Clearing the Path

Advent 2

Luke 3:1-6

When we moved into our current home, I could hardly get into the study because of all the boxes piled up inside.  I shoved some boxes around to make a path, but, I knew something more needed to be done.  Some of those boxes hadn’t been opened for ten years!  The tape was yellow, the boxes marked and remarked from one, two, three, four moves.  It was ridiculous.  I felt guilty for dragging them around for so long.  I vowed that, this time, I would open every box and get rid of a lot of the useless stuff they contained.

Sometimes, our faith life can look a lot like my study.  So many things can get in the way of our discipleship, and our ability to grow deeper in our relationship with God.  I recently had a conversation with a group of church leaders about how worship attendance patterns have changed in recent decades.  There are so many other things clambering for our attention on Sunday mornings.  In our mobile world, we are often out of town visiting friends and relatives, or  away for work or tending to other responsibilities.  Apart from Sunday, our personal faith lives can get cluttered up too.  It’s hard, very hard, to carve out time to spend with God in prayer, to attend to the reading of scripture and reflect on God’s presence, power and blessing in our daily lives with our busy personal schedules.   As people of faith, we know we should do these things…  we feel guilty when we don’t…  and sometimes we simply give up and trust that God will understand (and I think God does.)

But, what we really need is John the Baptist.  We need someone to call us out.  We need someone to help clear a path.  We need someone to help us hear God’s voice in the midst of all the busy-ness, and the guilt and the powerlessness we feel to do anything about it.   Repentance is about doing just that.  It’s about clearing a path in our lives back to God.  It is about opening the boxes and cleaning out the useless stuff that we keep dragging around with us.  But, it is not something we can do on our own. 

That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in.  The Spirit is God at work in our lives constantly calling us back and giving us the ability to respond to that call.   The Spirit, though, is not just some vague ephemeral vaporous presence.  It is not the “Force”.    The Spirit works through the concrete stuff of life.  (Isn’t that the way God always works?)  The Spirit works through the community of faith – which is one of the reasons we need a community of faith.  The Spirit works through spiritual directors, mentors, elders and others who have gone before us down the path of life and faith.   The Spirit works through the John the Baptists that God sends into our lives to prepare the way for Jesus so that Jesus’ Way can take root and grow even in the midst of our cluttered and busy lives.

Peace,

Bishop Mike