Sing!
For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page, which includes Laytham's current Living by the Word column as well as past magazine and blog content. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century.
On a Sunday when John the Baptist's call for repentance roars in our ears, we need reminders of the precedence of gift, the prevenience of grace. For John's sermonic cry to "prepare the way of the Lord" can seem all task and no gift. It calls out the Pelagian in all of us, the voluntarist who wants to build the kingdom. Careless hearing leads us to imagine that if we "make his paths straight," he will come.
But this isn't Field of Dreams; it is Matthew. And Matthew has already made it plain that the one who comes does so not by our planning and preparing but by the Spirit's initiative (1:20). Matthew has shown us that the one who requires straight paths has come to us by a crooked genealogical journey (1:2-6).
