Second Advent
Mark 1:1-8; Isaiah 40:1-11; 2 Peter 3:8-15a
My sister-in-law wants a goat for Christmas. Honest. She called Chris the other day and said she really couldn't think of anything she needed so why don't we buy a goat from The ELCA Hunger Appeal in her name. A goat to be supplied to some third world farmer to bring milk and cheese to his family. I think it's a great idea, a Christmas goat. Last year my brothers and sister and I stopped buying gifts for each other and contributed instead to a mutually agreed upon charity in the name of our family. I wish the rest of my Christmas shopping preparations were as easily completed.
These are the Sundays before Christmas--Sundays in Advent we call them. They are the preparation Sundays. Our lessons for today actually set forth preparation as a theme for this day. The voice of one crying in the wilderness --actually a voice shouting out. A simulcast announcement on every channel, radio station and filling the head lines. Calling us to attention and the need to prepare. To prepare for Christmas. Right. There are undoubtedly places in the world that do not know what December 25th is --but I am quite sure that the greater Lincolnshire/Deerfield/ Vernon Hills/ Riverwoods area is not one of them.
Who doesn't know that Christmas is coming? How could anyone miss it? Preparing? Our economy is almost based on the importance of advent preparation. We have been conditioned by years of experience and the advertising environs that surround us to enter the advent season planning and preparing. I know with absolute certainty that a number of you sitting in the pews this morning are soon going to have your minds drift from the sermon to your personal list of things that need to be done before Christmas. A fact made even more likely by my suggesting it. If you could read your neighbor's mind you would find people thinking about their Christmas lists, shopping lists, calendars and entertainment plans. We are a society that is always looking ahead to what comes next. Advent is not a season--it is a way of life for most of us. Half the congregation this morning already knows what their lunch plans are and the other half just realized that they had better start thinking about it. The afternoon surely includes some football, maybe a musical event, shopping, the teens are due back here at church at 4. You see--we are a people always preparing. Advent is not a season--it is our way of life. Planning, preparing, anticipating is the way we live today. What's next?
Trumpets--fanfare--and the Gospel for today is read. "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." The beginning? We are in the middle of the Christmas season. I saw my first Christmas decorations on sale at Walgreen's three days before Halloween. Each Christmas seems to begin to come our way earlier and earlier. There are no beginnings any more, only transitions to the next commercial holiday on the calendar. The Gospel of Mark doesn't really begin the story of Jesus in the first chapter and first verse. Our Gospel reading begins the story this morning decades after the birth of Jesus. Mark is not a Gospel big on Christmas. There is no birth story--no Bethlehem, manger, angels, shepherds or wise men.
But every story has to begin someplace and so the Gospel of Mark begins with a prophet's words. Further evidence that Mark really was not beginning a new story but rather continuing a promise made centuries before. The words are from the prophet Isaiah. Our first lesson for today. Familiar words that almost sing in our heads even as we hear them read because they are the familiar words from Handel's Messiah. A prophet trying to get a desperate people's attention.
I remember when the weeks leading up to Christmas were filled with the shouts of my sons, "Dad! Dad, come and see this. This is what I want!" And they would point to the ad on the television or hand me a colorful advertisement catalog page with details about some radio controlled racing car or ninja turtle action figure with sewer system hideout. Last week we asked the oldest what he wanted for Christmas and he replied without a moment's hesitation, "Dining room chairs." Two dark wood dining room chairs from World Market. He even printed off a picture and sku number for me to be sure I got the right ones to match the dining room set. How exciting. How interesting. How surprised he will be.
Of course, I appreciate the preciseness of his request but there is also something missing in preparations that are simply by the numbers. Advent by the numbers. The list of names to buy gifts for with a check mark in front of each name as a gift is purchased. The Christmas card list with a check mark in front of each name as the card is written and mailed off. Advent by the numbers. Angel tree up--check, tree cutting party in Wisconsin--check, lighting the second candle on the advent wreath--check. Items still remain on the list but we will take care of them in an orderly manner--teens decorate the church this afternoon, men set up the Christmas tree on Tuesday, the Three Sopranos Advent Concert is Friday, Christmas program practice is next Saturday and the program on Sunday. Check, check and double check.
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness... John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance. To the early Christian community it was the prophets who provided the check list of Advent. John the baptizer was the first check on the list leading to the revelation of Jesus as God's gift to the world. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke would find further check list items to add--a birth in Bethlehem, a star guiding travelers to the new born King of the Jews. It seems that Advent has always had its check lists. That's what preparations are all about--trying to anticipate and prepare. Yet there are always surprises, what some might call impossible surprises.
