Rough made smooth

John the Baptist is out in the woods yelling at everybody within yelling distance.  He is telling them that Jesus is coming to straighten things out, so they better straighten up, or, well, I don’t know what, but one sure does get the feeling that judgment, or discipline, or something is going to come down and come down hard.

            “Mountains are going to be made low”, says John “the crooked made straight, the rough made smooth, and all shall see the salvation of God.”

            Mind your manners; discipline your kids, judgment’s coming, Happy Advent!  Can’t wait for Christmas, right?

            Last week Kristin and I were a part of a conversation with a group of people discussing discipline.  More specifically, we were discussing non-physical means of disciplining children.  Discipline that does NOT involve hitting. 

We went around the room with each person giving an example of non-physical discipline.  We named the usual things like time-out for little kids, grounding and taking away cell phones for bigger kids, and we named some unusual things, like the cussing tree – which for those who don’t know, is a tree in the yard designated for cussing under and at.

            If cussing is not allowed in your home and you get caught cussing, you have to march yourself out to the cussing tree and get it out of your system…and try to keep it down so the neighbors don’t hear.

            One of the men in our group is a guy we’ll call Mike.  Mike is big as a house.  He wears a ball cap and big handle bar mustache.  And he is one of the gentlest souls you’ll ever meet. 

He said to us, “When I need to get after one of my grandkids I make them sit next to me on the couch.”

            We looked at him with puzzled faces.  “Really?  What do you mean?”

Mike said, “I don’t care if they’re three or seventeen, if they’re running a little bit wild, misbehaving and such, I make ‘em sit next to me on the couch, and if they’re really acting up, I make them talk to me.”

Now, Mike is, as I say, a big guy, so I am picturing him as one of those cats that sits on the couch and sinks down, so that the cushions on either side of him sort of angle up into the air, so that anything set down on the couch now rolls down next to him.

            So, now I am picturing his grandkids rolling down and getting scrunched up right next to him, I mean, much closer than they could possibly want to be.

            We still didn’t quite get it.  “You make them sit next to you?  What does that do? Sounds like you’re punishing yourself, Mike.”

            He said, “the last thing my little grandson wants to do is sit still next to me, quietly on the couch.  He wants to run crazy through the house doing whatever he wants, so making him sit next to me, be still and quiet is like torturing the kid, he does not want to do that and he straightens up.  And I don’t lay a finger on him.  Oh, I might talk to him a little bit, maybe tell him I love him, but I don’t touch a hair on his head.  Works with teenagers too.  You find me the seventeen year old kid that wants to sit still next to their mom, or dad, or up real close to their old granddad on the couch and talk quietly.  Works every time.”

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Of course, some of us came up in a culture of spanking and physical discipline and thus find it the most efficient and effective means of correcting behavior in children.  The idea is that if the discipline is hard and painful enough, (spanking and hitting causes pain and humiliation) then the child or young person will remember that pain the next time he or she is faced with the decision to either behave or misbehave.  They will not want to experience the pain again, and thus they will choose to behave out of fear of pain.

            Now, I am not in favor of this line of thinking or discipline, in fact, I am staunchly against it, but I must say that if we take a purely clinical approach, it’s not bad logic.  If you hit me every time I reach for the cookie jar, I am going to stop reaching for the cookie pretty quickly.  It’s how we train rats to choose a particular path in a lab, and how we teach dogs to stay out of the trash.  The same disciplinary logic is used by many Christians.

            If I tell you that every time you sin and misbehave that that is yet another reason God is going to punish you with misfortune in this present life or send you to hell when you die, then chances are you’re going to straighten up because you are growing increasingly fearful of a God who causes pain.

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So, Advent leads to Christmas, right?  Jesus is coming.  We’re always preparing for Jesus to come.  And I think it’s fair to say that some of us   are worried that Jesus’ coming means judgment’s coming or that at least Jesus’ coming means that discipline is coming.   Jesus and discipline means for some that pain is on the way.  The crooked are going to be made straight, that sounds like discipline and it sounds like it’s going to hurt.  The rough are going to be made smooth.  Does he use sandpaper on us for that?

I think Jesus’ coming does mean that judgment is coming.  But what if, this is just a question now…  What if the judgment of God in Jesus Christ does not involve physical discipline?  What if Jesus is not into spanking either?  What will we do if Jesus comes among us    and makes us sit next to him on the couch, still, close, and quiet?  That is, what if Jesus comes among us and draws us in close to discipline, and correct us by calling us to slow down, quiet our whirring minds, still our too busy hearts, and open ourselves to be filled not with our sins and amusements, but with his Love?

            Picture this, John Doe is on a murderous rampage he is a living, breathing, sin machine with no respect for anything living, so Jesus comes into our world in all his power and glory with a host of angels, gliding through the atmosphere on the winds of Grace, and he encounters murderous John and he just smites him, I mean obliterates him with a bolt of lighting, so there’s nothing left of John but smoke and ashes. 

Discipline, judgment….  Justice is served and we’re happy, right?

            We’re safe and secure with John dead, and, of course, all of us have lived good lives, pure and virtuous folks that we are, and so we are gathered up in the love embrace of Jesus, and we go happily about our heaven bound way.  Right?

Of course, then we get to thinking about it, and, heck we could have killed John, I mean, if that was the answer,  if that was John’s judgment, death as discipline, then give me a gun and a bullet…  I could have done that.

And if I can do it, then it must not be a very powerful act. 

What we couldn’t do, what we didn’t have the power to do was love John deeply enough to transform him from a murderous misbehaving child into a life-loving, peaceful neighbor.

            Now, if Jesus could come among us and draw up close to John, make him sit right next to him on the couch, I mean, uncomfortably close, and whisper love and healing grace into his bent and broken life and drown him with the judgment of God’s love, so that he died to his murderous ways and was born again from above…..

            Now, that would be impressive, that would be powerful discipline, violent-love-judgment.  That would be rough made smooth, crooked made straight, mountains leveled out and valleys filled in.  That would make the slow Advent journey to Christmas entirely worthwhile.

            So, I say, “Come Lord Jesus come, come Lord Jesus, judge us with your love…”

Amen.