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PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD

Malachi 3.1-4

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

Luke 3.1-6

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene,during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 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 the prophet Isaiah, ‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

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On Friday evening I was at the Christmas light switch on by the canal in Worsley village. Over eight hundred people had gathered to see the lights and looked forward to Father Christmas coming as he arrived on a narrowboat from further down the canal.


As I stood there looking around and I saw the bridge packed full of people all waiting for the arrival of Father Christmas to speak to the children, I wondered about all of the preparation that had gone on that would allow an event like this to take place. There were the lights on the trees, the canal boats on the water all lit up and Christmassy, there was the sound system and microphones, there was making mulled wine, buying in the minced pies and everything else. All preparing for Santa’s arrival. When you turn up at something when everything is already ready, you can’t always see the sheer amount of effort and cost involved. You’re. ‘In the moment’ if you like, and when you’re in the moment like that you don’t always think about what has happened behind the scenes, if you’re in the moment, you miss things.


In our readings this morning, Malachi and Luke both speak about ‘preparing the way of the lord.’ What does that mean.


It means ‘get ready,’ for the Lord is coming. The people of Israel though are not waiting on a bridge in the dark looking for Santa. No, this was a people who had suffered the destruction of their home, being carried off into exile, into Babylon. They are waiting, they are waiting expectantly for God’s promise of restoration to be fulfilled, where he would come again to reign as King, as he had done at the time of King David. They are waiting for the promised messiah, the one of David’s line, that would bring them out of exile back into their promised land, Jerusalem unsullied by pagan invaders. Now, even though at this time the Jews were in Israel, they had been under occupation for over 100 years by pagans. That’s four generations! The messiah, they thought was to be the one that would destroy Israel’s enemies and establish God’s kingdom reign on earth as it is in heaven. And now John the Baptist prepares the way for the King’s arrival.


Of course, we know that Jesus wasn’t the king that people expected him to be. He didn’t defeat the Romans, he didn’t create an army and become a warlord. He said that the issue is not ‘out there’ with the empires of the world; it’s in here, it’s in the human heart. It’s the human heart, first and foremost that needs ‘sorting out’


John the Baptist wants the people to be ready for his coming, and so he takes up the call, one in the desert. ‘prepare the way of the Lord,’ ‘make his path’s straight.


And so he baptised people, ‘a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.’ He told people to repent of their own ways and turn back towards God. The word for sin means ‘to miss the mark.’ It’s an archery term, it means that you haven’t hit the target (the target, which is all the good in the world), and we can’t hit the target because we’re not aiming properly, we’re looking the wrong way, there’s darkness in our lives that we can’t shift, there are attitudes, there are habits, all sorts of things that if others knew we did them…


Well…


If we think that ‘s not true. Imagine every other person in the world had full access to your mind, your thoughts and feelings etc. would you be happy for them to see it in all its glory. I certainly wouldn’t for me. We miss the mark because we aim the wrong way, there are things that we just can’t shift.


We always miss the mark, because we’re not aiming at Jesus. We’re not ready for him to be king in our lives.


John the Baptist, ‘prepares the way for the Lord’.. He wan’ts the people to consider their own heart. To see what’s wrong and what needs to be done. What’s wrong is our sin, what needs to be done is to have faith and follow Jesus. And what will happen when the Lord himself comes? Our reading from Malachi tells us:


“[T]he Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. 2But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; 3he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.4Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.”


There is a refiner’s fire. What’s that? If we misread it, it sounds a little bit like hell and damnation doesn’t it. But what’s really going on? The text speaks of a refiner’s fire, not a fire that consumes wholly. That is what happens in the metaphor of hell, the motif there is one of complete and utter destruction. But in this case, it’s a refiner’s fire. Like when you’re smelting metal and as you heat it, all the impurities come to the surface which you scoop off, and you’re left with the pure molten metal, which you can then make into something useful, something pure and unsullied.


Another analogy would be if you’re forging something. I wonder if you’ve ever been to one of those medieval outdoor events where you see all the different ways that people used to do things and there’s candle making, jousting and beer brewing and everything else in between. And you see somebody forging a sword or a shield or something like that. The metal is heated and shaped into the way that the forger would have it be. That is what Jesus does for us, he take us and makes us the way that he would have us be.


It’s not something that we can just turn up to when everything is done, like when we all turned up to the side of Worsley canal. No, like the people seeing John the Baptist arriving, hearing his voice from the desert as he tells people to repent and turn away from their old ways. The Lord himself is coming, not Santa, the one through whom the whole universe was made; he is the one that is arriving, not a man in red with a beard. We need to prepare, prepare our hearts and minds, consider what needs to change, be ready for it; for when the Lord comes, he will purge it from us in his refiners fire. He will temper us and mould us into tools he can use to serve others, and to share his love with the world.


Last week I said ‘let’s get to know Jesus better’ This week I invite us to get to know ourselves better, to consider what needs to change, what habit needs breaking, what issue needs resolving, what needs to be done that is stopping us from living the lives that God would have us life.


We need to be prepared, and get ready, get ready to be changed, for in three weeks’ time, the Lord will be here, .


Amen.




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