From the perspective of our check listed and calendared world we read back into history order, direction, purpose and meaning that those caught up in the moment rarely see. The prophet is the one who can look at the immediate circumstances and discern the direction and purpose God is preparing from what looks like a messed up check list. With the beautiful and uplifting chords of Handel's Messiah behind them, the prophetic words of Isaiah in our first lesson joyously move us toward the birth of Christ and celebrations of the season. But some 2,500 years ago (around 537 BC) at the moment the prophet Isaiah was announcing the Advent check list there seemed little that was worth celebrating and there was even less hope for the future. Most of God's prophets were not the popular leaders of society. Generally they set the pattern for political correctness before it was politically correct, which means that most people thought them to be out of touch with the real world. The nation of Judah had been conquered and prisoners carried off to a distant land. Babylon's empire building armies had made short work of the grossly outnumbered and militarily inferior forces of Israel --the U.S. military versus Afghanistan and Iraq--and the prisoners of the conflict were spirited away to a distant land with no rights or privileges except the controlled practice of their faith, a faith strange and unfamiliar to their captors. History refers to this as the Babylonian Captivity. The nations of Israel and Judah had disappeared from the world map. For the prisoners held captive in a strange land, their homeland occupied by a foreign military, the situation looked far worse than hopeless. Their faith was the only thing they had left, believe in God, do what God commanded, live the Godly life and pray for deliverance. Time passes. Fifty years of exile in Babylon and then comes a new army, an empire greater than Babylon, the Persian armies of what is today the nation of Iran, and the enlightened ruler Cyrus who defeats the Babylonians and declares freedom for the Hebrew exiles. Freedom to return to their religion and homes. Cyrus orders the rebuilding of Jerusalem. In this moment the prophet Isaiah speaks in our text for today "Comfort, O comfort my people ". The time of exile is completed. Now get ready to build. Build a straight path back to God. Out of the wilderness of exile comes the promise of something wonderful about to happen. God is coming again to his people--get ready--prepare his way.
Jump ahead five hundred years, as the Psalmist reminds us, but a blink of the eye to God, the prophet's words are still burning hot. The people are still waiting. Waiting because while they returned to their home land and began to build the armies of the world did not rest. Empires of might continued to march and Israel still waited for God's promise to be fulfilled. Isaiah's words burned strong in the hearts of many who yearned for their God to be revealed. They waited for a messiah to deliver them from the Roman armies, the occupying oppressor of the moment. John the Baptizer comes on the scene with advent anticipation and preparations. With checklist precision John announced the prophets declaration that the people needed to turn again to their God, to repent and make straight a way for his coming into their lives. John called the people to repentance and baptism. This was the way to prepare. This was the way to wait for one whose coming would be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Two thousand years ago the people had their check list for the Messiah. It was based on their reading of the prophets and the circumstances of their world. The amazing part of the Gospel begun by Mark today is that he knew the check list of the prophets, but he knew something more. Our check lists are usually based on balance, fairness and reward. If we got a Christmas card from the Smiths last year than they will get a card from us this year. If the family across the street sent us a gift we will send them a gift. Santa's famous list of naughty and nice guides our Advent thinking. But such is not the way with God. God does not operate according to human check lists.
Make your Christmas list--check it twice. And hear the prophet's words, "All people are grass...The grass withers, the flower fades". This year's gift will be next year's clearance sale item. This year's must have toy will be forgotten in three months. Our too human check lists are simply not God's way of doing things. We check all the wrong items. The first century faithful went looking for a messiah to free Israel from Rome. They never expected someone who would come for the sake of the whole world. We still prepare according to old lists--old expectations. Human armies have always marched to prepare the way for the next great answer to humanities search for the perfect society. The assumption is still made that the solution to every problem is found through human wealth, power and strength. We still have difficulty with the idea of serving others first, with accepting all people as children of the same God with infinite value. The prophet's words cry out to us in the wilderness of our lives. Cries out for us to turn again to the prophets vision. Here is your God! He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep. Here is your God! Here, in the one who feeds, feeds a homeless person at PADS, feeds a hungry soul the good news of Jesus in a Sunday school class. Here is your God! Here, gathered in the arms of a caring foster family through our Lutheran Social Service agency, gathered in a Christmas party for inner city children where gifts from our Angel tree are distributed. Here is your God! Here is the one who carries the grief of a family that mourns bringing comfort in the promise of the resurrection, carried by the support given to people stricken by disaster of tsunami, hurricane, tornado and flood. Here is your God! He comes in the gentle leading of prayers, hymns and the quiet gift of bread and wine, in the promise of baptismal waters. And John proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
Prepare for advent, but do so humbly and with a heart that remembers the prophet's words and open to the Spirit's leading.
Amen