"In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
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.
Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken." [Isaiah 40:3-5]
Okay, the question we have got to ask ourselves here with all of this earth-moving is simply this: who is all of this construction and excavation work actually for?
As the prophet imagines it, God is announcing new road work, like those big blaring lighted signs you see on the highway announcing lane changes, detours, and possible delays, because a new road or lane is being built. This passage has the feel of a work-order from the Divine Department of Transportation: the crooked has to be made straight, the low spots filled in, the high places leveled off, and the rough terrain needs to be made smooth. And all of it is being done in open, rugged wilderness for a project God has in mind to build a highway in the middle of nowhere.
But that's not the weirdest part of all this: the real kicker is who the road is "for"... because ultimately, it ain't for God.
Well, at least not in the sense that God needs a road to get anywhere. Sure, the prophet says that this highway is "for God" in the sense that God is the one commanding creation to carve out a road and clear a path. Yes, God is the one who is calling for this divine construction project, but God doesn't need roads. God is God, after all, and God has never been bound to traveling along paved highways or smooth terrain. One of the perks of being God, you might say, is that God doesn't even need a straight line between Point A and Point B: God is already immediately present everywhere at all times, to all points in existence (and probably to all the points in non-existence as well). In other words, God doesn't need a nice new flat four-lane highway to get anywhere; there's nowhere that God isn't present already!
So... why would God go to the trouble of announcing a construction project like this, and why would God insist that this road be smooth, straight, and level... in the middle of nowhere? Why would God call for a road, if the Creator of All That Is doesn't need to take the turnpike?
Because, dear ones, we do. Human beings do need to travel by road--at least the ones to whom these words from Isaiah 40 were first spoken sure did. These words are addressed to the exiles who had endured decades of captivity at the hands of the Babylonian Empire. Their parents and grandparents had been taken away like human plunder by the conquerors and brought by the Babylonians to be assimilated into their culture and to boost the Empire's gross domestic product. And now, some seventy years later, here comes a voice speaking on behalf of God saying, "There is a homecoming in store for you. You will come back from exile. Even though you don't know the way, I will bring you home." The road in question, then, isn't a road that God has to take in order to get from Point A to Point B, but rather it is the path that God will lead the exiles along to bring them back home--even though it's a way they've never gone before, and even though it means crossing empty wilderness to get there. God will lead the people along the way, and because the people need a straight and reliable path, God will clear the way for them.
If this sounds a bit like the story of the old Exodus out of Egypt, you're on to something. In fact, I think that's exactly the point: to people who were hopeless and thought there was no way of ever getting to go back to the lands, the homes, and the way of life that their parents had told them about, God has to point them back further than they have been remembering. God points them further back in their memories than just when the Babylonians first came and took them captive; God points them all the way back to that formative story of a wilderness journey out of Pharaoh's grasp and into the land in the days of Moses. And so this prophet here in Isaiah 40 is trying to say, "Well, just like God did for us before, when it was the wilderness journey out of Egypt and the Sea, now God can be relied upon to bring us through the desert from Babylon to our homeland once again!" The first exodus had the parted Sea, so now this journey will have a road carved out the leveled ground in the desert. The first exodus had "the glory of the Lord" leading the people along the way as that pillar of cloud and fire, and so now in this second exodus, "the glory of the Lord" shall be revealed to all peoples. The idea is that God has been with the people in exile all along, just like God heard the cries of the enslaved Hebrews in Egypt, and God moved in history to bring them home. So now, the journey home from exile will have God leading the way, guiding the exiles along a path already prepared for them. God doesn't need a road to walk on, but we do--so God chooses to go on the journey with the returning exiles as well. That's how God does things--going with us, sharing the journey, covering the same miles we do. We need the way in the wilderness because of our limitations, but God will walk it with us so that we are not alone. The God we meet in the Bible always chooses to be God-with-us.
And that, beloved, is what this season's hope is really all about. The One for whom we are waiting is the One who comes to share the journey with us. The One on whom we pin our trust is the One who walks us home from exile on desert highway, not because God needs to have a paved road, but because we humans do. And God is not above slowing down to match our pace (or use roads). That's what the Incarnation is all about. God in the human life of Jesus--sharing all that it is to be human, bearing the frailty and fragility of it all, choosing to live within our limitations, in order to walk with us all the way home. In a sense, that's really what God's presence in Jesus is all about: God's commitment to bring the whole world back home out of exile, and sharing our humanity along the way like God once walked the "way in the wilderness" with the people leaving Babylon. God becomes a human in Jesus, not because God needs it (or thinks it would be a fun "field trip" to find out what it feels like to be human), but because we do. God shares our humanity and walks us home in Jesus.
I've got to tell you: for a lot of my life, I heard this business about "preparing a way for the Lord" as though God was the one who needed a clear pathway in order to get to us... or that we were supposed to walk this highway on our own to get "up" to where God was. And so often, that's how pop religion talks about things, isn't it? That we need to do these five things, or pray this certain prayer, or keep the following list of rules, and by doing so we "keep on the straight and narrow way" so that by the end of our lives we will be deemed acceptable to get to have companionship with God. You know that old sales-pitch, right? But when we hear these words as they were first spoken, it's not about us getting "up" to God, and it's certainly not about God needing some kind of obstacle-free, level-ground road in order to get to us. Nope--it's always been about the God who has been with us even in our times that felt like godforsaken exile, who takes us by the hand, and who walks the way with us... because we need it.
That's why Jesus' coming is good news. And that's why he's worth telling others about. In Jesus, God walks us all the way home.
Lord Jesus, enable us to recognize your presence among us here and now, and to trust your guidance where you will lead us.
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