When we hear the words, ‘a voice cries in the wilderness: Prepare a way for the Lord …’, what do we hear? A young man wondered whether he was being called to be a priest. But when have we heard a call to prepare a way for the Lord?

In our wilderness have we heard a voice calling us to a change of heart? A woman heard such a voice when she spoke of her grief in a small group. A friend’s response enabled her ‘to find release from the doubts and fears and self-concern that had imprisoned me.’ That’s the hope and the joy offered to us in Advent, in the person of the one who is to come. 

John the Baptist prepares a way for him, and he reveals how we might do this by calling us to repent, to a change of heart, so the kingdom of heaven might be made real in our lives. When the people were baptised by him, they ‘confessed their sins’, naming them so they might be forgiven, and their relationship with God and one another, might be restored.

These are the fruits of repentance. We can’t simply presume like the religious leaders do in the gospel that all is well because we’re in good standing with God, as John calls them out for their complacency.

Clearly, he’s an agent of change, and as the young man and the grieving woman instinctively understood, it’s decision time, because John points to the coming one’s role as judge at the end of time. He will baptise us with the Holy Spirit and with fire – a baptism of fire – which a woman experienced a few years ago when a bushfire destroyed her home.  She lost everything and slowly came to realise it was an opportunity to do things differently this time, with God at the centre of her life.

She came to understand this judgement is not something to be afraid of, for when it comes it will be the moment when all is revealed, the moment of our liberation, when we will be ‘set free to love’. The only question is, do we long for this transformation or cling to what we’ve known? It’s not quite what John had in mind, but it is the hope and joy of Advent; that the Lord’s judgment will see the birth of a community of hope, where we might experience the joy of being with one another, both now and forever. 

This community is at the heart of the first and second readings. Isaiah speaks of a new life for God’s people on returning from exile – renewed relationship with one another and all creation. While Paul speaks of hope in the scriptures and following the example of Christ and our forebears in faith, the building up of a community where we might all give glory to God. In this way we ‘prepare a way for the Lord’: it’s what we’re called to do. 

Damian Coleridge    

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