Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann
Isaiah 35:8-10
December 11, 2016
A decade or so ago, it became fashionable among relevant Christians to use the word journey when talking about the Christian life. No longer simply living in the world alert for the return of Christ, believers were now journeying on the way—and probably journaling each evening about the highlights of that day’s journey. It’s a fine metaphor or image as far as it goes. But, there are decidedly different sorts of journeys. Though the lore and legend of our own Route 66 offer a romantic and nostalgic portrait of the great American road trip, for most of us, a road trip is simply a necessity fueled by family or business responsibilities and limited finances. Most of you are very familiar with road trips. The goal of a road trip is to arrive at your destination as cheaply as possible; a road trip is merely a means to a greater end. If a road trip represents one sort of journey, a walk or hike on a mountain trail may represent its opposite. When you hike, the hike itself is the point. It’s not a means, but is the end itself. And, usually, it’s done by choice, not obligation. On a hike, one communes with nature, snacks on granola bars and trail mix, and drinks freshly filtered ice cold water from pristine streams. On a road trip, you commune with dudes at the truck stop, drink excessively caffeinated beverages and eat pork rinds and Donettes coated in viscous, degraded, powdered sugar.
Small wonder, then, that in the church it is the winding path that illustrates the journey of the Christian life. Christians walk with their Lord along dirt trails under the spreading canopy of giant shade trees…you know, the kind of beautiful trees you find along the way to Emmaus just like in that familiar painting that hung in so many homes a generation or two ago. Christians follow their shepherd along trails bordered by babbling brooks. Paths are for Christians. Highways, on the other hand, are for heathens. With reckless abandon, the lost careen down the broad thoroughfares on their highway to hell. They get their kicks on Route 666. The contrast is sharp. Christians read from devotionals titled Light on the Path, not Headlights on the Highway. They walk on paths of righteousness, not on roadways of rectitude. And, Jesus himself, we know, warned us about broad ways and wide gates that lead to destruction; he told us to stay on the narrow ways with the small gates. No highways, for Christians: just paths. But, in today’s reading, Isaiah gives us a highway—and it’s not even a highway through the mountains or under dense shade. No, it’s a highway through the Arabah, which was the arid land south of the Dead Sea. It was a barren, desolate land occupying a valley mostly below sea level. Isaiah gives us a highway that doesn’t fit the usual picture, but a highway it is. And so, we’re forced to pause and reevaluate. A highway…really? Well, why not? Why should the devil have all the good highways?
Isaiah doesn’t give us too much detail about his highway. But, it’s likely that his highway doesn’t exactly fit the images we get when we think of highways. Ancient highways weren’t measured by the number of lanes they provided in each direction. And, they weren’t built of concrete or even merely asphalt. Isaiah doesn’t tell us anything about the materials used for the highway, or the maximum speed that was in mind when it was designed. But, we do know that the maximum speed wasn’t much—after all, this highway is made for walking. This highway is not built for speed or even for volume. It’s built for safety. What Isaiah stresses about this highway is that it is secure. When you travel on it, you don’t have to worry. The safety of the highway centers on the fact that it is a limited access highway. Those allowed on the highway are strictly regulated. No deadly beasts are permitted. One can walk on God’s highway without fear. Whatever jackals may be lurking in the ditches, lions hiding behind boulders, or snakes slithering across the sand, the highway is guaranteed to be beast-free.
So, what’s all this highway talk mean? Well, just this: the highway is a metaphor or a picture of the way of faith followed by God’s people as they travel through this world in the trek called life. The highway is the way of life that makes God’s people unique. You might say that the highway of God is the church. With its teaching, its exhortation, its security, and its provision for its people, the church creates a safe place for God’s people to make their journey of life. So, when Isaiah says that there are no beasts on the highway, what he means is that while there are many dangers—both human and demonic—in the world that threaten to confuse, distract, mislead, and even destroy the child of God, staying in the church, staying on the highway, will afford a secure passage. When you’re on the highway, you won’t be misled or ambushed. You can be sure that God will take care of you.
There are great advantages, then, to the fact that our highway is a limited access highway, free from dangerous beasts. But, it’s also limited access in the fact that it is free of all fools as well as off limits to anyone who is unclean. This doesn’t mean that there is an IQ requirement or a test of personal hygiene to get on the highway. In the world of the Old Testament, to be unclean simply meant that one was not living according to God’s standards for what was good and upright. And to be a fool meant that a person was morally inferior—a person with a faulty and crooked character. Part of what makes God’s highway safe is that the wicked and immoral aren’t allowed on it. Limited access means only God’s people, the clean and the wise, those who know and follow God’s will, get to travel here. Which, of course, raises an immediate problem. We know the score. You know that none of us qualifies as morally pure or fully wise. You know that unclean acts, and foolish, ungodly, thinking and behavior have a way of intruding even into your own life all too often. It’s the case for all of us. So, the limited access part of the highway starts to look like trouble.
