As we enter the second Sunday of Advent, we hear the voice in the wilderness, the prophetic voice of Isaiah, not just once, but twice in the first lesson and the gospel reading. “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Make his paths straight.” St. John the Baptizer continues the prophetic tradition handed down from Isaiah as he becomes the only voice in the wilderness in Jesus’ time. St. Mark describes St. John the Baptizer as an ascetic who seems quite eccentric. He doesn’t eat typical food. He doesn’t dress like regular people in his time. He is clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He eats locusts and wild honey. What a strange, bug-eating, hairy prophet he is!
So as the prophetic voice in the wilderness, what is St. John’s message? He proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. This is how he prepares the way of the Lord. He prepares himself by living as an ascetic whose only interest is to glorify God. He prepares people around him. He teaches them to repent and baptizes them with water at the Jordan river for the forgiveness of sins. This theme of preparation in St. John’s case is very fitting in this season of Advent. As St. John prepares the way of the Lord, we too prepare the way of the Lord into our hearts. We also prepare the way of the Lord into our world. This morning I want us to pay attention to the biblical image of preparing God’s coming in the first lesson from the Book of Isaiah. It is strictly agricultural as if this preparation work is that of a farmer or a gardener. The work starts in the wilderness in the desert. Every valley, every low area of land between hills or mountains is to be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low. The uneven ground becomes a flat and even surface without slopes or bumps, and the rough places a plain. We can easily imagine a gardener cultivating the ground. Now in a way, we are like this gardener in this Advent season. We don’t have to go far to look for this wilderness in the desert to flatten all the bumpy, rocky, and thorny grounds. We just have to look into our hearts. The prophetic voice takes us to the ground of our hearts, particularly the desert place. How does the ground of your hearts look like? What do you see in the garden of your soul? Do you see dark valleys between high mountains and hills? Do you see weeds tangled and nettled on uneven grounds? Looking into your own hearts, do you sense anxiety or fear? What about envy, rage, or greed? Any hatred towards yourself and others? What about pride that you feel more important and superior to others? Or even a false humility that you feel less important and inferior to others? These are mountains and hills that need to be lowered. These are valleys that need to be lifted up. This season of Advent is not just the time of waiting for the coming of God in Jesus of Nazareth. It is also the time of preparing our hearts as we go deep down to the wilderness in the desert place in our hearts that we want to avoid. This image of gardening is not something totally new to us. Think about the garden of Eden. We encounter Adam and Eve who are tempted to become like God, completely forgetting that they are already like God, created in the image of God. The desert place of their hearts change the garden of Eden to a place where they have to labor to sustain their lives. I invite all of us to visit your desert in your hearts. With what wrong perception about yourself, your self-image, who you truly are, do you torture yourself? With what kind of prejudices do you judge your neighbors? With what kind of high standards do you reject others or yourselves? Another prophet Hosea from the Hebrew Scripture proclaims, “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.” (Hosea 10:12) All these mountains of prejudices and hatred are to be lowered where as all those valleys of self-hatred, false humility, fear and anxiety should be lifted up. When this preparation takes place with the help of the Holy Spirit, what we see is an “open place.” (Ps. 18:20) This place in your heart becomes a sacred place where the glory of God is revealed, the place where we see the coming of God in Jesus of Nazareth. This plowing work of our hearts is repentance, which means a change of heart, turning towards the coming of God in Jesus. Wendell Berry, a novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer, said, “A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.” He’s talking about the meaning of gardening and its social and communal benefit to the entire world. Well, I can also say the same thing about gardening one’s soul. A person who is cultivating the garden of his soul spiritually, is improving a piece of the world. And of course, this leads to social justice and peace in our world. When the reform of our hearts truly happens, our social involvement also changes. In this Advent season, we are called to prepare the way of the Lord like St. John the Baptizer. At the same time, we should remember that the Way is already in our hearts. The way, the truth, and the life has already come to us. The ground of all our desert places in our hearts is grounded in the love of God. The purpose of our spiritual gardening is to see our God seeking us and to experience being sought by God in Jesus Christ. The hymn #689 in the 1982 Hymnal sings, “I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew he moved my soul to seek him, seeking me; it was not I that found, O Savior true; no, I was found of thee.” There is no place where God cannot be present with us. Wherever we are, God is always present with us, even in our darkest places. However we feel, God always feels our sorrow, grief, fear, anxiety, anger, and pain with us. As someone once said, “There are no gardening mistakes, but only experiments.” I pray we all have courage to explore all these gardening experiments in our hearts. We prepare the way that is already grounded in us. We prepare not because there’s no other way God can come, but because we are already standing on the way, the way of Jesus Christ through baptism. We are already in the way of the divine love redeeming us humans. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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