Luke 3:1-6
December 10, 2000
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
“Prepare the way of the Lord!” shouts John the Baptist. On this second Sunday of Advent, we are awakened with hopeful images of what is to come.
Our lesson for today tells of a specific time in history when the word of God came to the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. The wilderness was a stark and inhospitable desert along the Jordan River. It’s the territory through which the Israelites wandered on their journey from Egypt to the promised land. It’s a land full of dangers from hostile people, wild beasts, and the constant scarcity of food and water. But it was here in this wilderness where the faith of God’s people is tested. Imagine what it was like for John to be preaching about a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
“Prepare the way of the Lord!” is still the message for today. But after 20 centuries of proclaiming this message and two thousand Advents, how are we to prepare for the coming of the Lord when we have felt disappointed?
John came preaching to the people, urging them to prepare themselves, to have their sins forgiven. What would it take for us likewise to be prepared? It might be that we have lacked the eyes to see God’s divine intrusions among us. It might be that we are near-sighted, whose span of vision is too narrow and too close to our chests. Is our world like a wilderness of danger and threats that have frightened us to a point that we can’t imagine God’s presence in the world. Perhaps we are the ones unable to comprehend the width and breadth of God’s embrace on us. Perhaps God has been with us all along but we were unable to see him.
More Data
Today we live in a world preoccupied with computers that convince us that we have a scarcity of facts. Out in that mystery world of the web, we surf for information and for more data to feed our minds with facts to believe in. Sometimes we think that if we can find it on the web than it must be truth.
We say, “We need more data.” Isn’t that what Vice President Gore’s team is saying before the courts about the Presidential Elections this year? “We are waiting for more data to come in before making a final decision.”
We don’t need more data. We have more facts than we can possibly consume. What we are dying of is a lack of dreams, a lack of imagination. No computer can give us that. Computers may be able one day to speak, even to think. But no computer will ever be able to imagine.
Remember the old TV police show, Dragnet? In the words of Joe Friday, “Just the facts ma’am, just the facts.” As modern people we like our reality straight up, unadorned, just the facts.
So at Christmas time, no wonder we become suspicious of the claims of Christmas angels, expectant virgins, and songs in the night. We are rational, analytical, skeptical people—wanting more data from the computer before we can believe. But, I’m wondering if it’s more truthful to say that we are the ones who are limited. I’m wondering if we have a far-too-limited idea of what facts are.
Funds the Imagination
Some of you here play golf. You might say that it is the most engaging, fascinating sport played by humanity. You say “In one stroke I can get this little white ball from 400 feet away into this cup buried in the grass.”
I, for the life of me, can’t see it. As golfers you would say to me that I can’t accept this fact because I’m not a golfer or English where the game was invented. And that I have been corrupted by tennis, and that I have had a limited experience.
When I say to my golfing friends, “Sorry, I just can’t see it,” there’s much truth in that. I can only live in a world that I can see. I can only believe that which I conceive. Seeing happens before we can believe.
If we limit truth to only the things that we can see, then we are limiting our understanding of the width and breadth of God’s embrace of us.
When we read the Scriptures today, it fed our imagination.
“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.”
When we allow our imagination to interpret this passage, these images penetrate our consciousness. We begin to believe them to be reality.
“Faith,” says the theologian James Whitehead, “is the enduring ability to imagine life in a certain way.”
Every morning, I open the San Francisco Chronicle with my bowl of cold cereal and a banana and read the black marks on the pages. These black marks take me to Tallahassee, Florida to Wall Street, New York to Jerusalem to Mexico City. We say that they are just words. Just images. But such images make the world. Remember how seasick you felt when you read Moby Dick?
When we come to church we gather to listen to the Bible. The Bible is a book that proclaims a reality that can fill our lives with truth to live by. And particularly during this time of Advent, the Bible keeps trying to pry us loose from our tight grip on the data and facts that we can see and taste and smell and push us to stand on our tiptoes as we greet God.
The newspapers on a daily basis remind us of the humdrum world in which we normally make our way. We read about the poor, unmarried moms and their babies facing bleak prospects. The December heavens stay dark and damp. Christmas carols arrive via the FM radio interspersed with Billy Joel, not by angels. And God seemingly stays safely aloof from the world.
But here in church, particularly in December, our otherwise thin imaginations get assaulted, funded, stoked, poetically pushed by a much richer image than what is offered in the San Francisco Chronicle.
