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Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent – December 16, 2007
“Every major world city has a dinner topic that elicits endless opinions and horror stories,” writes Steve Van Peet, an American who has lived in Asia for the past 31 years. “It may be crime, terrorism or taxes,” he says, “the high cost of housing or the perpetually lousy weather. In Bangkok, it is traffic.” Traffic described this way by another writer, this one the Asian correspondent for Time Magazine: “Black clouds of exhaust invade your nostrils. Red tail lights flash endlessly before your eyes. You are going nowhere and not even fast...Bangkok’s legendary traffic jams are of such epic proportions,” he says, “they drive the average tourist from the capital in about two days.”
From what I read, they probably spend those two days stuck in their car.
Those of us living in this expanding and increasingly crowded metropolitan area may think we know a thing or two about being stuck in a car, considering that we face the second longest commuting time in the nation. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, people in Chicago take an average of 32.7 minutes getting to work each day, a bit more than five minutes faster than the winner, if you can use such a term – New York City – whose residents spend 38.4 minutes, or an average of about a week a year simply going from their homes to their jobs.
Now, to a visitor from the United Kingdom, that would seem like a quick dash. British commuters, most of whom drive, have the longest journey to work in Europe, with the average trip taking 45 minutes, according to a recent survey of driving habits and attitudes. “Drivers would rather sit in their cars twice as long than change jobs, move house or change their work base,” said one official for the RAC, kind of like the British version of the AAA.
Ironically, the main reason people give for using their car to drive to work in the UK is that it is quicker than other options. Yet almost half of the motorists questioned said that if their car journey time doubled, they would simply allow more time; only 7% would make the switch to public transportation. They are a nation of car commuters.
But compared with the eight million or so residents of Bangkok, the Brits are mere babes in arms. “On a good day in Bangkok,” says our American ex-pat, “nothing moves. On a bad day, it doesn’t move – but slower.” Mr. Van Beek relates how a typical businessman rises before dawn, endures a two hour bus ride which covers five miles, and arrives at work by 7 am, where he will have to wait two hours for his office to open.
Moms have it even worse. Get up at 4, deposit barely conscious children in the back seat, get to school long before the sun comes up; run combs through hair, shovel food in mouths, aim offspring towards the classroom and then begin their own journey to the office. In the evening, they’ll do it all in reverse.
Anecdotes abound illustrating just what’s involved in getting from one point to another in a city with the longest communing time in the world; a city which adds 500 new cars to its streets every day; a city which has no subway system and regards buses as suitable only for the poorest class of people. (Car advertisements there do not appeal to practicality, mileage or even comfort, but to “prestige” and “the demonstration of your achievements.”)
But even prestige will not save you from urban gridlock. One day, in a typical example, an executive had an appointment at an office on a major thoroughfare. After sitting 10 minutes within 300 feet of the building, he told his driver to park the car in a nearby garage. The executive then got out of the car and walked the remaining distance to the office. Thirty minutes later, he came out of the meeting to find that his car had just arrived at the building’s entrance. His ability to afford a driver could not save him. In fact, the only time the roads are clear is when some important government official wants to get somewhere in a hurry; then, says one resident, “Police escorted cavalcades snowplow traffic to the side of the road so that dignitaries can pass unhindered.”
For regular people, their social life is limited by the distance required to reach an event; so the first thing they do after receiving an invitation to a function is chart the location on the mental map they have drawn for themselves around their home or office. “If it falls outside your perimeter – as little as two miles – you send your regrets. Each year,” Van Peet says, “the diameter diminishes.”
Though its people are predominantly Buddhist – a fact which, some say, allows them to accept such horrific conditions – “Why suffer a meltdown over something you can’t do anything about?” – still I’ll bet the people of Bangkok, prodding their children awake in the predawn darkness, taking two hours to traverse five miles, would likely find themselves smiling in response to Isaiah’s joyous vision of an unobstructed highway running both ways between us and the divine.
“Every valley shall be lifted up,” he promises a people yearning for an end to their exile in Babylon, and the Baptist will echo this vision hundreds of years later to a people yearning for an end to what they see as their exile from God. “Every mountain and hill shall be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together…”
A way to God, how do we envision that? A way for God to come to us, how do we describe what that’s like in a way that brings the meaning home? We speak of a road, smooth and straight; a road in which no traveler, not even those of us who get lost in our own back yard, shall go astray. We speak of a holy way, safe for all to travel, even those of feeble knees or those who must ride the bus. We speak of a way which widens the diameters of existence for all God’s people, allowing everyone to venture freely from the narrow zones of their comforts or fears. Isaiah really nailed it here.
