In the 3rd Year of the Presidential Term of George W. Bush Baruch, 5:1-9, Philippians 1:1-11, Luke 3:1-6 December 7, 2003, Year C, 2 Advent The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness." We're not talking abstracts here. Except for the historians among us, the names and locations have no significance to us, but the author of Luke emphasizes we are talking about a specific time, a specific place, a specific person. "He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness or sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: '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.'" With all the world around us looking like Christmas, wouldn't it be nice if at church we had a glimpse of the baby Jesus, all wrapped in his swaddling clothes, surrounded by shepherds, singing angels, and adored by his mother? However, Jesus is not even named in today's lukan reading for the second Sunday of Advent. Instead, we get this list of names unknown to most of us and feel as if we are reading a work order to finish the last of the Highway 25 four lane between here and Louisville. Before we can gather around the manger and feel those warm fuzzy nostalgic emotions, Luke invites us to a realization that God called John to proclaim the same message the prophet Isaiah had proclaimed 500 years earlier from Babylon (to be exact from Baghdad). During the Babylonian Empire, when a king would travel to a less-inhabited region, a cadre of royal engineers would prepare the road for the king to pass. They would smooth out the road so that the king's chariot would not get stuck in a rut. They would level out hills and valleys so the journey would not be so treacherous and the king would have safe passage. Isaiah's message was that the world order had changed, and God's emancipated people were to make their way home on paths cut right through the desert's obstacles. We tend to look back at the New Testament era as a sad and depleted time just waiting for a church to be formed. In fact, it was a time of order and predictability, where most had made their peace with Roman oppression and only zealots imagined something else. Religion had becomea self-centered practice of small rituals, where people listened for familiar words and resented anything new, in other words, not that much different than today. Instead of Rome, today America is the major power. Instead of Pharisees, we go to church and mouth the words while hearts yearn to experience the sacred. We, too, have our modern day tax collectors and lepers who know their lives need God's grace but whom we stop at the door. We still seek wealth and ignore the widow and orphan in the street. In our modern world, we have shops that fulfill our every fantasy, we have our children's lives neatly arranged in school and organized sports and arts, we drive home in spiffy cars to large homes with high-tech kitchens and entertainment centers. All the while, we yearn for slower paced lives, where our spacious homes are not empty, children play sports in the yard, to fix up old cars, play people-centered games, weigh less, and do our cooking on skillets passed down to us by our grandmothers. We, as did first century Jerusalem, know something is missing. In to that world, quoting Isaiah, Luke introduces John shattering the world order with his prophetic message. What John was initiating was not a new way to look at old thoughts. He was demanding new thoughts for a new way. John was inviting the very 'Children of God' to see the world in an upside down way. He was telling the 'cleansed' that they still had body odor. John was not just telling them to change paths; he was telling them to change destinations. God still calls prophets. They are never obvious to us. They have included voices like those of St. Francis, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, and Desmond Tutu. They always cause us to feel uncomfortable. They always change the order of things. To the complacent it is a call to bring low the mountains: to let go of our arrogance, to let go our wealth that prevents us from seeing the suffering and serves as an obstacle to God's grace. To the anxious, the suffering, the despondent, it is a call of hope: to allow God's grace to fill emptiness with expectation. For all, it is a call to straighten the crooked path, to allow God into our hearts and then to make a path for the world to better see God. As was John, prophets are never in the center, but always at the edges. If God were to make God's self known from the edges where you live or work, what would it look like? More importantly, if we're trying to find the edge that could reveal God, who do you not look at? From what or whom do you avert your eye? Over Thanksgiving, I was in Austin, where I saw something we seldom see here in Starkville: someone at almost every major intersection with a sign reading, "will work for food." What if rather than looking from the center, we looked to the edges, rather than looking on this man and his sign with disgust or tossing him a coin as we pass, what if we could consider that from the edge, he might help us understand God in a way that we will never be able to do from the center? Are we willing to risk spending time with such a person to find out? Are we willing to risk considering that the one we find the most unacceptable, the one who causes us to feel the least comfortable, the one who changes our order of things could possibly be God's prophet. Are we willing to go into the wilderness, to leave behind the settled world of political order and established religion, and go into that wild place where the word of God can be heard and ask God to help us to discern? This year, like every year, we celebrate that Christ, God as a humble infant, is coming. And, in Christmas, we celebrate the reality that Christ really does come. As in all of our liturgical years, we will soon celebrate the truth of the words that we speak every week in our table celebration: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. However, if Christmas is to be more than gathering with family around the tree to open gifts, if it is to be more than gathering on Christmas eve to feel nostalgic as we sing carols, if Christmas is to transform us, then we must prepare our hearts to encounter Christ in totally unexpected ways and to allow our world order to be unconditionally changed: to straighten and flatten the way and fill potholes in our lives. Christ is coming soon. And, there is work to do. In the third year of the presidential term of George W. Bush, when Ronnie Musgrove is the Governor of Mississippi, and Rowan Williams is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Frank T. Griswold is the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States and Duncan M. Gray, III, is the Bishop of Mississippi, someone is waiting quietly in the wilderness, asking that you allow the valleys of your heart to be filled, your self-centeredness to be leveled, and that you help make the paths of the world straight so that Christ can safely come back and all will see the liberation of God.