilization. The Romans learned this, and their extensive road system was the backbone of the Pax Romano that lasted for centuries. My father’s first job was with the DOT, then called the Highway Commission, and that was when North Carolina was called the Good Roads State. He used to say that our state had more miles of state maintained roads than any other state in the country. I wonder why they dropped that slogan. Maybe because we seem to have forgotten how to pour concrete.

I

This morning’s gospel lesson from Luke talks about good roads too. Our passage introduces John, whom God had called as the last of the Hebrew prophets to prepare the way for the arrival of the Messiah. After clearly locating John in secular history with great detail, Luke plants John firmly in the midst of the prophetic tradition of Israel with a familiar quotation from Isaiah: “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth …”

This sounds like a page out of Civil Engineering 101 from NCSU. This is road building language. When you build a highway for high speeds, the road bed needs to be level and straight with as few curves as possible. So the hills in the way have to be lopped off and the valleys filled with dirt in order to make a straight, level highway. This of course is why roads take so long to build; moving all that dirt takes heavy equipment, and lots of personnel and time. So, God called John to prepare the way for Jesus by building him a road. He didn’t do it with bulldozers and motor graders. He did it by going out into the desert far away from the hubbub of the big cities, living very simply and dedicating his time to preaching a baptism of repentance. Like wild fire, the word went out and thousands of people left the city and went out into the wilderness to hear John, and they repented and were baptized.

In a way they went out into the wilderness to watch John build a road. For John would later tell them that he was not the one the prophets had promised to send to redeem Israel and restore her fortunes, the one whose sandals he was not worthy to kneel down and untie. He was merely the forerunner, the advance person, the warm-up act. When we go to see some big name band at the RBC center or Walnut Creek, the main act doesn’t come on at the beginning and start playing. A warm-up band of lesser talent and fame plays to warm up the crowd and to build anticipation for the main act. So John said, “I am not the one to come; he will come after me.” Gabriel had earlier told John’s father-to-be, Zechariah, that his son “will turn many sons of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” So John was the road builder, the one God sent into the wilderness to prepare the way for the Messiah. Fred Craddock notes that whereas Mark takes three verses to prepare his readers for the appearance of John, and Matthew takes 48; Luke takes 134 verses (Luke, A Bible Commentary for Preaching and Teaching, Fred B. Craddock, John Knox Press, 1990, p. 45). He wants to make sure that his readers know what’s at stake and that John didn’t just show up one day out of the blue but was sent by God to fulfill the ancient prophecy regarding the advent of the Messiah.

Each of the four gospel writers paints his own unique portrait of Jesus. Luke shows a Messiah who loved everyone, rich and poor alike, but he had a special regard for those on the bottom rung of society, those who been relegated as outcasts and left out and left behind by those on higher rungs. So Luke quotes the last part of Isaiah’s vision of the mission of the Messiah, which the other gospels writers leave out: “and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” According to Jesus, the scope of God’s love was universal; it was offered to the whole world. He agrees with John that God so loved the world – not just Israel or the elect – that he gave his only son so that whoever believes shall not perish but have eternal life. This theme runs throughout the book of Luke. He will not let us circumscribe or reduce God’s universal love for all of his people. We Presbyterians, who were once known for our attachment to the doctrines of election and predestination, ought to read Luke’s gospel more often.

II

Let’s get back to the notion of John as road builder and warm-up act. The Messiah, for whom John is to build a road and prepare the people for his arrival, is so important and pivotal for human history, that the church has set aside two long periods of time to celebrate his arrival and his departure. The first is called Advent, which means, coming, and lasts for a month, and the second is Lent, which literally means lengthen, referring to the lengthening of the days in the spring, lasts for six weeks. They are both designed to build anticipation in Christians for these holidays. The birth and death/resurrection of Jesus are so important that we spend a great deal of time in prayer, study, and worship getting ready for them so we don’t miss their significance. So, when we ask, “Are you ready for Christmas?” these days, sadly, we only mean have you put up your tree, decorated your house and yard, and bought and wrapped all the Christmas presents, when we should mean have you prepared room in your hearts and lives for receiving the Christ child, or have you reflected on what it means that the one and only living God decided to take on flesh and live in our world so that we could be forgiven of our sins and be reconciled with God.

Oh, you mean that religious stuff? One of our members went to the post office last week and asked for some Christmas stamps. The clerk asked, “Do you want religious or secular stamps?” She was taken aback by the question and said she thought Christmas was a religious holiday. She went on to say “that’s like me asking for some non-religious Chanukah stamps!” You go girl! I tell you, the Grinch hasn’t stolen Christmas from the church; our culture has. And you and I are not immune from being sucked into the Giant Madison Avenue and Wal Mart Christmas machine. This is his birthday, and we need to get serious about how we celebrate it. John said, “repent and be cleansed from your old ways.” He told the people to share their clothing and food with those who had none and to go the extra mile to help their neighbors. And he got so popular and told God’s truth so convincingly that Herod was threatened and threw him into jail, and eventually executed him.

III

And of course something very similar happened to Jesus three years later. Seems to me that the Bible teaches that those who take a stand for what is right and good in the sight of God end up getting persecuted by people with power and influence. Some historian once said that the first casualty of war is truth. And we could add to that politics. What I have been trying to say to you for the past two weeks, and really for the past 25 years, is that it is a shame that we have let our culture steal Christmas from us. It’s almost like the postal clerk’s question, “Do you want a religious or a secular Christmas?” I’m afraid that little by little we have surrendered to those who profit from a secular celebration of Christmas, which has diminished its spiritual significance. Do you remember those old TV commercials produced by the SPCA? Everyone is crowded around the Christmas tree in the warm living room having a wonderful time on Christmas morning while the family dog is forgotten and chained to stake outside in the cold. It tended to pull at our heart strings. I have this image of Christmas morning in America of all the family gathered around the Christmas tree opening gifts and having a wonderful time, while Jesus is standing out in the cold looking in at what is supposed to be his birthday party! What’s wrong with this picture?

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