Advent II

Year A
Sunday 5 December 2010
St. John’s Church in the Village
New York City
The Rev’d Lloyd Prator

I
In Advent, we meet two unforgettable characters, the Blessed Virgin Mary on the fourth Sunday, and John the Baptizer on this Sunday and next. He is so hot that he gets two Sundays. John the Baptist is the herald of Christ. In many paintings, he is pictured about the same age as Jesus, and usually carrying a processional cross—sometimes a very stylized one, but a cross nonetheless. there he goes, leading off with the cross, leading people to Jesus—that’s the artistic point.

Sometimes John will be pointing---pointing at the infant Jesus, pointing at Jesus the young man, pointing , even sometimes, at a passing sheep. There goes the lamb of God, he seems to say.

John’s message has to do with travel. He talks about preparing the way of the Lord, making his paths straight.

Human beings are travelers, we have been since our earliest days. Think of how often we talk about the places were are going to travel or things that happened to us as we traveled. If we have not seen someone for a while, we eagerly rush up to them: How long have you been gone? How was the trip? How was the flight (usually asked with an enquiring, anticipatory grimace, for we all know how they are these days. Met anyone interesting at the ITA screening booth?) There is an ancient near eastern proverb which said: “there are three states of misery—sickness, fasting, and travel.” I suspect that even in those days, the camels ran late and there was not enough leg room at the hump. In those days, before a traveler set out, he was advised to pay all debts, provide for dependants, give parting gifts, return all articles under trust, take money and good templer for the journey; then bid farewell to all.

Ordinary roads were just tracks, pavement had not been invented. There were a few surfaced road, one historian tells us that Solomon had built a road paved in basalt. to help peplle get to Jerusalem for the festivals, and as a sign that he was just the best king around. Reminds me of the observation that someone made that nearly every highway in West Virginia was named Robert Byrd Causeway, The Byrd Expressway, Byrd Boulevard, Bird Highway, and led to the Byrd forest and the Bird Memorial stadium. Early forms of public relations, I guess.

When the king was coming, ordinary roads might be improved and repaired in anticipating of the royal journey.

That is the image I want you leave with you today, the image of the road. Let that be your Advent image for this season. Consider these points:

Whenever you deepen your prayer life, you are repairing your road toward God. An extra mass here, a Morning Prayer service there, an intercession list for noonday—whenever you do these things, you re putting on a surface of asphalt, checking the grade, and repairing the lighting on your road.

anytime you do something which strikes out for justice and peace in a world where dissent, violence and strife so often carry the day, you are building a road for the king. If you decide to get behind the serious challenge offered by our public schools, then, you are building a road for the king. If you were to increase your pledge of financial support to the church, so that we could do more for our teenaged program on Tuesday nights, you would be preparing a road for the king.

If you were to make Christmas less an occasion for compensating for a year’s bad sales, and more an occasion for waiting quietly for the lard, you would be preparing a road for the king. Yesterday, in our Quiet Day, Brother Maximilian, SSF, commented about how counter cultural it is to see a dozen people sitting a room staring out at a winter scene in the Courtyard. What a contrast to the brutal hustle and bustle of midtown Manhattan, It might be the only place in town where a road is built in silence.

A road into your soul, a road for the king, a road to herald the savior, the sacred road is an advent symbol, and it is a road to God.