Online Sermons
2nd Sunday in Advent: December 7, The Rev. John Horn
I grew up in a family of six kids. I’m the youngest. As the youngest, I don’t remember a lot of what went on when everyone was around, because there’s a fourteen-year spread between my oldest brother and me. But I do remember that taking a family vacation was a major production. There was a lot to pack for eight people, and one of my earliest memories – I was probably three years old – was being bundled off on a train with my mother and a huge trunk of clothes for our annual two weeks in the Finger Lakes region of New York. We had to go ahead of the rest because there simply wasn’t enough room in the car for everyone and their stuff.
Even when some of my siblings had moved away, vacations took a lot of planning. My mother kept long lists from year to year, detailing the clothes and linens and towels and who knows what else that we had to bring along. Being the frugal sort, she packed most of it in paper grocery bags. Meanwhile my father would be stationed out by the car, muttering to himself as bag after bag appeared that had to be stuffed somewhere in the trunk or under the seat or between squirming children.
Maybe that’s why I’m still ornery when it comes to packing for a trip! It was good schooling in how to be prepared, however. I really appreciated it years later when I went backpacking in the Great Smoky Mountains. Because I knew how to prepare carefully, I never ended up in the wilderness without something essential, like the fuel for my camp stove.
Last week Barbara talked about the four great themes of Advent: paying attention, looking for divine intervention, waiting, and preparation. The Gospel reading last week really focused on the first of these, with its recurrent them of watch! Stay awake! Be alert! This week we hear all four themes again, but “prepare” is the one that leaps out most clearly from Mark’s Gospel.
Mark begins in his usual no-nonsense manner. He has a lot to say and doesn’t have a lot of time to say it. In the first verse he doesn’t even take the time for a verb, or a definite article in the Greek: “Beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ,” he writes, and then he’s off. He’s careful to situate this good news in the context of the prophets of Israel. But right away something startling happens. Whereas Isaiah talked about the way of the Lord and meant God, Mark subtly equates that Lord, that God, with Jesus Christ. Perhaps that’s why some ancient manuscripts put the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God, in the first verse. It is Christ’s way that John the Baptist will prepare. Just in case you missed it, Mark says “prepare” twice. And where will this preparation take place? In the wilderness.
The word for “wilderness” appears only four times in the entire Gospel of Mark, and they are all in the first thirteen verses. Two references we heard this morning; the other two occur after Jesus’ baptism, when the Spirit casts him into the wilderness and he is tempted by Satan. Clearly Mark has something on his mind when he talks about wilderness.
The verses from the prophets give us a clue, I think. Ancient Israel was formed in the wilderness; it was the place where the Israelites met God as they wandered forty years during the Exodus. As one commentator puts it, “In the wilderness Israel experienced privation and danger, and learned through this testing period to trust in the provision and protection of God.” In spite of the grave difficulties of living in the wilderness, it became for Israel a place of hope and new beginnings.
The fortieth chapter of Isaiah which we heard earlier picks up on this theme. (I don’t want to quote a lot of it, because I’ve sung Handel’s Messiah so many times I’d probably break into an aria or a chorus instead of a sermon.) This prophet was writing at a different time in Israel’s life, when they were living in Babylon and despaired of ever seeing their homeland again. It was as though they were living in the wilderness once more. The writer addresses that, but tells the people that in that wilderness God will come to them, God will find them, so they had better get ready and prepare the way of the Lord.
And so Mark picks up on this. Just as the Israelites were told to prepare the way for God, John the Baptizer appeared in the wilderness to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus Christ. John is a mighty peculiar character, to be sure, and maybe you’ll hear more about him when he shows up again next week. But John’s importance to Mark is as one who points beyond himself. “There’s one coming who is more powerful than me,” John says, “and I’m not even worthy to do the work of a slave for him. Do you think I’m somebody because I baptize you with water? He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!” And immediately we start thinking, who can this person be?
Well, we won’t find that out for a couple of weeks, and you already know how this story turns out anyway. But in the meantime we are told to be in the wilderness, preparing the way.
I don’t need to tell you about being in the wilderness. You know that better than I. Davenport, where I live, was not devastated like Cedar Rapids by flooding last summer. As this year ends, nearly everyone is worried about the current state of the economy and its impact on jobs and income. Here at Christ Church there may be anxiety about your rector search, even though you are blessed with gifted lay and clergy leadership. You may be living in your own personal wilderness of disease or loss. This is truly an “in-between” time in many ways. Yet so is Advent. Remember what was said about Israel in the wilderness: they experienced “privation and danger, and learned through this testing period to trust in the provision and protection of God.”
I wish living in the wilderness was always as easy as making a good enough list that you didn’t forget the fuel for the camp stove. But it isn’t. It takes faith to wait for the revealing of the glory of the Lord. “The word of our God will stand forever,” Isaiah cries, and in his letter Peter promises “new heavens and a new earth.” In the darkness, in the immediacy of need, it is difficult to remember the promises of God. But God is faithful, darkness or not, and in a couple of weeks we will once again celebrate the birth of that Light which cannot be darkened, that One who is more powerful than anyone or anything that can happen to us.
May this period of watching, of waiting, of preparation in the wilderness, be one in which you are blessed by the provision and protection of God. Amen.
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online Sermons