Advent 2

There isn’t a person here who hasn’t been stuck in gridlock at some point and wished we had more roads to ease the traffic congestion.

News flash! More roads won’t do it. Traffic engineers know that the moment you build a bigger road, more traffic rushes into it, creating a monster mess in contrast to the previous mini mess.

According to Parkinson’s Law, work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Another variation is expenditures rise to meet income, which is probably how your last raise seemed to disappear. Applying this sinister logic to our highways, the number of vehicles expands to fill any highway.

In addition to building more roads, we are also straightening the existing roads.

Which is sort of what Isaiah, who could have been sloganeering for the United States’ Interstate program, was suggesting in today’s Old Testament lesson: “Make straight in the desert a highway… Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain” (vv. 3-4).

We bridge valleys and rivers and cut and tunnel through mountains and smooth badlands in a manner befitting Isaiah’s God. Straight, smooth, level highways – the shortest possible distance between point A and point B.

Not so long ago we thought that such highways would solve our transportation problems. At the beginning of the 20^th century, the privileged few who could afford an automobile faced the worst roads in this nation’s history. They had been long neglected because as a nation we had been more dependent on and concerned about railroads. Those early road warriors gloried in their tales of hardships on the road – sand and mud and ruts that swallowed wheels and broke axles.

Not only were the roads bad, but they weren’t well integrated, and left vast areas of the country unconnected. Here is what Henry Joy, President of the Packard Motor Company, discovered when he tried to drive across the United States early in the 20^th century:

He found that the roads ended completely somewhere in Nebraska. A man in Omaha gave him instructions: drive west from town until you reach a fence. Open the fence, drive through and close it. Do this several times. Joy followed the instructions, he recalled later, until finally the fences ended and there was “nothing but two ruts across the prairie” (Phil Patton, Open Road [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986], 39).

Isaiah’s prophecy described the dream of men like Henry Joy: straight, smooth, level highways from coast to coast.

By the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, the dream was much closer to being a reality. The most popular exhibit at the Fair was General Motors’ Futurama – a diorama of the futuristic world of 1960 replete with tiny, streamlined model cars whizzing along superhighways only dreamed of in 1939. The opening of the first American superhighway was less than a year away. “America’s Dream Road,” our first superhighway, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, 160 miles of four-lane divided highway connecting Pittsburgh and Harrisburg gave us our first national taste of the straight, smooth, level highways prophesied in the Futurama exhibit. The first travelers along the turnpike (including my parents) were rhapsodic in their praises.

But the Futurama dream also unintentionally foreshadowed the nightmares to come: When one of the tiny, streamlined, cars would occasionally get stuck in its groove, the others would crash into it, creating a massive, miniaturized glimpse of future gridlock.

When we first moved here almost two decades ago, my wife and I could strap our son, Hamilton, into the back seat of the car, hop on I-4, and drive from the Rectory to the Magic Kingdom in one hour flat. Nowadays, we’re lucky to make it to Haines City in that amount of time.

As we all know, when highway traffic slows, tempers rise. Aggressive driving, road rage, ordinary Dr. Jekyll citizens metamorphosing into sociopathic, ranting, deadly Mr. Hydes – we’ve all seen it or felt it. What can we do?

We know that adding capacity won’t solve the traffic problem, nor will it solve the time problems we have in our own lives. Adding more capacity, more time, will not deal with the basic issues of how to unclutter our lives and prepare for the coming of the Lord.

In fact, there are a few possibilities to explain the congestion and frustration in our lives as we experience this Advent season. We might consider that as we start packing to meet God, we may be on the wrong highway. God may not be found on the roads of consumerism that we’re traveling. If we find that our lives are full of gridlock, it’s because we’re on the same road as everyone else. Time to get off that road and onto another.

And even if we are on God’s road, it may need some smoothing out. It’s very easy for seasonal and distracting potholes to create a bumpy ride on the way to meet God.

Or it might not be the road at all. It may be the travelers on the road. We don’t need better roads; we need to be better travelers. Perhaps we need to get rid of some baggage. There may be something more significant than long lines at the heart of our Christmas preparation woes; or something more significant than a lack of money at the heart of our financial woes; or something more significant than a lack of time at the heart of our feeling hurried all the time; or something more significant than a lack of entertainment at the heart of our boredom.

In these and many other ways, we tend to seek solutions through our American genius for efficiency – the straight, smooth, level highway philosophy applied to life in general. We seek the better highway, the better job, the bigger store, the right pill. And we often succeed, at least for a while.

This isn’t what Isaiah was talking about.

One aspect of Isaiah’s highway shocks our American highway building sensibilities: God builds these roads. We don’t have to bridge the valleys or level the mountains or smooth the rough ground. In Isaiah’s prophecy, God does these things because he is merciful to his chosen people. Isaiah is not calling the Jews of his day to an arduous highway building plan; he is announcing the good news that God will make their journey easy.

Centuries later Christians saw in the highway of Isaiah’s prophecy a prophecy of John the Baptist and Christ. John the Baptist is the voice crying out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Mark 1:3).

Once again, we don’t have to do the heavy lifting. That is the work of Jesus Christ, who is our highway. “I am the way, and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Like Isaiah, John the Baptist is announcing good news – the Messiah is almost here, so get ready. Preparation is not a matter of arduous highway building, but of repentance. Grace, not human effort, makes this possible.

There are still two weeks until Christmas. Why don’t we let go of some of the unnecessary stuff we drag with us on God’s highway?

* Why don’t we spend one hour less shopping and use the time to spend five minutes a day repenting and thanking God that he became one of us in Jesus Christ? Or maybe to visit a forgotten, shut-in neighbor?

* Why don’t we cut back just a little on our gift-giving and donate the money to a worthy charity or use the savings to relieve ourselves of optional overtime in order to spend the time with family?

* Why don’t we make an effort to let someone go ahead of us in traffic, maybe while leaving the church today? Or maybe we might forgive someone who cut us off in traffic, or pray for everyone stuck with us in gridlock?

If every Christian took such an attitude in traffic, we probably would not realize Futurama’s naive prophecy or avoid the gridlock of Parkinson’s Law, but we would make our journeys a lot more pleasant and less filled with rage.

The prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled when the Jewish people returned to Jerusalem in 538 B.C. after almost five decades of captivity in Babylon. The prophecy of John the Baptist was fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Though both prophecies will only be fulfilled completely when Christ comes again in glory, our straight, smooth, level highway is already in place. The way was won for us on the cross.

Sometimes, contrary to our American approach to life, a better highway won’t cure what ails us.

Sometimes the answer is using our freedom to become better travelers.