Day 11 - Wednesday, December 7
Title: MAKE A HIGHWAY FOR OUR GOD
Scripture #1: Isaiah 40:1–5, 9
“Comfort, yes, comfort My people!” says your God. “Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” O Zion, you who bring good tidings, get up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, you who bring good tidings, lift up your voice with strength, lift it up, be not afraid; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”
Scripture #2: Matthew 3:1–2
In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”

Poetry & Poet:
“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion–put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

MAKE A HIGHWAY FOR OUR GOD

It is odd, in one way, to remember resurrection in Advent. Wendell Berry, in today’s poem, suggests ways to practice resurrection. He invites readers to live, at least once each day, for a way that is not the ordered to the calibrated success the world measures and values.  This is Redeeming time, time yet to come, in faith of the promise of fulfillment––where love and laughter have currency eternally, even while not lining our pockets. The Son’s incarnation is precisely the subversion of expectations of power and might the world craves. When Berry suggests being like a fox, Jesus’ Bethlehem birth outfoxes that fox, Herod. His ministry is a parable-like misdirection for humanity’s redemption into the Kingdom of God. The ‘they’ of Berry’s first stanza had their agenda for Jesus too, but his coming, service among sinners and tax collectors, and death, all conformed only to the loving will of the Father.

In the light of Isaiah’s prophetic cry that the high places will be laid low, that the good news from Zion will straighten crooked paths, Andy Goldsworthy’s nature sculpture offers an intriguing perspective. Amid the scatter of fallen leaves from forest trees this dug out, arrow-straight corridor looks like an alien intervention. At the same time, with the symmetry of the rocks on either lip of the drop, it is as if the earth has been cleaved open, preserving its features.  The natural swirliness and free fall of leaves fill the corridor, incorporating the cleft into a re-ordered landscape. This particular photograph of the sculpture can be read to tell a story. A person’s head becomes the stepping stone to bridge the cleft. While the corridor is vertical to our eyes the bridge is horizontal, stepping from stone to head to stone.  Is this John crying out in the wilderness? Prepare the way for the Lord. Himself the lightning rod of proclamation that strikes Israel and us today with his call for repentance. The kingdom of heaven is at hand! When that kingdom comes, how shall we be found? Welcoming and molding ourselves to the new order as the forest floor has accepted Goldsworthy’s intervention? Is this bridgehead the Lord himself – the mediator between God and humankind? The one who is born of the young virgin’s womb, in the earthy poverty of the manger, accommodated by the livestock, making a way for the savior and salvation of the world.

How do you practice resurrection this Advent, today? Hear again the earth shattering and restoring Good News of God’s coming kingdom in the person of Christ, and testify to that kingdom, in view of our expectant looking forward to celebrating Jesus’ birth to Mary, answering Berry’s question: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?

Redeem the time, standing in prophetic time of Advent, by laughing, or, in tears, be joyful as only those whose hope is not in themselves or their systems but in the coming Christ can be. Thus we can redeem even the contrary joy ‘though you have considered all the facts’ from Berry’s poem to an apt seasonal joy: ‘because, in Christ, you have considered all the facts in the light of his coming.’

Prayer:
Lord, we hear your comfort! Thank you. Lead us into ways that prepare for the celebration of your coming. Lead us in repentance for ways we speak and act as if the world’s way is true. Turn us around so that today we may act so as to testify to all flesh (or at least a few of those in the flesh around us) that your glory is revealed in Jesus. Lift up our voices to proclaim that he is our God.
Amen.

Dr. Andy Draycott
Associate Professor of Theology 
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.