Advent 2

[HKHaugan]

In cross country skiing you have a forerunner, that is, someone who blazes a trail through new snow to make way for the next skiers. If you are a group of people you each take a turn blazing the trail since new snow takes more effort and energy. Each one may take a few hundred yards then the next does the same and so on. Each skier helps the one behind. They all know where they are headed and what has to be done along the way.

When the Blue Ridge Parkway was built in the 1930’s in Virginia and North Carolina the forests, mountains and valleys were carefully surveyed. Every detail was worked out so that the 400+ mile road was faithful to the ridge terrain. That trail had to be blazed. It took careful preparation for a long project with a set goal.

Think also about the great Panama Canal. The purpose was to connect the Atlantic and Pacific at the land’s narrowest point between North and South America so that ships would not have make that arduous journey around the southern tip of South America. That canal had to be blazed. Each mile across the Isthmus of Panama was a wilderness, demanding precision and perseverance.

John the Baptist was a trailblazer. His trail was spiritual. He was walking the Judean countryside while at the same time walking in a spiritual wilderness. It was a trail through the darkness of sin and evil at the end of which the light of hope would shine, the Messiah was coming. This trail was first to make people aware that sin was behind all human failings, that every heart should look deep within, realize its separation from God, turn to Him and say they are sorry for the way they have lived so self-centeredly. Second, he was fulfilling the Isaiah prophecy of ‘one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord’ who would lift them from sin. Third, Jesus referred to Him as the ‘Elijah who was to come’ meaning John was the transition between Jewish history and its fulfillment in Jesus.

But what does John have to do with us? Three things. First, John is the example for what we as disciples of Jesus are to be spiritually, trailblazers. Our calling is to blaze a spiritual trail to the hearts of others. It is not just a one-time trail but a trail that enables it to be well traveled and in turn makes others trailblazers as well. Secondly, John indicates the method by which this is done, “I must decrease that He may increase” meaning the heart sees that its satisfaction can only come by letting the consciousness of Jesus be central. Thirdly, John makes it clear that the world, secular society, is a wilderness in which people are lost and in need of the One who gives the heart its moorings in the midst of the devil’s subtle traps of confusion and temptation.

Each of us is a John the Baptist ‘in waiting.”