Road Work Ahead
December 4, 2011
“ROAD WORK AHEAD” Isaiah 40:1-11 Dana Douglass
How many hours did you spend the last few years waiting for the worker on the bridge to turn the sign from Stop to Slow? Even worse than going over the bridge has been traveling from Ellsworth to Bangor. With all the traffic coming and going from the interstate to Bar Harbor on a hot summer day, and all the widening, and blasting, and paving, the delays have been maddening. No one likes being in a hurry to get somewhere and coming across the sign that warns of road work ahead.
But, when the job is done? The results make us forget the frustration. Our bridge looks beautiful and will last another few decades. The road from Ellsworth to Bangor is now wide and smooth, there are broad shoulders, the twists and turns have been straightened out, there are passing lanes on the hills — it’s almost like a highway. Travel time has been reduced..
Isaiah talked about road construction in one of the beautiful biblical passages. And he wasn’t describing minor repairs such as filling in potholes. He was calling for major reconfiguration of the terrain: filling in valleys and leveling mountains. Why all the hard work? To make way for God to come back into the life of the nation.
Isaiah was talking to a people who had been defeated in war and carted away into slavery. Their homes and institutions had been destroyed; their religion was becoming a memory; worse yet, they were getting used to being slaves.. Isaiah believed that misery had come their way because they had betrayed God and the tenants of their faith. Compassion for the poor had given way to greed for themselves. Exile was the penalty for faithlessness.
Now, Isaiah said, Israel was being pardoned. “You’ve paid double for your sins. It’s time to go home.” Isaiah wanted to be sure that when the people got home they would remove all the barriers that had kept God out of the life of the nation. “Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Lift up every valley. Lower every mountain and hill. Make the uneven ground level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.”
Talk about inconvenience! It’s disruptive to change the landscape of human lives, to reclaim a set of values, to change behavior and start over. But, if you can do the hard work, how smooth the traveling is when the work is done.
How about us? Have we have lost our way as a nation? Are we in exile from our better selves? Have we traded liberty for license, a peaceable kingdom for perpetual war, compassion for greed? Could it be — and here’s a question we don’t like to ask in our liberal churches — could it be that in excluding God from public live, we have lost the very thing that gave substance to our national ideals?
The problem with asking that question is that it gets answered by those who don’t like complexity. “Our nation went to hell when we took prayer of out school, started coddling homosexuals, and legalized abortion,” says those on the religious right. But, those changes they were driven by a high ideal — to make room for all, to honor individual choices. I might say, instead, that our nation started down the wrong road when we stopped living for anything larger than the individual, when the common good gave way to “self-actualization through consumerism”; when we threw the baby out with the bathwater — by which I mean we got rid of God so as not to favor any particular religion. The intent was good; the result was not.
Last Saturday on NPR Scott Simon presented a moving editorial. He said this: “It’s hard not to look at some of the pictures of people surging into stores as they opened at the stroke of midnight for Black Friday sales and see some kind of crass, mindless mob. But I think something else may be at work to explain the swarms at midnight sales. In hard economic times, people will go without buying themselves new shoes or a winter coat. They’ll do without lunch and snacks, and stretch hamburger with rice and beans. They’ll patch up old socks and sweaters. They’ll try to make their old car last for another year. But they won’t skimp on holiday gifts for their family.
People who are unemployed will spend their last savings, and people who are earning less with fewer benefits will take a second job so that their children can unwrap the toy they’ve seen on TV. I think they’ll spend money during the holidays that they might more wisely try to save for food or rent to try to reassure their spouses and children — and perhaps themselves — that they’re still resourceful and strong, that they can still provide for their families.”
I think the editorial is right on, but maybe doesn’t go far enough. Perhaps the overindulgence we see around us at this time of year is a sign of deep spiritual hunger. Maybe people are hungry for a connection with something bigger than themselves. Hungry for comfort, peace, real joy. Hungry for love and meaning. Hungry for the Hallmark Christmas, or Hannakah. So, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, the motivation is good — break down the doors, let the season in, get gifts for the ones we love. The motivation is good; just a little misplaced.
During Advent we are reminded to do the inconvenient, risky, but ultimately rewarding work of letting God back into our lives. We are reminded that if we would stop trying to buy love, and simply be more loving; if we would be more inclusivie, not less, even things up a bit between the rich and the poor, we might just get for Christmas what we really want — Spirit in our lives, a real connections with others, and a nation to be proud of once again.