Much of what the prophets speak of to illustrate their point has little resonance with our daily lives. Unless we travel to the desert, we seldom encounter burning sand or reeds and rushes; and I can’t recall the last time I saw a jackal, at least of the four legged kind. Of course, we know that springs breaking forth in the wilderness can only be a good thing, but the last time my house was without water all I had to do was call a plumber. And, after taking out a second mortgage to pay his bill, my faucet was flowing again; hardly a miracle, more a matter of knowing which knob to turn.
We do understand the biblical metaphors, usually. We have heard enough sermons in Advent and Lent to interpret broadly the idea of wilderness; to know that, more than a place,it’s a state of being. We get that, if at times only intellectually.
But being stuck in traffic - creeping along, inhaling exhaust, searching for an exit, trying to keep our tempers in check - now that we really know something about; congestion, gridlock, endless commutes, the energy we expend getting from point A to point B, that’s imagery that hits us where we live. Little wonder that the promise of deliverance fills us with joy.
Commercials for global positioning devices typically feature a solitary male driver being warned in a female voice - easier to hear, more soothing - of upcoming congestion and then being offered an alternative route that no one else seems to have discovered. (In one commercial the guy actually falls in love with his GPS; God knows what a shrink would make of that!) Perhaps it’s really simple, though; perhaps what all of us need is the comforting word of a loving guide and the promise of an open road ahead.
What all of us do need, I believe, is a way to God, just as God needs a way to us.
Though they knew nothing of GPS’s or gas fumes, the people Isaiah spoke to knew all about roads; they knew who blocked them and who they were cleared for. Behind Isaiah’s imagery of the highway God will use to come to his people are the roads the Babylonians especially prepared for the festive processionals of their gods, no riff raff, no outsiders. Now, with the end of the exile the ransomed of the Lord shall return, no longer cursing the congestion but praising the Lord with singing, everlasting joy upon their heads.
God needs a way to us and we need a way to God.
John the Baptist knew that, as did the people he spoke to. Though the exile had long ended and the Babylonian kingdom long displaced by other forces, the crowds that flocked to the Jordan to hear the word and receive baptism were eager to form their own alternative route in the wilderness, laying down a path we follow today, still waiting for Isaiah’s promise to be fulfilled.
How many feet must trample a path before the road is clear, before we obtain joy, before sorrow and sighing flee away? “Be patient,” we are told, “until the coming of the Lord.” We do our best, drumming our hands on the wheel until the light changes, punching the radio buttons until we find a decent song; getting to work, getting the kids to school, going from point A to point B, in the meantime trying to have a life. So we wait.
Still, as we wait more or less patiently, we pray fervently, “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us…let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.” We know we need the kind of help we cannot provide for ourselves; the kind of help that is coming soon in the birth of the child; the kind of help that is coming at some unknown time when the vision of a holy way is fulfilled. We are waiting in between times for the road to be paved.
Just when that road is finished and God comes to us in fullness and finality is out of our hands. All we can do is pray patiently. But as for us making our way to God, there is much we can consider, as we make our way across the congested landscape of our days.
Next time you’re stuck, seemingly not going anywhere - broaden the image now– take some time to ask yourself what it is you are seeking. Is it to see, to hear, to be of a strong heart? Is it to expand the diameters of your life? Well, there is such a road, a two way road that is not always fast or smooth or without cost, but it will get you there, and you don’t have to go alone.
There is such a road bringing us to God and God to us. All, regardless of status or rank, may use it unhindered; a road that begins at a far from prestigious place of unexpected joy - our destination this Advent season. The poet Ann Weems has written: “When we are Bethlehem bound we experience our own advent in his. When we are Bethlehem bound we can no longer look the other way, conveniently not seeing stars, not hearing angel voices. We can no longer excuse ourselves by busily tending our sheep or our kingdoms. This Advent,” she says, “let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that the Lord has made known to us.”
And the best thing about traveling to Bethlehem is that we don’t have to drive and it shouldn’t take all day to get there. All we have to do is kneel.
Amen