DEC. 10, 2006 PASTOR SCOTT FULLER
MAL 3:1-4; LK 1:68-79; PHIL 1:3-11; LK 3:1-6
Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we believe and in believing we obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
In the lessons from both Malachi and Luke, our eyes are opened, our imagination piqued by that famous call: prepare the way of the Lord! The imagery is of an ambitious undertaking…yet one that’s right up our alley: filling valleys, leveling mountains, making rough ways smooth and crooked paths straight – that’s a visual with which we Alaskans are familiar.
From Tor to tundra and peak to plains, from mountain to marshland and summit to swamp, we know that any valley can be filled, any hill brought low, the crooked can be straightened and what is rough made smooth. We have it as part of our history, our psyche: the ALCAN highway was carved out of the rocky Pacific northwest (1500 miles – Atlanta to Santa Fe). The same is true of the oil pipeline from the North Slope to Valdez (800 miles – Seattle to San Francisco). We know the challenges of preparing a way through the wilderness. Heck, we’re so good at taming the terrain of this terra firma that we even plan to build bridges to nowhere…!
But neither the building of bridges nor the constructing of corridors is the point of our lessons for today. In spite of such vivid imagery, our challenge is less a matter of hard hats and more a matter of hurting hearts. Sharon Baker is a pastor from North Dakota spending a year-long sabbatical here in Anchorage. At our text study on Tuesday, she suggested that these lessons call us to look closely at the hills, valleys, and crooked paths…of our lives.
And that can be a little painful…especially considering Malachi’s descriptions of the refiner’s fire or the fuller’s soap. Either process, the burning away of impurities or the leeching away of dirt, is harsh. So in that sense, I guess we should ask the question: What are some things that prevent us from preparing the way of the Lord?
Whatever our problem: anxiety, anger, angst; self-centeredness, self-deception, self-love…the challenge is to trust God in the process, to follow the Spirit’s lead, to embrace this path of healing for life. For it is a strange sort of…invitation: that we should embrace God’s refining fire, undergo God’s cleansing process, willingly enter the valley of shadows and trust that, some how, some way we will find our way through.
At times we make what seems to be progress. Other days we’re just grateful to put one foot in front of the other. So that’s what we do: we step, and stop, and pray, and trust…then we do the same thing all over again. The good news is that God has blessed us with a master planner, an able builder, a gracious guide – who knows where we’ve been, where we’re headed, and how to keep us on the way.
One of my favorite movies of all time does a great job of portraying this image of God as refiner, cleanser and preparer-of-our-hearts. The Spitfire Grill tells the story of a young woman who is on her way through a deep valley of shadows. We meet Percy in prison, where she works at a phone bank for the tourist bureau answering questions for people who want to visit the state in which she happens to be incarcerated.
In the process of her work, Percy becomes enamored with a pretty little town nestled in the mountains: it’s called Gilead…a name from the Bible of a town famous for its healing ointment or balm. We sometimes sing a song about it: There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. That’s exactly what Percy hopes to find…but as you might expect, many in the community are suspicious of this Outsider with a checkered past.
Only a few are willing to give her a chance: the sheriff is one and Hannah, the elderly manager of the only diner in town, the Spitfire Grill, is another. In so many ways this young ex-con embodies what Henri Nouwen calls The Wounded Healer. While suffering from her own wounds of body, heart and spirit, still she is wonderfully able to prepare the way of the Lord. Percy builds bridges of communication. She smooths the rough edges in relationships. In fact, through the ultimate sacrifice, she helps the town fulfill its destiny to make the wounded whole and heal the sin-sick soul.
Hannah’s son, nicknamed Johnny B, went to Viet Nam a whole person and came back a broken spirit. So broken, in fact, that no one knows he’s alive but his mom. Johnny’s like a beaten dog that will only let you get so close. His home is a lean-to shelter up in the woods behind the Spitfire Grill. His mother, who had tried to get him help, soon discovered that the more she pulled, the further he moved away. Now their only contact is through a bag that she fills with food every night and leaves by the woodpile for Johnny. In the morning, it has been returned empty…a sign that her son is still alive.
But Percy, that wounded healer, somehow manages to connect with Johnny’s broken spirit. One day, while wandering in “his” hills, the young woman is overcome by the peaceful beauty of the place. She sits down overlooking the valley and begins to sing, There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.
At that moment, Johnny steps out of the trees and into the day, out of his valley of shadows and into the light of the sun/Son. Soon after that, we get to see a true miracle unfold: late one night at the empty diner, there sits Johnny, in a booth, holding hands with his mother.
Where life seems to offer so many bridges to nowhere, Jesus Christ promises all people a bridge to somewhere…that place of grace – in the loving and healing arms of our God. Amen.