Sermons for the Month
Time to Build God a New Highway
DATE: December 5, 1999
SERVICE: Advent II
TEXT: Isaiah 40:1-11“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
Akron received national attention last month about the road rage killing of an out of control motorist by an aggressive taxicab driver. If nothing else, this incident impressed upon me that it's time to get rid of moral gridlock and roadblocks, and build a superhighway for God, so that God can visit us and we, him. I bet 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. But you and I know that more roads isn't going to 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. Similarly, data expands to fill the space available, as anyone who has tried running Windows '98 on a 5-year-old computer can attest. Another variation on this same law: 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. But truth be known, we are NOT building more roads. The miles of paved highway in the U.S. numbered highway system, those roads exclusive of the Interstate system that stretch through two or more states, have actually been declining -- from 169,000 miles in 1955 to 163,000 in 1973 to 157,000 in 1989. Rather than building new roads, more roads, we are straightening the existing roads. Which is sort of what Isaiah, who could have been sloganeering for the United States' Interstate program, was suggesting in our text: "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 in Akron especially know about bridging valleys with All American Y Bridges and rivers with I 275 and the Turnpike over the Cuyahoga and smoothing out hills with out cutting through Stony Hill on Route 18 toward Medina. We are familiar with Isaiah's God. Straight, smooth, level highways is 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 this century, the privileged few who could afford a Model T 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. That's what Henry Joy, President of the Packard Motor Company, discovered when he tried to drive across the United States early in this 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 were ecstatic 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. As we all know, when highway traffic slows, tempers rise. Aggressive driving, road rage, ordinary Jekyll-citizens metamorphosing into sociopathic, ranting, deadly Hydes -- we've all seen it or felt it. What can we do? Whatever 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 treat 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 enter this Advent season. We might consider whether the road we are on to meet God may be the wrong highway. God may not be found on the roads of self-satisfaction or materialism that we're traveling. If we find that our lives are full of gridlock, it may be because we're on the same road as everyone else. Last summer, my son drove to California. He decided to drive the old Federal highways, Route 40, for example. He found the traffic lighter and the scenery more interesting than on the superhighways. Why? Because very few were on these roads. Everyone else obviously wanted to get from Point A to Point B as fast as they could. All this is to say, we may want to consider getting off that road and onto another. Even if we are on God's road, however, we all know it may need some smoothing out as well. It is very easy for seasonal and distracting potholes to create a bumpy ride on the way to meet God. It is very easy to get caught up into the nonstop barrage of Christmas Carols mixed with sale ads and shopping bargains and become so stressed we forget the true reason for the season. Or, it might not be the condition of the road at all. It may be the travelers on the road with us. It may be we need to get rid of some of the baggage we are carrying, weighing us down, stressing us out. There may be something more significant than Pokemon cards, handheld DVD players, PlayStation games and digital cameras; or something more significant than running up our credit cards at the end of the year; or something more significant than our feeling hurried all the time; or something more significant than the newest Schwartzenegger film about the end of the world. 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. My friends, you know 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 it is God who 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 announced the good news: the Messiah is almost here, so get ready. Preparation is not a matter of find the most direct route to the nearest mall but of repentance. Grace, not human effort, makes this possible. There are still almost three weeks to 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 or attend one less party and use the time to spend three 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, or call a member of Faith you haven't seen for awhile just to let them know they are missed? * 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 lot 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 five decades of captivity in Babylon. The prophecy of John the Baptist was fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even 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 a 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. AMEN