Making Straight Paths (part 2) --Where does your path lead?

“A voice of one crying in the wilderness:

Prepare a way for the Lord.

Make his paths straight.”

John 1:23

 

It is almost a week after Christmas and I am still thinking about the Advent readings, especially this idea of making a straight path.  As my family might tell you, I am quite easily distracted, moved off task, redirected even.  My paths tend to be anything but straight—even when I drive!  I remember my first car, a white 1978 Honda Civic with a stick shift, no AC and only AM radio.  I remember how that car taught me the importance of shade.  And the blessedness of trees.  I cannot count how many times I had to answer the question: Why are you going this way? The freeway is faster. And my answer was always:  Memorial Drive is shadier—and you get to drive through the park.

 

I say this for two reasons; first, because I want to be honest. I am not someone normally concerned with making straight paths, nor innately inclined in that direct direction either.  However, as I have grown older and as life has become more complicated, I find that –especially when it comes to driving—that I tend to not take as much delight in detours as I once did.  I have a tendency these days to try and get home asap.  And stay there, if possible. And second, because I am about to take a detour.

 

It was the Sunday before Christmas, and I was driving some groceries over to one of my daughters (at UH).  Of course, our current car has air conditioning and even has one of those USB things that lets you listen to music off a thumb drive.  Which means I can download old Jack Benny Radio Shows and listen to them while I drive.  Some people listen to podcasts, others audiobooks.  I listen to 1940s radio shows.  Did you notice I just took a little detour? An aside?  Anyway, back to my story.  I was out delivering groceries, and hoping (as always) to get back home ASAP. I had important stuff on the agenda: plans to watch a movie with my wife and maybe even take a nap… I was making a straight path right back to my couch! I’m all about grabbing that gusto wherever I can! 

 

But the Lord had other plans. Heading back home, suddenly the traffic slowed, and then stopped and then inched forward bit by bit.  There was one of the many Houston traffic closures happening that weekend.  A bridge or something was being repaired and all the I-10 west traffic was being rerouted.  We had to stay on 45 headed north.  I wasn’t too frustrated because I was enjoying a jazzy number by Phil Harris’s orchestra, and we used to live in the Heights; I knew I could pretty easily find my alternate route home.  I would just exit North Main and drop by the old Shipley’s for a doughnut and some coffee and be home in no time.  I thought.

 

Apparently, everyone else did, too.  The North main exit was backed up onto the freeway, so I kept going.  I think I took the next exit—Patton?  Anyway, I got off, turned left and knew if I just kept going straight I would come to something I recognized.  So there I was, trying to make a straight path when out of the corner of my eye I saw someone I recognized—or thought I did. It was a friend who died about 2 years before. I slowed down and looked back, knowing it couldn’t be him and realized it was a homeless man. Thin, ragged, long hair, long beard, walking half bent over through a parking lot. I think I was still on Patton.  Just a block or two from the freeway.  I saw him and thought –how strange that he had looked just like our friend Forrest, and yet on second glance not at all.  And in the rearview mirror I thought I saw him lean against a wall and then kind of slump to the ground. 

 

It was a strange thing to see, but I was on my way home and actually in a bit of a hurry now with all the detours. I wanted to get home to that movie and that nap. So, I kept going. Kept trying to make that straight path… And then I thought of Forrest again, and how he would care for people when they were down on their luck. How many times he even came to take care of me and my family when we were feeling down on our luck.  How he would go out of his way to help just about anyone.  And suddenly I found myself turning around.

 

Another detour?  Perhaps, but I drove back and there the man was sitting on the pavement just outside the store, huddled up, with his coat pulled closed and his knees pulled up near his chest, his head slouched over.

 

I got out of my car and walked over to him.  Asked if he needed anything. Some money? He looked up with the eyes of the lost, as if the last thing he expected to see was someone offering help.  I got down on one knee beside him and we talked for a few minutes.  His name is Adolph.  And he wanted to know what church I went to.  He then told me about a church over by Mattress Mack’s store.  How kind they were to him when his brother died. How they helped him and took such good care of his brother for him.  I don’t know how long we talked, maybe 10 or 15 minutes. At some point he seemed done. His eyes looked away, exhausted, as if he needed to rest.  I gave him what money I had, and he looked at it like it was something strange and unexpected.  Before I left, I told him I would pray for him and asked him to pray for me. 

 

I got back in my car and drifted through the Heights toward Studewood and back to I-10, thinking about Adolph and about how I almost drove right past him.  There is that famous scene in John’s Gospel where Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well.  He asks her for a drink of water. She is surprised that a Jewish man would ask help from a Samaritan woman. But He says to her: If you only knew what was being offered you… (cf. 4:10) That phrase, offered you, seems to me quite important.  What was it that was being offered to her?  A thirsty man was asking her for water... He needed a drink and had no way of getting it. She was being offered a chance to help someone. To serve them.  In fact, she was being offered a chance to serve God…  Driving home I realized that in my hurry to get back home to my couch and TV, I almost missed that chance myself.  

