Prepare the Way!

Prepare the Way! is our worship theme for the second Sunday in Advent, December 9, 2012. Our focus scripture is Luke 3:1-6.

In the passage before us John the Baptist quotes Isaiah 40:3-5 urging people to prepare the way of the Lord. Every valley is to be filled in, every mountain brought low, the crooked roads are to be made straight, and the rough places made smooth. Then God will come and all flesh will see God’s glory.

John has a tremendous conviction that God is going to act with power. He may not know every detail, but the word has come to him and he is convinced that all the people must get ready for this new day. So he sets up camp in the wilderness around the Jordan and begins baptizing those who come to him. He dunks them in the river to wash their sins away. But even as he baptizes them with water he sees that another is coming to baptize them with God’s Holy Spirit and with fire.

Advent is nothing if not a season of preparation. There are lights to put up, a tree to be decorated, presents to be purchased, cards to be sent, and cookies to be baked. With everything to be done and Christmas Eve pressing closer, it can be exhausting.
Yet John’s focus is not on getting the house ready, or preparing a great holiday feast. John’s focus is on preparing our hearts. His camp is out in the wilderness, in Israel’s history a place to learn to rely on God and to follow God’s lead. There John offers “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” It’s an experience of washing away or drowning the old in favor of the new. It’s the opportunity to “turn away” from the sinful ways of living that keep us from God’s justice and “turn towards” walking the true and straight path that God sets before us.

Somewhere, somehow in the busyness of the season, may we find time and will to journey out to John’s camp in prayerful imagination, and there hear God’s call to prepare our hearts for the new thing that God is doing.

Here are two Calls to Worship that fit our lectionary readings. Please use or adapt anything that is helpful to you.

Call to Worship    From Baruch 5:5-9

L: Arise, O Jerusalem, get up to the mountaintop and look east!
    Your children are gathering from west and east at the call of the Holy One.
    They rejoice that God is remembering them.
P: They went out from you on foot, led away as slaves by their captors;
     Now God brings them back to you, carried in royal splendor.
L: God says: Let every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low!
     Let the valleys be filled up to make level ground!

P: Let Israel walk safely in my power and might.                                                        

     Let forests of fragrant trees spring up to shade my people.

All: For I, the Lord, will lead Israel with joy, in the light of my glory.
     My mercy and righteousness will cover them once again. 

Call to Worship    From Luke 3:1-6

L: In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius,

    when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea…

    God’s word came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.

P: He set up camp by the river Jordan,

    preaching that everyone must change their lives completely

    and be washed in the water for the forgiveness of their sins.

L: John quoted Isaiah: “A voice cries out in the wilderness:

    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make God’s path straight.

P: Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain shall be made low;

    the crooked roads shall be made straight,  

    and the rough ways made smooth.

All: Then all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’