Preparing the Way

Sunday, December 8, 2024, 2nd Advent – Gospel Luke 3:1-6, also Malachi 3:1-4, Luke 1:68-79, Philippians 1:3-11.

I began this sermon by singing…

“Prepare Ye the Way of The Lord, prepare ye the way of the Lord. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, prepare ye the way of the Lord.”

Who remembers that song? I’m not sure what year I first saw the musical Godspell, but I think I was a young teenager. I’ll never forget when the performers invited audience members to come up on the stage to receive bread and wine (or juice, I can’t remember which). That really made an impression on me. I’m not sure we’d see that in any theatre today.

Godspell opened off Broadway in May of 1971 with music and lyrics written by Stephen Schwartz and the “book” or script by John-Michael Tebelak. I learned as I wrote this sermon that Godspell began as a project by drama students at Carnegie Mellon University.

After its premier in 1971, it became a long-running success, and has been staged by touring companies, community theatres, and churches around the world ever since. An updated version was restaged on Broadway in 2011 and the recording is excellent.

There must have been something in the air in 1971, because it was in that same year that the musical Jesus Christ Superstar opened on Broadway, although the “concept album” of its music had already been successful in both radio airplay and record sales. (I’m old enough to remember when “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” was on popular radio.)Jesus Christ Superstar was written by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, who of course wrote many other wonderful musicals.

While Godspell is based on a series of parables from the gospel of Matthew, Jesus Christ Superstar takes an interesting approach to the story of Jesus, presenting the story from Judas’ perspective in a somewhat sympathetic tone.

Neither show includes a resurrection, and both were surrounded by controversy and attacks from conservative critics. But I love both shows, and they certainly captured the imagination of generations of people. I think that’s something we should pay attention to.

Psychiatrist Carl Jung talked about the kinds of patterns of human life and behavior that are “archetypal,” meaning that they show up again and again, in all times and places. We see an archetypal pattern in the Star Wars movie, where the story follows what Joseph Campbell called the hero’s journey.

Archetypal stories speak to us because they are deeply true. That’s as true of the Jesus story as it is of the hero’s journey, because both share the same life-giving pattern. The reason the story of Jesus has transfixed billions of people for the last 2,000 years is not just because it points to one man who defeats death.

It’s a story that resonates with humans across time and space because it tells us the truth about all of us, that death can never defeat life because life is everlasting.

Jesus dies a criminal’s death, but the darkness cannot hold him, and he rises again to new life, bringing all of us with him into that divine life. It’s a story that tells us that no matter how dark our circumstances are today, a rebirth, new life, is always possible. Not just possible, but after death new life is inevitable.

Redemptive stories never end in the darkness, but always in the light. Maybe John Lennon was right when he said, “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not ok, it’s not the end.”

Yet on the way to that ending when all will be well, we seem to have to move through a lot of pain and refining fire. I’m not saying every painful experience is sent by God or meant for our own good, but I do know that there are times in all of our lives when the dead matter within us needs to be burned away to make space for the life of God.

I mentioned this in our Wednesday service. That God will always come. Even when we can’t perceive God, God is here.

But if we have no space within the manger of our hearts for God to be born within us, God helps us clear that space.

It’s the clearing of space within us, or the burning away of what keeps us from God, that is the repentance that John speaks of at the Jordan River. The word translated in the Bible as repentance in Greek is metanoia, and it means to change one’s mind, to change one’s perspective. In a psychological sense, it can point to the experience of a psychological “breakdown” and the positive re-building or healing that follows.

But here’s the thing. We can’t heal or save ourselves. That’s the human condition. We aren’t capable of being righteous on our own. We rely on God’s help and grace – or refining fire – to save us.

And it’s not our repentance that activates God’s coming. As Melinda Quivik writes, “The primary action is God’s.” But our repentance – our minds and hearts being changed and refined through fire and washer’s soap – prepares us for God’s coming.

In our gospel message, Luke writes,
‘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.’ ”

All flesh shall see the salvation of God.

Not just some flesh. Not just Christian flesh. Not just well-behaved flesh. Not just educated flesh. All flesh. As Paul also writes, “God will be all in all.” And it’s the refining that prepares the pathway for that union.

Can we open our minds and hearts to being changed? Are we willing to ask that that change come quickly, come now? I think we must. If we want to be part of what God is doing, then we can’t wait. We must only hold to the promised that God will complete the good work begun in us.

Sing with me of hope and faith.

“Prepare Ye the Way of The Lord, prepare ye the way of the Lord. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, prepare ye the way of the Lord.”