Second Sunday of Advent-B
One day, Anthony received a phone call from one of his friends from work named Jerry, which would prove to be an unexpected portal into Anthony’s life. Jerry was an intelligent man in his thirties, a bachelor who lived with his widowed mother. Anthony often spent time with Jerry partly because he liked his company and felt a little sorry for Jerry. Jerry was someone who had many gifts but lacked a lot of confidence.
Jerry told Anthony that he had gone to the oral surgeon for the removal of his wisdom teeth the day before. But the bleeding from the surgery didn’t stop, and so Jerry went to his doctor and was quickly admitted into the hospital. After numerous tests, the doctors determined that the reason the blood continued to flow was because he had acute leukemia, leukemia that would probably be fatal for an adult like Jerry.
Anthony hung up and was shocked; the status quo was no longer. He wanted to be Jerry’s friend, but he wanted no part of being his support as Jerry struggled through the disease. Anthony was willing to be Jerry’s friend on his terms, which would sidestep the issue of leukemia. His path of friendship with Jerry detoured around this terminal disease. After Jerry’s death, Anthony realized that this winding road of friendship was a shallow relationship.
Perhaps not always with as tragic of consequences, we all have approached some relationships in our past wanting to detour around or sidestep some issue. There are certain things in certain relationships that we don’t want to have to deal with. And if it happens in our relationships with others, it happens with our personal God.
The role of John the Baptist throughout his somewhat brief appearance in the Gospels is precisely to warn us of this type of shallow, detoured relationship with Christ.
Our path to Christ must be straight, and there can be no protected corners or recesses of our lives not open to his redeeming and sanctifying presence. We cannot invite the Lord into our hearts but simultaneously limit his sovereignty. We cannot pray, “Lord, come on in, but please step around my dislike for this co-worker. Don’t expect my greed to move out of your way; it has been implanted there too long to change. Pay no attention, Lord, to that part of me that must control everything and everyone around me.
Our hearts and minds cannot be an obstacle course that Jesus must weave in, out, and around to enter the center of our lives. This path cannot be filled with detours and sidesteps. The path must be straight: no sidestepping, compromises, or negotiating. “Make ready the way of the Lord, clear him out a straight path.”
The Baptist urges us to use these weeks before Christmas to clear away everything we think we know, all our preconceived notions of who Christ is and what he says to us. John says to approach the celebration of the birth of our Lord as you would the meeting of a long-lost friend. We have to work at renewing the interest and attentiveness to the person of Christ we had when we first encountered our Savior. John warns us to approach the coming of the Lord with hearts open and transparent to the transforming power of Christ.
Christmas can become not just a celebration of a remembrance of the birth of Christ but a re-birthing of Christ into our very lives, a birth of renewal. But we must clear the way and straighten the path to do this.
And if we think this spiritual exercise of repentance is more a Lenten project than one for Advent, we should remind ourselves that repentance is the beginning of hope. As Mark says, it is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. This admission of our straying, this acknowledgment of our sin, leads us to the birth of renewal. We acknowledge that we cannot save ourselves and are not the Messiah, but this admission also invites us to hope for the “one more powerful than I.” We clear the path and make it straight the way because we are filled with the hope that the Savior is coming and ready to welcome him into our open hearts.