2nd Sunday of Advent 2024
Baruch 5:1-9; Psalm 125 (126); Philippians 1:3-6, 8-11; Luke 3:1-6
I am going to tell you a story. I have probably told it to you before, but so what? I watch lots of repeats on iplayer, so it is unlikely to do you too much harm if you listen to something which you have already heard. As a priest once said to me when I apologised for re-using material which I had used previously: “The same sun rises every morning and we don’t complain about that”.
This story dates back to the equivalent Sunday to this one in 1986. I was based at the time at the Diocesan Residential Youth Centre at Castlerigg Manor in Keswick, and I had been asked, on this Sunday, to celebrate Mass at Windermere, where the parish priest was ill.
The priest in question was the late Fr. Joseph Haydon, known to the brethren as Smokin’ Joe, not because of any resemblance, real or imagined, to the original Smokin’ Joe, the heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frasier, but simply because, except when he was on the sanctuary, he never had a ciggy absent from between his fingers. Now, Smokin’ Joe was ill—perhaps not surprisingly with pneumonia—and I had been asked to “supply” for him on this particular Sunday morning.
It was a glorious morning, as close to perfection as ever a morning can be. It was frosty, but the sun was beating down from a cloudless sky, creating those shadows and effects on the fellsides which only a winter sun can provide. On the Lakes which I passed—Thirlmere in particular, to which the road runs parallel—a slight breeze made the wavelets dance as they reflected the sun’s sparkle, and as I headed down Dunmail Raise, the sheer tranquility was breathtaking.
As I drove, I was rehearsing in my head the homily which I was to base on the readings of the day. “For God has commanded that every mountain and the everlasting hills be made low.” “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places shall become level ways,” and all I could think was “Oh no, Lord! Not these hills, please! They are far too beautiful.”
It is all a matter of context. Baruch is writing of the return of the Jewish exiles from their seventy years’ enforced absence in Babylon. For the individuals involved, it would not actually have been a return. The original exiles would have died, and it would have been chiefly their grandchildren and great-grandchildren who were making what was, for them, a trek into the unknown. Baruch promises that their journey will be made easy, all obstacles removed, everything done to make this a genuine homecoming.
We find similar comfort and rejoicing in the psalm: “When the Lord delivered Sion from bondage, it seemed like a dream”. You are familiar with the exiles’ psalms of lament—“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, remembering Sion”—now their tears are replaced by songs.
Luke picks up this theme in the Gospel. After providing precise dates—clearly a man after my own heart—he applies the prophecy to the work of John the Baptist, who is preparing a way for the adult Jesus. Notice that this all relates to the proclamation of the Kingdom: we are still not thinking about the Christmas event. It is too early in Advent for us to focus on that.
So the way for Jesus is to be made more straightforward by the Baptist’s teaching, as the way for the exiles had been smoothed more than five centuries earlier. What about us, as we make our own pilgrim journey towards the Kingdom? Is our way to be smoothed? Are the obstacles to be removed from our path?
I would like to pose a rather different question: would we want them to be? In some respects, we might answer “Yes”. If, as the pilgrim people of God, we were to have an easier journey, that might sometimes be desirable. Yet, if life and, in particular, the Christian life, were to have suffering removed, if the struggles which we face in following Christ—and for some people in merely existing—no longer afflicted us, would we walk more rapidly, achieve the Kingdom more securely?
Think again of those Lakeland hills and valleys. If somehow the Keswick to Windermere road were to be flattened, would we feel that we had gained, or lost? The struggles and difficulties, the obstacles and hardships, provided that they do not destroy or severely damage us, are part of the journey, whether in the Lake District or in life. If our way was to be totally smooth, it would not be a pilgrim road; it would not be taken in the footsteps of, and in company with, Christ. It is because Christ has walked, and does walk, this route, and not because it is flat and straightforward, that we are truly enabled to be pilgrims of hope.
