Sermon, 12/8/24: Regulatory Road Signs

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2 Advent

Canticle 4; Baruch 5:1–9; Philippians 1:3–11; Luke 3:1–6

For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God.  Baruch 5:7

Whether as driver or passenger, anyone who has driven or been driven in an automobile outside US borders, is quick to notice the difference in regulatory road signs between American signage and those of other countries.  However, more and more road signs from the European Continent have begun to be used in the United States.  An inverted triangle connotes a yield; a red circle with a white horizontal bar means do not enter; the octagonal red sign, with or without the word STOP, at least in the western countries, is universally understood that one must halt, prior to proceeding.  Given the number of languages spoken on the European Continent, it is expedient to use universal signs.  I have come to the conclusion that, whether determined by a universal sign or spelled out in words, Boston drivers choose to translate signs as most expedient for them.

The year was 1995, a year in which regulatory road signs were not on my agenda, but a year which introduced a change in my family’s unity, never ever to be forgotten.  In summer 1995, to regain my spiritual balance, to have uninterrupted, private conversation with the God of Creation, I set out from Upstate New York to visit Northern New England, without a mobile telephone and at a pace which was set daily as my thoughts and feelings so moved me.  I sought out in Maine the bishop who had confirmed me, ordained me deacon and priest, and who 25 years earlier had performed my wedding ceremony.  I did not encounter any unusual regulatory road signs in Maine.

From Maine, I crossed over into New Hampshire where I had taught seven years at Dartmouth College, where my daughters had been born, and later attended St. Paul’s School in Concord.  Regulatory Road Signs did not cause me to take notice of any unusual situation.  From New Hampshire, I crossed into Vermont, the Green Mountain State.  My aim there was to look in on a former fellow Theological School graduate who, after graduation and ordination, had taught my younger daughter at St. Paul’s School, but by then had become rector at a small Vermont country parish.  Everything was calm, even uneventful.  One could not have wished for better weather. 

However, I began the drive up one mountainside where I felt that an oxygen mask would have been desired.  I had to cross from the eastern to the western side of said mountain.  And as my reliable Volvo continued its climb, I encountered a Regulatory Road Sign which was different from any sign I had ever before seen.  The sign was of billboard size, and it read: Do Not Use This Road After 1 November.  With an elevated blood pressure level, I was enormously pleased that I had learned to read prior to entering kindergarten and that it was mid-July, for the road itself was narrow and possessed unending curves, thus treacherous at any time of year.  Opposing vehicles had to slow to a walking pace.  Should you like adventure, I would not recommend you travel to Vermont; rather, undertake a day’s journey, just beyond Springfield to western Massachusetts on I-90 and then return.  It’s a safer trip.  You may have the opportunity to witness a long-haul tractor trailer make use of the “runaway truck ramp.”  Because of the steep decline, there is a regulatory sign on the eastbound side that warns “Truck Drivers, test your brakes.”

Regulatory Road Signs and alternate routes are nothing new.  In our daily lives, we do not give much attention to regulatory road signs.   They are second nature to us.  We observe and honor “No Parking” signs in Boston and Cambridge because not to do so can be costly.  “Do Not Enter” or “One Way” signs, even when we do not observe them, are not new to us.  Thanks to Google Map we can often maneuver around obstructing traffic. 

Regulatory Road Signs are not new for those who would travel by faith through life.  They are to be found throughout our Book of Records, the Bible.  I offer you proof:

  • From the Prophet Baruch (during the time of Israel’s captivity in Babylon (Iraq):  For God ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God.  (5:7)
  • From the Gospel according to St. Luke: As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. (3:4 – 6)

Good people of St. James, it is my firm belief that the temptation is great, too great, to read and to hear in trifold repetition these words as merely wishful thinking, as other-worldly conjecture, as beautiful prose, as an allegory, rather than as the challenge that it in fact is.  It is my firm belief that the God of our Creation is calling us continuously to consider those things which separate us and which cause us to relate to the one or other group or tribe as less worthy of access to God and to all which God has prepared for All since Creation.

Whereas the psalmist declares that all that is was created for all humankind, including mountains and valleys.  We have used them corruptly.  From my own experience, for example, from my early years of living in Germany, I witnessed firsthand that a “mixed marriage” was not, as we in the United States would describe it, according to skin color, but was a marriage between a man and a woman who came from villages separated by a mountain. Rejection ensued.  Have I not only read, but also seen with my own eyes, how those who were situated financially better, built their houses and mansions on the higher ground, away from the odor of slaughterhouses and from the floods in low lying river areas, as was the case in our major cities?  To fill in the valleys, i.e. low-lying areas, and to render economic roads straight, devoid of twists and turns due legal jargon and documents which make it impossible to the less educated to decipher, to see in the distance a viable future.

At the time in which John the Baptizer exercised his ministry in and around the Jordan River, as recorded in our Book of Records, our Bible, Judah/Israel was no longer under Babylonian (Iraqi) occupation.  Rather, the country was under occupation by the Roman Empire.  During Luke’s era, there were those Judeans, not unlike followers of current political parties at home and abroad, who collaborated with the occupiers to their own advantage, while the common man/woman was relegated to a lower status.  Plainly stated, these were the sins for which John preached repentance.  They took advantage of their own people.  John’s belief was, as it was centuries prior, identical to that of  Isaiah’s and Baruch’s:  that all barriers which prevented the realization of the contract/covenant that God had first given the Hebrew, the people of biblical Israel, should be removed.  Everyone of faith should enjoy a direct, unimpeded relation with Yahweh. John was a spokesman for political and socio-economic justice. 

In the secular world, regulatory signs take many shapes and are altered and replaced with up-to-date ones.  The Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament are filled with regulatory signs that govern our interactions with each other, signs which aid in achieving the goal of faith.  As we, with anxiety, look ahead to 2025 and beyond, let our prayer be, yours and mine, that we falter not in using John the Baptist as our hero, as our General in our struggle to “make [God’s] paths straight” and to fill every valley, to make every mountain and hill low,’ so that all God’s creatures may see the glory of God.  Amen