When my oldest daughter was in high school, she sang in the school chorus which put on several musicals, one of which was “Jesus Christ, Superstar.” I never read the Isaiah lesson we have for today without hearing the soloist starting at the back of the darkened auditorium wending his way down the aisle singing, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” It was so different, so awe-inspiring, it continues to resonate with me all these years later. (When I read this paragraph to her, she said she supposed schools wouldn’t be able to use such overtly religious material these days—how sad!)

As the season of Advent stretches out before us, we need to hear that call once again, to prepare our hearts and minds to welcome Christ among us, now and not yet. It is so easy to allow ourselves to be distracted by the busyness of our culture, to forget “the reason for the season.” Imagine, if you can, what life would be like if we did indeed spend this time really preparing ourselves “to be found by [Christ] at peace, without spot or blemish” as our epistle enjoins us. We would then be ready to celebrate the twelve days of the Christmas season with joy and delight, rather than finding ourselves worn out, exhausted from all the pre-Christmas hubbub. We would be ready to focus on the incarnation of Love in our lives spilling over to those around us, to relish the reality of the presence of Christ in our midst.

As for the “not yet,” we declare Sunday by Sunday that we believe “Christ will come again.” We don’t know when or how that will be manifest, but I expect it will be like nothing we’ve ever considered, as different as the first coming was for the Jews who were anxiously awaiting their Messiah’s arrival. The Rev. Tom Weller, in a recent blog, reminded me of a book he preached about here at Trinity in 1993: Jesus and the Sweet Pilgrim Baptist Church. The author, Clayton Sullivan, tells of Jesus and Simon Peter returning to earth as Jewish women in a red convertible to visit a little backwoods church in the town of Clearwater, Ms. (You might want to read it for an Advent treat.) His picture is quite different from Isaiah’s peaceful, pastoral scene in today’s lesson where the Lord God “will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” Or from Peter’s very opposite image in our epistle lesson of a cleansing fire preparing the way for the day of the Lord, where he encourages us as “we wait for new heavens and a new earth,” to lead “lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God.” Whenever, however, God alone knows. In the meantime it’s never too late to start our preparations—to prepare the way of the Lord.