“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.”
Here at church, we will load you down with images that will enrich your thoughts, broaden your limited idea of what can be.
Will My Cancer Be Healed?
I’m saying all of this because I expect that there are a number of you here this morning who are asking yourselves questions like, “Will my cancer heal?” “Will this Christmas be a time to be reminded once again about the divisions within my own family, or might it be a time to heal those divisions?” “Can I wait to make some difficult decisions about my future until after the holidays?”
In Luke 13:10-17, Jesus comes upon a woman who has been crippled for 18 years: “She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.” Jesus invites her to stand up straight, and he lays his hands on her. Her social context, the reality that she has lived with is to be crippled, dysfunctional, and worthless. Moreover, she had come to accept the debilitating condition for life.
When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” The words of Jesus enabled the crippled woman to imagine and believe that she is healed. Immediately, she stood up straight and began praising God.
Jesus didn’t just see a crippled woman, but he renames her as “a daughter of Abraham” and imagined her differently from what others thought about her.
And even when the leaders of the synagogue accused Jesus of violating the law of healing on the Sabbath, Jesus did not allow this set realty of that day stop him from seeing this woman as a child of God. Scripture says that when Jesus said this, all of his opponents were put to shame.
People will tell you to “fact the facts.” But you wonder. People reassure you, but you are not sure.
We shouldn’t be surprised at this time of the year that children seem more attune to the claims of Christmas than adults. It isn’t because children are ignorant or haven’t yet got clear in their young brains what is “real” and what is not. It’s because children are not yet confined within the narrow restraints of officially sanctioned “reality.” For them, the world is a backdrop for their imagination, a stage on which they can be super heroes if they have a towel to drape over their shoulders. They are astronauts if you gave them a cardboard box. They notice possibilities and connections in the world the rest of us miss.
We ask ourselves at what age does the world cease being thick with potential and we demand more facts and data before we can move on.
Halo Costume
There is a medieval legend about a man who was decadent and irresponsible in many ways but who had enough grace in him to want to be good. He went to a costume maker who gave him a costume to wear—complete with a halo wired on his head. As the man walked down the street he was tempted to act and react in his normal, shiftless way—but then he remembered the halo on his head.
So he decided to act differently: He gave money to a beggar on the street. He treated his wife well. He refused to cut corners at work. Eventually he returned the halo costume—but as he was leaving the costume shop he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror—and he saw a permanent halo glowing above his head!
It seems that he had become what he did—that his repentance had made possible God’s forgiveness and transformation in his life. By turning around and imagining what it means to have a halo on his head changed this man permanently in a new direction for his life.
Imagine the Way of the Lord
John’s prophetic message for us today is just as relevant as it was when he preached in 2000 years ago. When we hear him say,
“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.”
our imaginations are ignited, funded, stoked, and charged up.
Faith is the enduring ability to imagine life in a certain way. In faith, we can imagine a world that warring nations would stop hurting each other because every valley shall be filled and every mountain shall be made low.
In faith, we can imagine the diseases that attack our bodies will be eradicated because the crookedness of suffering will be made straight and our rough lives made smooth.
In faith, we can imagine the divisions in relationships that left us bent over for many years will be reconciled because Jesus will lay his hands on us and help us to stand up straight with mutual respect.
In faith, we can imagine the quagmires of tough decisions become untangled because the way of the Lord is straightforward and all of us will see the salvation of God.
People will still tell you to “face the facts.” “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.” But you wonder. People will still reassure you, but you are not sure.
But imagine this. In this season of Advent, a poor woman named Mary breaks into a song. A baby cries in the barn out back. Herod the king gets nervous.
Why not try to remember the days when you ran around the house with a towel on your back imagining that you were Superman or Wonder Woman.
Imagine having a halo wired over your head, And everyday of your life on this earth, you are on your tiptoes greeting the grace and mercy of God in your life.
So today, with hope in our hearts, we can imagine a whole new world. In faith, imagine tomorrow not closed but open to the breaking in of a living God. Imagine your life caught up in something bigger than you. Imagine our Lord is coming into our world with the power of love to heal you and me. Imagine and prepare the way of the Lord!
Let us pray.
Gracious and loving God, we thank you for the ability to imagine a whole new world when you will reign over us and that all hardships, sufferings, disagreements, and conflicts will be no more. Come into our lives today and lead us to believe in the miracle of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Let us prepare the way of the Lord. Amen.