“Prepare the Way”
by Bruce J. Johnson
(Advent 2: Luke 3: 1-6)
As many of you know, I walk the loop of
I
loved that play and so much of the music in it.
John
the Baptist is a great dramatic character in the biblical story—a prophetic
figure—wild, eccentric, ascetic—to be sure, a man more at home in the
wilderness than on a city street or a merchant’s shop or a holiday cocktail
party. He must not have been too much of ranting and raving figure because
people did come to him and they did listen. They took him seriously. There was
something about this person that made people listen. I suspect that his
wildness came from being so close to the truth of things---most of the time. I
say ‘close’ because I am not all that certain that even he had it right!
The
other day, almost by accident, I ran across a phrase that I hadn’t heard
before--- “the fourth wall.” Anybody
know what that is?
Definition:
The fourth
wall is the imaginary invisible plane in front of the stage in a
theater through which the viewer is thought to look. The term signifies the
suspension of disbelief used by the audience, who are looking in on the action
through the invisible wall. The audience thus pretends that the characters in
the story of real ‘living’ beings in their own world, and not merely actors
performing on a stage or studio set, or written words on the pages of a book.
In order for the fourth wall to remain intact, the actors must also, in effect,
pretend that the audience does not exist, by staying in character at all times
and by not addressing the audience members directly.
The
literary technique called ‘breaking the fourth wall’ is used when the
plot of a story calls for some event to take place that shatters the barrier
between the fictional world of the story and the ‘real world’ of the audience.
(Michelle,
isn’t that neat? You just finished your play at the high school and a great job
you did! Have you ever been introduced to term?)
Well,
I was thinking the other day that on this Sunday in Advent, John the Baptist
would surely want to ‘break the fourth wall.’ I envision him yet again, on the
stage of life, calling people to the wilderness or to the
And
then John turns and addresses us, the audience, which is what we all want to
be--- right?-- just the audience-- protected by this invisible wall—just
looking in on this make believe character dressed in locusts stuck to the body by honey and eating wild camel hair!
(Just trying to see if you are still with me!) But this John breaks the
barrier, takes a few steps toward us. We lean back. We look down--- not wanting
eye contact. Nevertheless, he asks so that all will hear:
“And you? How about you? How do you--- in your life-- prepare the way of the Lord?”
What is this
‘way’ of which he speaks?
John’s voice,
of course, seems harsh, more often than not understood as proclaiming a message
of change, the need ‘to do’ things differently so that you ‘look’ better and
are more ‘acceptable’ on the day of His coming. He calls some of his listeners
vipers and threatens them with their demise if they don’t show their
stuff—fruits that befit repentance. And a little later on he even tells his
listeners that the Messiah will come with a winnowing fork in hand, used to
separate the wheat from the chaff and a stoked up fire awaits the chaff.
Indeed, my sense of John is that he expects us to lift up the valleys and lower
the mountains, to smooth out the rough places and straighten out the crooked---
make sure that every thing is right for when the Lord comes! It’s like those
two bumper stickers:
Jesus is coming! Look busy!
Jesus is coming and He’s
p______ed! (upset)
That, of
course, is not the way of the Lord, as we soon found out. What we discovered is
that while repentance certainly involves a change of behavior—the way of the
Lord is the way of the heart. It is all about the heart being able to receive
him—the heart of the saint and sinner, the heart of the good and the bad, the
heart of the one who is honest and the one who lies, the heart of the one who
is well and the one who is sick, the hearts of those who find themselves
depressed in the valley of sorrow and shame or exhilarated on the mountaintop
of joy and triumph.
What the
Baptist did not quite understand is that it is not we who are expected to lift
up the valley or make every mountain lower and all the crooked places straight
and the rough paths smooth so that Christ may come but Christ comes to find us
in those places where we are low and high, where we are good and bad and make
things right!
Wherever we may
be in our lives, repentance begins with what we do with the heart and its
capacity to open itself up and receive and trust the ONE who wants in! You see,
if Advent—a time of waiting and watching, a time of longing and preparing-
means anything; if Christmas, that moment in time when a baby cries and the
world rejoices, means anything, it is that God has chosen to come to us, to
reach out to us and invites us to be re-united with God and to live in God’s
joy and peace.
God is the one
who then levels and smoothes the road, who lifts up and makes straight.
It’s like this:
“When Lois and I are driving somewhere
and she notes that I have made five consecutive right-hand turns she may ask:
“Are you lost?”
Being the
humble soul that I am, I respond, “No, I’m not lost.”
She then notes
that I make three more right hand turns and then says something that no loving
spouse and navigator should say: “Why don’t you ask for directions.”
I don’t know
about you but I take those kinds of things personally. I don’t want to admit
that there are times when I’m lost, when I don’t know where I am or why or even
like what I am doing, or how I am feeling or living my life. I like to think of
myself as self-reliant and in control.
But finally the
reality sinks in and I have to admit to myself that while I am driving the car,
I’m not really in control--- I need someone there who knows where he or she is
and will help me get to where I want to go.
And that’s
where repentance begins, with the rolling down of the window of the heart and
asking Jesus to come to us and claim us and change us, showing us the way to
that state of being where we feel at peace with God and ourselves.
Well, the One
to whom John the Baptism points, the One for whom he challenges us to prepare,
is both here again and yet to come--- hoping that the fourth wall will be
breached when we invite Him to be part of our lives and dwell in our
hearts.
Amen
Invitation to Communion