Last Sunday I spoke to you about how God, through the prophet Isaiah, calls us to go out into the wilderness of our heart and soul in order to make a straight and level pathway for our Lord and Saviour to approach us; how God calls us to make a straight and level pathway by governing our ungoverned places:  the low places of disordered affections which admit no light, . . . the lofty and proud places which admit no love, . . . and the stony places of wrath and envy which forbid intimacy.  . . . Of course, defeating concupiscence with simplicity and pride with detachment and wrath with obedience is not at all easy.  After all, many of these things became the landscape of our souls to protect us from hurt and disappointment in the first place!  Indeed, many of these things became the landscape of our souls to protect us from God.  Fact is, you see, most of us really want to keep God at a distance.  . . . We want to keep God at a distance because we suspect that if a person were to gaze directly upon the countenance of Jesus . . . and accept His loving embrace, . . . they might become holy; . . . they might become holy like Peter or James or John or Mary the Virgin or Mary Magdalene.  And look at them:  they surrendered everything to follow Jesus and obey the Father, . . . and a modern person has so much to give up!  Holiness is for poor people who don’t have anything to lose, we reason.  Or else we think of holiness as involving competence and self-confidence . . . and a great deal more self-sacrifice and energy than should be expected of a mere person, . . . because God always seems so busy coming up with so much good to be done . . . so that saints never seem to have any time to do interesting stuff; . . . to vacation in warm places; . . . to kick back with a cold margarita on the veranda.  And so, we keep God at a distance:  we keep Him close enough to help when we need Him, . . . but not near enough to change our lives.

    But the change God offers us is so good, the Prophet Isaiah tells us today.  The change that God offers, Isaiah says, is as if the Lord God Almighty were to remake existence (new heavens and a new earth) so that the sadness we have caused and the shameful and really dumb things each of us have done and said in former days . . . shall not be remembered by God . . . nor even come to His mind so as to require forgetting.  . . . For, behold, the Lord God Almighty creates His Church and all His saints (called by Isaiah, “Jerusalem and her people”); . . . the Lord God Almighty creates His Church and all His saints, and they shall be a joy to God and give all the holy angels cause to rejoice.  . . . For, while we, the Church, shall have our moments of sadness, . . . we shall not weep with despair nor go about as if there were no consolation or confidence in our lives.  . . . Rather, before we call, God and His angels shall answer, . . . because we shall be heard even before we speak.  . . . And so, the life of any Christian will not be without purpose or point; . . . we shall not plant and another eat; . . . neither shall we build and another inhabit; . . . our labor shall not be in vain, Isaiah says; neither shall we bear children for calamity.

    The power of the Church which the Lord God Almighty creates is so extraordinary that miracles happen(!):  . . . miracles such as the wolf eating mice and voles and vermin right beside the lamb, eating grass, whom the wolf does not harm; . . . and even the fierce lion is content to feed beside the ox without doing it harm.

    “Ah,” you say, “now I know that because such things are impossible (because they are contrary to nature); . . . now I know that Father is making up these wild claims in order to get me to come to Church more often and serve on the Vestry when I’m asked.”  . . . But my claims are not wild!  Look at the history of civilization.  . . . It is the Church Who has, in the course of centuries, by persistent preaching and example; . . . it is the Church Who has de-brutalized a brutal world.  It is the Church Who has caused science and medicine to flourish.  . . . And it is in places where the Church is suppressed that brutality continues.

    How has it been possible for such things to happen?  . . . Saint John the Baptist tells us:  . . . “Among you stands One the thong of Whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.  He baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with Fire!”  You are the Church, baptized with water into the Death and Resurrection of Jesus . . . into the Death and Resurrection of Christ the King; . . . you are Jerusalem, created by God to be a rejoicing and a joy; . . . you are the Church, baptized with water as a sign that the Risen and Living Jesus breathes His Spirit upon you and kindles holy fire to make of you a blessing in a cold world.  . . . You are the Church, Who Jesus visited many years ago . . . and Who the Risen Saviour visits even yet . . . in preparation for the final visit that shall bring the years to their completion and create new heavens and a new earth.

    But so that you, the Church and each of Her saints; . . . so that you might cherish that first coming of Christ . . . and so that you might profit from His daily visitations . . . and so that you might be fit for His transformational arrival, . . . you must heed the counsel of Isaiah, . . . “In the wilderness; . . . in all the rough and stony and arid places of your soul, prepare the way of the Lord;” . . . you must heed the counsel of John the Baptist, “Make straight the way of the Lord.”  . . . You must resist the temptation to distance yourself from God; . . . you must resist the need to poke around in the rubble of disordered human affections, saying to yourself, “Well, the Bible says this is evil, but science says it’s perfectly normal behavior, so the Bible must be wrong.”  You must not make of your soul a convoluted maze of excuses and justifications and equivocations.  You must make and keep the way of the Lord straight!  . . . And how is that done?  Well, I suggested a few things last Sunday, and today someone more illustrious than your Rector has suggested other things; . . . today Saint Paul himself has told you, the Church and each of Her saints; . . . Saint Paul has told you that the direct will of God in Christ Jesus is to be at peace among yourselves, being patient while admonishing, encouraging, and helping idlers and fainthearted and weak persons; … the direct will of God in Christ Jesus is that you not repay evil for evil but do good, rejoicing always, praying constantly, and giving thanks to God in all circumstances … while holding fast to what is good and abstaining from every form of evil.  . . . Do this, and it shall be for us, the Church and each of Her saints; . . . it shall be for us as we pray throughout Advent:  without shame or fear we shall always be disposed to rejoice to behold Christ’s appearing.