Matthew 3:1-12, Second Sunday of Advent

Let’s try not to short circuit Advent to get to Christmas. The four candles here are for the four weeks of Advent. We are now entering the second quarter of this time of preparation.

Listening to John the Baptist is part of this preparation. He tells us today to clear the way of the Lord and make straight his path.

Ituwid ang daan. Straighten the twisted ways of the unscrupulous and corrupt. Patagin ang mga lubak na kinatitisod ng marami. Plug the rifts and fissures that make us trip and fall. Level the lofty piles of the proud that stand in the way of the Lord and his people.

In truth, this life is all just preparation. We are here to prepare the way of the Lord. What we are going through these days, however bad or good, is part of the preparation.

To prepare the way of the Lord is to prepare for the one thing we have yet to possess in all its fullness. We prepare for life. We are not yet there. The fullness of life is something we have yet to reach.

It is life we prepare for, not death. Death is not the end of this journey. There are those who believe that this brief passage we call life is as good as it gets, and that there is nothing more beyond the grave. They do not prepare for life. They prepare for death by defying it, by denying it, by hoarding wealth and power, no matter the sorrow they inflict on the poor and vulnerable.

Advent is the time we remind each other once more not to mistake this fleeting time for the fullness of life. If we are here, it is to prepare to live with God forever.

That means every manner of training our lives to discern and value the life God desires to offer us. That means unmuting ourselves to speak God’s truth, bracing our resolve to bring about God’s justice, and enlisting our lives to fight for freedom as befits the children of God.

Truth, justice, freedom. These will not be won without preparing for sacrifice, without the strength we gather through trial and defeat, without the endurance we gain from carrying the cross of Christ.

For John the Baptist, to prepare the way of the Lord is to drench ourselves in a baptism of repentance, which is more than just a rewind of regret or sorry for yesterday’s sins. To repent is not to be imprisoned by the past.

Repentance looks beyond contrition to continuing conversion and renewal. It is more full of hope than it is of remorse. It opens up to tomorrow and looks to how tomorrow can be changed by our resolve to do better, to become better.

To clear the way of the Lord is to prepare from the edges as John the Baptist did. He lived in the desert, as an outlier, away from the center of power that was Jerusalem. This is not to say that we should all relocate our lives to the desert. But to prepare from the margins is to let our lives be changed by the voices “crying out in the desert”. To prepare is to act on the prayers of those outside the fences of power.

To prepare the way of the Lord is to learn to separate the chaff from the grain. Advent is the time to discern the things of value and to let go of the superficial or shallow. We learn all this when we are made empty in the desert, not when we are surrounded by plenty.

To set straight the path of the Lord is to discover again what is important to God. It is to store what God stores and burn what God burns. What counts is not our lineage or connections. It matters not to God that we invoke “Abraham as our father” or that we insist we are God’s children. God can always turn stones into children. What counts for God is seeking the lost sheep, not the 99; looking for the lost child away from home, not the safely entitled one inside.

All life is preparing the way of the Lord and making straight his path to our lives. We prepare by unraveling what is twisted, plugging potholes that trip us, and leveling the mounds of ego that get in the way of the Lord.

To get to Christmas, there is no bypassing Advent. We still have a number of candles to light.

Similarly, to get to live with God forever, there is no shorting this life either. Thankfully, we still have time to prepare.