Advent 2C, 2024
Text: Luke 3:1-20
Title: Preparing the Highway
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In the spring of 1942, thousands of soldiers started arriving in Alaska. They were from the Army Corps of Engineers, and their task was to build a highway across the frozen tundra and connect this remote territory to the rest of the United States. WWII was underway, and President Roosevelt feared attack and invasion from the Japanese.
Throughout the spring, summer, and into the fall, around 10,000 soldiers worked on this highway. They were divided into seven teams spread along the route and they worked to connect their sections with one another.
Workers had to deal with mud, mosquitoes, and equipment break downs. As they were nearing completion in October and into November, freezing temperatures had set in.
In just eight months, however, they managed to build a road 1500 miles long through some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth. The construction of the Alaska highway is considered one of the greatest construction projects in American history.
Today, God is doing a construction project that is even more remarkable. He is making His own superhighway.
And He doesn’t do it with bulldozers and cranes. He doesn’t do it with dynamite and thousands of soldiers. The only means that the Lord uses to build His highway is His holy Word.
The word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 4As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
5Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall become straight,
and the rough places shall become level ways,
6and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
John the Baptist came to prepare a way, a road, a highway for God. But God wasn’t coming through the Alaskan wilderness. He was coming through a place even more remote and inhospitable. God was coming to the very hearts of His people.
And those hearts weren’t ready. They were like a pothole-ridden road, a narrow, winding, treacherous road. And this was evidenced by the way that they treated one another.
When the people of John’s day asked him what they should do, what did John say?
“Share your clothes and your food with those who don’t have any.”
“Don’t use your positions of power to cheat and steal and take advantage of other people.”
“Be content with your wages.”
If John has to tell people to share, it meant that they weren’t sharing.
If John has to tell people not to extort and steal, it meant that they were extorting and stealing.
The people were greedy, only looking out for themselves.
These were the potholes that needed to be filled in.
These were the curves that needed to be straightened.
How about you?
Where are the potholes in your heart?
Where has greed made you crooked and uneven?
Where has selfishness turned you against your neighbor?
The prophet Malachi spoke against the sorcerers, the adulterers, the liars, bosses who don’t treat their workers fairly, those who take advantage of widows and orphans, and those who did not show hospitality to migrants.
Does any of that sound like you?
Today, Jesus does construction on your heart through that same message John preached 2,000 years ago. His law points out your problems and tells you to get them repaired.
Jesus is coming. Prepare, get ready by repenting of your sin.
Repentance prepares you for Jesus because Jesus comes bringing His forgiveness.
As we heard last week, if you don’t have any sins, if you don’t need forgiving, then Jesus isn’t for you. Advent is a penitential season when we meditate on our sinfulness and the reason why Jesus had to come in the first place. If you don’t have any sins to repent of, then you don’t need Jesus, you don’t need Christmas, and you don’t need Advent.
But if you recognize your sinful and your need for a Savior, then you are ready to welcome Jesus.
He comes to take away your sin and your guilt by His death on the cross. Jesus comes to bear the punishment that you deserve and to die in your place.
But it’s more than that. Jesus doesn’t just come to take away the bad in you, but also to create something good. It’s not one or the other, but both/and: Jesus takes away the bad and He also creates something good.
John the Baptist warned the people that if they did not bear fruit, they would be like a barren, fruitless tree that gets chopped down and thrown into the fire.
It’s not enough just to avoid doing bad things, you should be doing some good in this world, too, you should be producing fruit like a tree bursting with it.
How can you do it? How can you create the fruit of good works in your life?
Remember what St. Paul said in the Epistle.
“6And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. 7It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”
The fruit of righteousness comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
The only way for you to bear fruit is through Jesus Christ. Everything good that you do is because of Him, from start to finish.
That’s why Jesus is coming, to work some good in this world, to bring glory and praise to God, and to do it through you.
There’s nothing good in you on your own. Apart from Jesus you can’t do anything right.
But when you are joined to Jesus, when He fills you with His Holy Spirit, then your life abounds with good works.
When you are kind and generous, when you freely give to those in need, that’s Jesus bearing fruit in your life.
When you work hard in your vocation, when you are faithful in doing your job well and serving the people you are called to serve, that’s Jesus bearing fruit in your life.
When you are content, thankful with what you’ve been given, rather than complaining and whining all the time, that’s Jesus bearing fruit in your life.
Jesus Himself makes you ready, prepared to receive Him. He forgives the bad in you, and creates the fruit of good works in you.
That’s why He’s coming, this Advent, and always.
That’s why He needs a proper road, running through your heart.
And that’s why He sends John the Baptist and all the other faithful preachers of the gospel down through the ages so that you will be prepared for that coming.
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