But don’t despair. You’re not excluded—though, by rights, you should be. By rights, of course, no one should be allowed on God’s highway. But, God takes fools and the unclean and the immoral and the disobedient and he puts them on his highway. Those who don’t deserve to walk there, are redeemed and ransomed and turned loose to travel the highway—good news, indeed. This is the message you learn, here in the church, here on the highway. You hear the very good news that God himself was at work in Jesus Christ making it possible for people who were out of step with God, who were rejecting God’s plan and God’s purposes for their lives, who were rebelling against all that God established and loved to be made right with God. Jesus made it possible for people who were utterly sinful to be forgiven and given grace to join God’s people on the highway. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God built his highway. He established the safe place where people can receive forgiveness and grace and be made right with him again. Through Jesus, and your God-given faith in the work and grace of Jesus for you, you are invited onto God’s limited access highway. You are made one of his people. You join the wise and the clean who travel the highway that he built for you. This is the core message of the Christian church. You know it and you celebrate it.
Still, gaining access to God’s highway is not actually our problem, today. We all know that being able to travel on God’s highway is only and always a gift that God alone gives. We know that we don’t deserve to be on God’s highway but that by grace, we are. No, our problem is not getting on the highway—our problem is growing content with merely being on the highway. Our problem is becoming enamored with the roadway itself: too consumed with the scenery around us, too caught up in the details of the journey, too fascinated with the wonders of the walk. What must not be forgotten, is that the point of God’s highway is not the highway. The point of this highway is not the splendor of the sights to be seen. The point of this highway is not the journey. The point of the highway is where the highway ends. The point is the destination. God’s highway is a one-way thoroughfare. Everyone on God’s highway is moving in the same direction toward the same destination. And what exactly is the destination? It’s Zion. It’s God’s holy city. Zion is the picture, the image for God’s perfect, eternal kingdom. Zion is the goal of all creation. Zion is the place and the time when everything is working exactly as God always intended it to work. Zion is the fulfillment of all God’s plans for this world. Zion is the point. The highway exists for the sake of Zion. The highway was built to bring God’s creation to Zion.
The destination, the highway’s end, is the point. But, you forget this. It happens, though you hardly notice: you lose sight of the destination—you become engrossed in the highway itself. You get wrapped up more and more in the day-to-day realities of life on the highway through this world, and become so fascinated with all the interesting things of this world on either side of the highway, that you begin to live and reason and choose as if this world, and your Christian walk through this world, were the only things. You even begin to believe the idea that life is all about the journey. But, it isn’t! Still, it is understandable that you get focused so strongly on the highway. After all, you live in this world; its demands are immediate and consuming. Of course, you get caught up in the here and now world of the highway and the journey, and even begin to live as if these things were the only things that mattered. Which is not to say that they don’t matter. They do. And, I’ve certainly done my share to urge God’s people to be invested in this world and to work to fulfill the tasks and responsibilities of this life lived on God’s highway. Those things are important. But, the highway is still not the thing. The journey is not the thing. The thing is where the highway ends. The thing is Zion. The thing is the end-times, last day, restoration when the re-created and fully glorified creation at last realizes and celebrates all that God always intended it to be. The point is the day of resurrection when God makes all things new. The point is God’s eternal kingdom. Yes, it’s true that God’s gift of new and eternal life begins even now, today—but we must not forget that this present reality is only the highway. The journey is fleeting and preliminary; it is not the important thing.
Don’t lose track of the goal of it all. Don’t become so caught up in talk about the journey that you forget the destination at the end. Whether you are walking, today, on God’s highway through regions that are wonderfully delightful or utterly dreadful, your present reality is only the highway. It’s just the journey. Still, it is God’s highway, which makes it a splendid thing—and you do journey with him on this highway, which brings its own remarkable joys; these splendors and joys are gifts from God to encourage you today. They are foretastes of what is to come. But, they are foretastes. What is better and best, by far, still lies ahead. Zion lies ahead. Don’t forget the truth about this broken, fallen, world: even if you are traveling on God’s highway, this life is finally, for all of us, a valley of sorrow. The highway passes through pain and loss and shame and tears. But, the highway brings you through safely. You walk with confidence and with comfort on God’s highway, because you know where it ends. You’re heading for Zion. And considering that even this present journey through the valley is so often punctuated with seasons and realities that are amazingly rich in beauty and wonder, how unspeakably, how incomprehensibly extraordinary, must be the end at Zion. Amen.