 

Making a straight path doesn’t mean making an easy one, or making the quickest one.  As St. Teresa of Avila once said, “God writes straight with crooked lines.”  In my efforts to make a straight path, I need to remember that. What looks crooked to me, may be leading me straight to where I need to be.  And so, the question I am now asking myself is this:  Where does my straight path lead?  Does it lead straight back to the couch, or does it make room for a detour that might just become a blessing?    

Make a straight path--some thoughts on Hebrews 12 (21st Sunday in Ordinary Time)

“So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak
knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that

what is lame may not be disjointed but healed.”

--Hebrews 12:12-13

 

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: make straight the way…  When I hear this phrase, I always think of John the Baptist and the baptism of our Lord (cf. Mk 1:3; MT 3:3, etc).  I always imagine a bony finger pointing toward the desert, or a raging fist shaking against the horizon, and a prophetic cry to clear the way—God is coming!   For me, this image usually comes with locust and honey and a scraggly beard.  But today as I was studying the mass readings for this Sunday (21^st Sunday in Ordinary Time), I suddenly heard something new in the text.  I didn’t hear a warning, or a challenge, I heard a kind of invitation, and a curious note of compassion; concern for the traveler.  And that opened my eyes and my ears to see and hear this image in a new way. A way touched by concern not just for the honor and glory of God, but also for those who struggle with their faith journey, for those who may stumble along the way.

 

Before I go any further, let me say a word about the Letter to the Hebrews.  First, we do not know who the author was, though some have speculated it was written by Paul or one of his followers.  Second, though it is often called the Letter to the Hebrews, scholars now refer to it not as a letter, but as a sermon.  And last, it is one of the most influential “letters” of the New Testament, a powerful influence on both Christian theology and the liturgy of the church.  This is the book that develops the theology of Jesus as high priest, and employs the visionary image of the community of believers as a “cloud of witnesses.” If you have never read it, I highly recommend you set aside a little time and read it through.  It can easily be read in one sitting—probably less than an hour.  You will find it an inspiring book, reverberating in your soul long after you finish; perhaps the rest of your life.

 

I don’t have anything profound to say about this verse, only that I was deeply touched by the way it brought together the prophetic call to make a straight way with the detail of an injury.  It humanized the call for me, and made it personal.  That concern for weak knees and drooping hands, speaks to my heart.  I often feel exhausted in both my faith life and my family life (forget about work).  And so, that call to renew my strength and to be careful and avoid turning a minor injury into something worse, made me stop and think.  This verse, this prophetic cry, it has a real life application.  When we are feeling overwhelmed, weak, exhausted, we need to be careful, to give ourself grace, and let our strength be renewed, so that we can continue our journey.  What I hear in this is good coaching. It is a word of encouragement wrapped around some good advice:  You can do this.  It isn’t going to be easy, but you got this.  Be careful. Pickup your feet, and take it slow and steady. Walk a straight path and you won’t get lost, and it will be easier on your knees. Don’t overdue it or start walking just any which way. That’s how you got hurt in the first place and that’s how you make things worse: you’ll end up disjointed.

 

Yes. But I also hear the coach telling me—this isn’t just about you!  Make a straight path.  Others will follow. You don’t want to lead them into the ditch or out into the wilderness. Just walk the straight path; and know that with every step you take will make it that much easier for the person behind you. That straight path in the wilderness that Isaiah and John the Baptist proclaimed, was a prophecy of the coming of the messiah.  But in the light of Jesus’s life and sacrifice, it becomes a prophetic call to live that path, to become that path of kindness and compassion, to live a life of hope and peace and simplicity and love for your neighbor—even the ones you don’t know or notice. What I am hearing is this: the straight path isn’t a geographic or geometric line, it is a line that runs straight through every human heart. Walk that line. Walk that path with care not just for yourself and your reputation, but with concern and compassion for those that walk with you and those who will come after you.  Make straight the path not just for the sake of your own weak and crackly knees, but for the sake of those who will come later, with their own infirmities and injuries, souls who may find themselves struggling in ways I could never imagine.

 

What I hear most decidedly is a call to clear away every obstacle you can, that those who follow will find a path clear and straight and smooth and paved with love.

