Second Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-8
A Swiss guy, looking for directions, pulls up at a bus stop where two Americans are waiting. "Entschuldigung, koennen Sie Deutsch sprechen?" he asks.
The two Americans just stare at him.
"Excusez-moi, parlez vous Francais?" he tries. The two continue to stare. "Parlare Italiano?" No response. "Hablan ustedes Espanol?" Still nothing.
The Swiss guy drives off, extremely disgusted. The first American turns to the second and says, "Y'know, maybe we should learn a foreign language."
"Why?" says the other. "That guy knew four languages, and it didn't do him any good
"You (don’t need a foreign language to ) ask anyone in the Bible how you get to Bethlehem, they will say, `Go out to the desert, Out there in the wilderness and keep going till you get to the River Jordan. You can't miss it. There is no other way to get there.'" The geography of these Advent lessons is clear. Before we get to Jesus coming we must first experience that great wilderness that is bounded by the banks of the Jordan.
Wilderness is a metaphor for lostness, exile, homelessness. When Isaiah says “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God,” surely he means for us to think of earlier Israel on exodus through the wilderness. Getting free from Pharaoh was not the toughest Exodus task. Between Egyptian slavery under Pharaoh and the freedom of the Promised Land lay wilderness. This is not the wilderness of nature freaks in their cozy pre-fab cabins nor is it the wilderness of a vacation hike in the national park. Wilderness for Israel was a place of wild beasts, scarcity, temptation, sin, and bewildered wandering with no star to guide them. After the Exodus, it took Israel 40 years of wandering in the wilderness to finally find their way home.
Now some 600 years later, Isaiah wants to recall that wandering as he addresses the politically exiled people of Israel who now are captive in Babylon. He wants the people to remember that as God led the people out of the wilderness into the Promised Land then, so God has not deserted them now. Past injustices and sins will not keep them from going home. They will be able to go forward to their homeland Wilderness is that place, which is no place, where we lose our way, wander from the path, get lost. Exile is that time when we become enslaved to false Gods, serve an alien empire, sell out forget. 600 years after Isaiah it is from the wilderness that John the Baptist appears, a voice crying in the wilderness.
I suspect that we have all spent time in that wilderness. Who among us has not had times when we felt aimless. When the direction of our life escaped us or felt so pointless that we just kept going in circles. Maybe it was the day the company you’d worked for for twenty years went out of business and suddenly there was no job. Where to now? Maybe that wilderness lay in the hours and days of fear between the first medical test and the final diagnosis. Suddenly it’s hard to tell what’s important in life anymore. What will the next weeks, months and years hold. How fragile is all that we hold dear. Maybe that wilderness came for us trying to adjust to a new home in a new community. Where we had lived before had been so perfect and this new place is just so different, so unapproachable. Maybe that wilderness is bounded by an upcoming graduation. What do I want to do with my life. What is meaningful employment; do I want to work to live or live to work? Maybe that wilderness is the huge hole, the black pit of emptiness occasioned by the death of one we love. We wonder, how can life continue, how can we go on? No, there is no doubt that we have all been to the wilderness at one time or another. And no doubt we wonder where God is while we are so tormented.
So it is that John appears in that wilderness, a prophet bearing a word from God, splashing in the waters of that famous river Jordan and inviting us to splash along with him. Jordan's bank--another important place in Advent’s geography. The very name awakens memories, deep memories that offer us a profounder perspective. Jordan: the river that fed the green valley that Lot chose for himself. Jordan: the river that parted just as the Red Sea had parted to let the wandering Hebrews enter their long awaited destination--the promised land. Jordan: the river where Naaman the leper washed and was healed. Jordan: the river that flows from the ancient land through the heart of believers and pours into some of their most beloved hymns: "When I tread the verge of Jordan/bid my anxious fears subside." "I looked over Jordan and what did I see?/Com'in for to carry me home./A band of angels coming after me./Com'in for to carry me home." And now at Advent: "On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry/announces that the Lord is nigh."
Jordan's bank marks a boundary, a crossing point between two regions of existence, between wandering and home, between illness and health, between death and life, between promise and fulfillment. Jordan's bank is a place in the heart, a realm in the imagination. To approach Jordan's bank is scary. If we pass through the waters, if we plunge beneath the wave, what will happen to us? Will we survive?
John calls to us and he calls to us with a word, and the word is “repent!”
Now we may well have some strange associations with that word “repent”. Perhaps we picture some groveling miscreant, tearfully latched to the ankles of a stern judge begging forgiveness. But in truth the word simply means to turn around, to go the other way. To turn away from a way of life that is directionless and meaningless and to turn toward that which is life giving. John’s cry for repentance begs for those in the wilderness to come out into the Jordan and be baptized. They say that prophets tell you what you already know. John tells us to repent. It’s so easy fo him to say. Just like the prophets of wellness, who tell us how to exercise and how to eat and what to have checked out when. But we already know that. So often we know the changes we need to make in our lives we just lack the motivation or the courage to make them. So we stay in a career we hate because it’s too scary to try something new. Or we cling to a grudge, past hurt or resentment because we can’t make the move to forgive. John calls us to repent.
And still, we would remain on Jordan's bank, unable to enter the water, unable to live through our grief or to meet the challenge of our new life or to grow into a greater knowledge of God, except except, that "the Lord is nigh." Christ is coming to meet us on Jordan's bank, to join us in our grief, our challenge, our growth. God has become incarnate, taken on flesh to be real and alive to us. And he is out there I that water being baptized—calling to us to come in, to follow his example. At the scariest moment, at the crossing point, there we will meet Christ, who is coming, coming soon. Listen to the Baptist’s cry and get ready for the One who hastens to Jordan's bank. For at the precise juncture of your greatest fear and hope Christ will join you and will be with you when you plunge beneath the water and when you rise to new life.
And that is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ!
Amen