Sermon: "Blue Highways"

THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Year B

December 7, 2014

Isaiah 40:1-11

Psalm 85:1-2; 8-13

Mark 1:1-8

Pastor David Tryggestad

Concordia Evangelical Lutheran Church

Duluth, Minnesota

“Life hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would,” she said matter-of-factly, but with deep lament.

We were visiting our best friends from college after Thanksgiving this past week. They are both well-educated, both having had good and satisfying jobs, having been very active in their church throughout their marriage. Her comment had to do with their son and daughter-in-law and their three-year-old grandson, their only grandchild, who have moved as far away from home as they could get. Their daughter-in-law has undiagnosed mental illness that she refuses to acknowledge, and one of the consequences is that she is driving a wedge between their son and our friends and is determined that they have minimal contact, if any, with their grandson, who himself exhibits profound mental and emotional handicaps. Their hearts are broken and they are powerless to change the situation.

“Life hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would.”

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Lynn and I headed south to spend the holiday with Lynn’s 86-year-old mother, who otherwise would have been alone. The usual eight-hour drive took two days, as we drove into snow and ice-covered roads. We headed first toward Rochester, where our son and daughter-in-law have a farm. We wanted to drop off a box of Christmas gifts for them and for our grandson, Simon, and we had with us in the car the body of our beloved cat, Babe, whom we had euthanized the day before, as she was old and very ill. We wanted to bury her on the farm, where Simon could visit her often. From there, we pressed on, intending to take Highway 63, the most direct route, south through Waterloo, Iowa, and on to Grinnell. The further we drove, the worse the roads became, and traffic was solid, almost bumper-to-bumper, on the two-way highway. We decided to abandon that route as too dangerous, with so much oncoming traffic, especially large semis, and headed west toward Interstate 35, where we expected the travelling conditions to be better. They were not. And there was even more traffic. With cars going into the ditch on both sides, even at 30 miles per hour, we got off at Mason City and checked into a motel. It was 7 p.m., and we had left Duluth at 9 that morning.

Two weeks ago in my sermon I referenced a book I’ve been reading, Blue Highways: A Journey into America, by William Least Heat-Moon. The author, Native American, is Least Heat-Moon, because his father is Heat-Moon and his older brother is Little Heat-Moon. Thus, Least Heat-Moon. He was a college professor of English. On the same day that he was notified that his teaching position was being eliminated the following term because of declining enrollments, he learned that his wife was having an affair and wanted to leave him. So he set out shortly thereafter on a journey across the United States—a large circle, actually—with his 1975 Econoline van, four gasoline credit cards, and the remnant of his savings account: $428. It was 1978.

The author explains the title of his book, Blue Highways:

On the old highway maps of America, the main routs were red and the back roads blue. Now even the colors are changing. But in those brevities just before dawn and a little after dust—times neither day nor night—the old roads return to the sky some of its color. Then, in truth, they carry a mysterious cast of blue, and it’s that time when the pull of the blue highway is strongest, when the open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself.[1]

William Least Heat-Moon may have thought he would lose himself through his trip on the blue highways, but he actually found himself through his many encounters with people along the blue highways, off the main highways.

A Native American man I had never seen before was among the group of guys in the sauna at the Y this past Friday. He sat in silence while the rest of us talked about various things, including how we had spent our Thanksgiving holidays. After the others left one by one, the Native man and I were alone, and he began to speak. He first spoke of his many experiences in the sweat lodges that are indigenous to his people. He spoke of his profound respect for the Native spiritual tradition and, at the same time, of his deep roots in the Roman Catholic Christianity of his grandmother. He spoke of getting on his knees at age seven and offering his life to Jesus. At the same time he spoke openly of his struggles as a youth and his rebellious nature that landed him jail. He had spent the last six years in federal prisons around the country, and he was just recently released under work supervision. He’s awaiting papers so that he can return to the reservation. He worries about his sons, who are going down the same rebellious path he had travelled.

Our country is going through a very difficult and painful time. It is also a potentially dangerous time. Our African American brothers and sisters are again marching on the road, seemingly revisiting the marches of the turbulent 1960s. The road to justice and freedom has been fraught with obstacles and difficulties. We still yearn for the time and place where “righteousness and peace will kiss each other,” as our psalmist today sings.

Our lectionary of Scripture readings during Advent jerk us around. (I am not disparaging the lectionary, as the rationale for it is sound.) Today we hear our prophet Isaiah sing:

Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the LORD's hand
double for all her sins.

A voice cries out:

"In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.” (Isaiah 40:1-4)

Through our prophet, our God sings, “Comfort, O comfort my people . . .” The promise is that God will make a way for the people in captivity in Babylon to return to their beloved Jerusalem and the territory of Judah. God promises that this way will be straight: “a highway for our God.” The hills will be brought low, the valleys lifted up. It will be like an interstate highway from Babylon directly to Jerusalem. No stoplights, no dangerous intersections, no icy conditions, 70 miles per hour all the way.

This is where we get jerked around. Last week, on the First Sunday of Advent, we heard our prophet lament, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down . . .” (Isaiah 64:1). Last Sunday’s reading comes 24 chapters later in Isaiah. Some of the people have returned to Jerusalem, but it is not what they expected: the city walls are rubble, the Temple is in ruins, and the local people who have settled there are hostile. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” It seems the interstate highway between Babylon and Jerusalem was not as smooth as they had expected.

Every year at Christmas one church or another will offer a so-called “Blue Christmas” service, a service intended to acknowledge and speak to those who find themselves somewhere other than where they hoped they might be, for people who say, like our friend from college, “Life hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would,” for people who thought their life would sail along the smooth and straight interstate highways of life but who rather find themselves on the “blue” highways, with twists and turns, detours and potholes, heartache and despair.

I wonder if most of the roads of our lives are blue highways.

Like Barbara Streisand in her song, we sing, “Color me blue.”

Blue is also the color of Advent. It is the color of hope. The Good News of Jesus Christ, announced in our Gospel, is that God in Jesus comes to us, wherever we are along our “blue highways,” and sings to us: “Comfort, comfort now my people.”

Thanks be to God!

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     [1]William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey Into America (New York: Back Bay Books, 1982), author’s preface.