Clear the road

Zephaniah 3:14-20
Canticle 9
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18

A week ago Friday we had the cable company in to the parish office to upgrade our internet service with some new hardware that is supposed to make everything move faster.  And, as always seems to be the case with these technical improvements, there were unexpected complications.  We came in on Tuesday to find that the Treasurer’s computer, which is plugged directly into the new router, was working just fine, but the computers that connect wirelessly from the other offices were unable to get internet access.  Fortunately, we had Scott the Information Technology guy coming in that day to work on another problem, so while he was at it he managed to straighten out the bugs in the wireless networking. 

At least, that is what we thought he done.  But it turns out one problem still remains, which only became apparent after Scott had gone.  You see, my laptop doesn’t only connect wirelessly with the internet router in the Treasurer’s office, it also connects to a wireless printer on the filing cabinet next to my desk, and while my computer can now communicate quite nicely to the internet, it is somehow no longer on speaking terms with my printer.   Now, I’m no geek, or at least not that kind, but I can sometimes figure these things out on my own, so I gave it a shot.  But after a couple of hours the best I could come up with was the printer’s network configuration utility telling me over and over that my computer and my printer were connected to different networks.  And as many times as I re-tried the process, entering the names of all the different wireless networks that were available, I kept getting the same result.  So I guess we’ll have to get Scott back out here again to see what he can do.

In the meantime, this image of two different, incompatible networks has stuck with me, because that is kind of like what the Gospel of Luke describes at the outset of chapter three.  First, it tells us about the network of political and religious power that dominates the world of the story it is about to tell—the Roman Emperor Tiberius, his governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, the sons of Herod the Great, who are the proxy rulers of the Judean hinterlands, and the High Priests at the top of the temple hierarchy in Jerusalem.  It is an uneasy set of alliances that binds these men together, one that rivalry, ambition, and mistrust continually threaten to break apart, but all of them are, in a sense, on the same wavelength.  They have a common interest in maintaining the network that keeps them in power.

But these political figures are not the main players in the drama that is about to unfold.  Some of them will play minor parts in the story later, but just at the moment they are only here to set the historical stage for John, the son of Zechariah, who has no throne, no territory over which he rules, no place in the structure of empire.  John is out in the wilderness.  But it is out there in the desert that something comes to John that connects him to a network of power and information entirely different from the one we just heard about.   The word of God comes to John, just as it came to Isaiah and the other prophets who were before him, with its revolutionary message to the world.

I don’t know about you, but there are few things that frustrate me more than a computer problem.  It throws off the pace of my working routine, and puts a drain on my productivity.  I want to get it worked out as quickly as possible, and have a hard time concentrating on my other tasks until I do.  But there is no simple fix for the disruption caused by the word of God, no quick resumption of business-as-usual.  Because the message of prophets like John is that we have to repent.  We can’t just get the printer and the laptop talking to each other again, and get back to work.  There’s a stream of data we’ve been ignoring, and people we’ve never heard of, hacking into the system we thought was secure.  They say it’s time to connect to a whole different network, time to make a complete change of plan, because God is on the move. 

God is on the move, and if there’s anything more frustrating than a computer glitch it’s a traffic jam.  We will go miles out of our way, even if takes just as long to get where we’re going, if it means that at least we can keep moving.  And what John the son of Zechariah says is that God doesn’t like traffic congestion either.  God’s not going to put up with lanes closed for road construction, or blocked off for an accident, with cars slowing down to rubberneck at the scene. 

God isn’t planning to take any detours, either.  God is coming, so it’s time to clear the road.  It’s time to fill in the potholes, and shave down the speed bumps, and open the carpool lanes.   Not so that we can go where we want to more quickly and conveniently, but so that God can come speedily to save us.  And when God does come, the prophets say, we’re going to want to be ready, and waiting, to have our heads up and our eyes open and our ears pricked, ready to see the signs and hear the words of our salvation. 

I used to argue for waiting as long as possible to decorate our house for Christmas.  It isn’t a matter of procrastination, but of principle, part of my quixotic quest to preserve the religious calendar, and minimize the intrusion of Christmas into Advent.  I’m also concerned for Christmas itself, that if we bring it on too soon it would go stale before the traditional twelve days of Christmas are done.  But I am outnumbered in this opinion, as in many things at my house nowadays, and either my resistance is wearing down, or I’m just learning to pick my battles.  So yesterday afternoon I went with my family to pick out a Christmas tree. 

I did console myself with a practical rationale, which was this: the trees we usually pick up the weekend before Christmas are all dried out from sitting around the lot so long, so my thinking is that if we get one now, cut a little off the bottom of the stem and kept it watered, it may actually last longer into the Christmas season before it starts turning gray and dropping needles all over the floor.  I guess we’ll see.  And I can report that, in a small victory for my side, we agreed not to decorate the tree immediately.  So for the time being it is standing in its pot of water in the corner of our living room, dark and fragrant, waiting.  Which, as it is, now strikes me as a beautiful symbol of Advent.   So I’m secretly hoping I can stall for a little more time before we pull out the lights and the box of cat toys, otherwise known as ornaments.

But I also have to admit to experiencing something yesterday that took me by surprise, which was that as were out and about getting the tree we saw many other families in the tree lots, doing the same, or driving home with trees in the backs of their trucks or on the roofs of their cars.  And here and there in our neighborhood they were out in their yards, stringing lights on the eaves, and hanging shiny objects on shrubs and doors and fences.  And I had the happy sense of taking part in a collective ritual, two weeks too early though it may have been, a ritual of getting ready.   Which is, after all, what Advent is supposed to be about—getting ready—so I’m not going to say that it’s wrong.

But the prophet in me still does have to ask—what is it we are getting ready for?  Are we simply hanging the scenery, gathering the props, and assembling the costumes, for an annual performance called Christmas, in which we will be the actors and the audience?   If that were the case, would not Tiberius Caesar and Pontius Pilate, Herod, and Caiaphas, feel right at home?  Or are we preparing for something far more beautiful and dangerous, something announced by a strange voice crying out in the wings of the stage—the entrance of God?