Every valley shall be
filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low… --Luke 3:5 (Isaiah 40:4)
I don’t remember many of the sermons I have heard over the
years (including the ones that have spilled from my mouth). But, one sermon I heard in college has always
stuck with me. It wasn’t the sermon so
much as the image my campus pastor painted of a world where valleys were filled
and the mountains and hills made low to make way for the love of God in Jesus
Christ. I remember the dramatic way he
swept his large, soft hands back and forth to show the level place God would
create for all peoples to stand together.
For the healing of the nations.
For the healing of broken, suffering and oppressed people
everywhere. For the healing of each and
every one of us. My campus pastor didn’t
just preach this hopeful message with his lips, he lived it. He was regularly working in our community to
break down the barriers that separated people and to lift up the lowly and the
outcast. He wasn’t perfect. Not by any means. But, he showed us what it looks like to live
out our faith in concrete ways in the real world in spite of our own
brokenness.
I have always appreciated the way Luke anchors the story of
Jesus in the real world. He prefaces the
story of Jesus’ birth, “in the days of Caesar Augustus…” He begins the story of John’s ministry “In
the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius…” Luke wants us to know that the story he is
telling is no fairy tale. Luke wants us to understand clearly that John and
Jesus carry out their ministries in the messy, rough and tumble world of
politics and religious institutions, not separate from them. While Jesus says his Kingdom is not of this
world, his proclamation of God’s Reign had real-world implications and led to
real-world confrontations with the powerful people of his day. As Jesus proclaimed God’s valley filling and
mountain leveling love and grace for a hurting world, his message challenged
the principalities and powers who always seem committed to digging the valleys
and erecting the mountains that keep people apart.
John the Baptist came to remove the barriers that kept
people from hearing and experiencing Jesus’ Good News. As we think about the world around us, what
barriers do you see that get in the way of people experiencing the healing love
of God? Where is there need for the healing
of the nations today? For the healing of
the broken, suffering and oppressed people of our world? For healing you and me? How can we, as followers of Jesus Christ, work
together to fill up some of the valleys (or even a few potholes) and level a
few of the mountains (or just knock over some sand piles) that get in the way
of Jesus’ Gospel here in our real world where politics and religion can still
be awfully messy?
Peace,
Bishop Mike
Thanks for reading.
Pray for our political and religious leaders. But, even more, let your faith inform how you
speak and act in your “polis” (Greek for “city-state,” the root word of
“political”) where you live.
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