The Second Sunday of Advent: Hastening the day of God (2 Peter 3:12)

“In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!
Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill shall be made low;
the rugged land shall be made a plain,
the rough country, a broad valley.
Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed…”

--Isaiah 40:1-5

            In last Sunday's reading from 2nd Peter, the apostle tells us that because we do not know the hour or day the Lord will come, we should be living “a life of holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God.”  And writing some 600+ years earlier the prophet Isaiah gives us a sense of how we might do that.  He tells us to make a straight path, to clear the way and build a highway for our God.  And the evangelist Mark, even cites this passage from Isaiah as he introduces his life of Jesus by directing our attention to the humble voice of one crying in the wilderness, aka John the Baptist. 

            As a boy, when I would hear this reading, I would often think of how glorious it would be to go out into the wilderness and dress in camel’s hair and feed on locusts and honey.  And I always thought: if we are serious about our faith, this is how we really make straight the way of the Lord. This is how we build a super-highway for God in the wasteland!  Like John, we need to give up all earthly possession, wander out into the wilderness and begin crying out: Prepare the way of the Lord!  In my childhood reverie, the clouds would part and the music would swell and Julie Andrews would look down from the Alps and start running the other direction! But it would be glorious with glistening sand and shimmering rocks and a picturesque body of water always nearby.  I even imagined a kind of vast cinemascope scene; half George Stevens and half a Hal B. Wallis remake of Godspell!  I also often wondered what would happen if thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of people suddenly gave up their daily lives and professions and obligations and wandered off in search of God! Sometimes I would sigh --What a day that would be! And other times I would gasp and ponder: what a day that would be… Half Cecil B. DeMille and half George Romero, perhaps…

            And yet, as I meditate upon these readings now I am struck (in old age) by a couple of smaller things.  First, the call of John isn’t to disappear into the wilderness. He isn’t calling the people of Jerusalem to abandon their lives and become hermits with him in the desert. He is calling them to repent.  To acknowledge their sins, and repent!  That seems to be the path he proposes for them, the highway he helps them construct.  And it makes me wonder about that highway.  I had always heard this as a highway we were building so we could travel it –so we could get to God.  But that doesn’t seem to be what Isaiah is saying.  Isaiah seems to be saying that we are making a “highway for our God,” not for us. That God will travel this highway to get to us.  And that leads me to the second thing I keep going back to: those valleys that we are to fill in and those mountains that we are to make low.  What does that mean to me?  In my youth of course it was a grand earth moving project from the WPA. Lots of explosions and collapsing piles of rocks and steam shovels and bulldozers and Mike Mulligan –all that.

            But now I hear these words and immediately think of idols and emptiness. The mountains make me think of the mountains I make out of my sin. I make false idols from my sin and they become so important to me, that I build “holy mountains” for them to sit on.  And for me sometimes it seems like there are so many of these holy mountains: one for my pride, one for my righteous indignation, one for my gossiping tongue, one for my sensuality, one for my laziness and an especially high one made entirely out of potato chips with a large bowl of onion dip and a six-pack of root-beer on the top! There are times when I look out across the wasteland and see so many of these mountains I feel lost.  And beside each mountain is a vast valley of emptiness and longing out of which I have shoveled and dug the dirt and the rock and the delusions and denials for the mountains I’m building –even still.  The valleys are the emptiness inside me. The longing for success, and for happiness and for peace.  And they just grow vaster and vaster as I shovel more out of them to make new mountains to what the ancient Hebrews would have called my “personal gods.”

            But the prophet says: fill in those valleys, make low those mountains.  The Lord is coming. Get rid of those mountains you have made. Let go of the pride you have taken in their construction. Tear them down and fill in those valleys that make you feel so empty.  That is how you will build your highway for our God.  Tear down your mountains, and fill your valleys and that is when God’s highway will appear.  And what is one of the best ways to tear down our mountain? Repentance. Confession. Don’t cling to your sins, confess them. Those mountains will begin to crumble. And then, make time for prayer, for scripture, for adoration or meditation, and you will feel those valleys begin to fill.  Remember, this highway isn’t for God. God doesn’t need it. No, it’s for us. We need a highway for our God, because we need to make it easier for us to receive Him. The wasteland is within us. It is in our misguided, broken and anxious hearts.  Isn’t that where we find these valleys of loneliness and emptiness? Isn’t that where we really build these mountains for our sins?  So, open your heart. Tear down the mountains and fill the valleys. God is coming. Prepare the way –Hasten His coming! Not for His sake. No, my dear friend, not for His sake, but for your own. The highway is for us. It makes it easier for us to receive the grace that God is trying to give us every day, every moment of every day.  Open your heart. Let it become an 18-lane superhighway (if you can). Receive the triumphal convoy of 18 wheelers filled with grace! And Mercy and Forgiveness and Love. God is coming. Repent. Change your ways. Straighten out your path, because you don’t want to wander off and miss this.