Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8
Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
In Advent, we are supposed to be waiting. But for what? For the sweet baby Jesus in the manger? For
the fiery Last Judgment? For Santa Claus and the presents under the tree? For
the Christmases enshrined in childhood memory to come to life again? For some
combination of all of these?
I went to
Michael’s hobby store right after church last Sunday to grab a new wreath for
my front door. Amidst pawed-through piles of plastic greens and overflowing
tangles of glittering ribbon, I heard a voice crying in the wilderness. The
voice did not say, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” however. On this last day of
November, it said, “I am SO SICK of Christmas.” A mom, weary to the bone, was
wandering the aisles with two children who looked to be about four and seven.
The seven-year-old must have been asking to buy things, because when she heard
her mom’s words, she put down the trinket that she was holding, and you could
see the joy flee her face. Her tiny shoulders drooped; she looked at the floor;
and she grew silent with shame. “Just so sick of it ALL,” muttered the mom,
utterly defeated. Trying to save the situation, the four-year-old piped up with
forced cheer, “I’m so sick of Christmas, too, Mommy. Come on, let’s go home.”
And the family trudged out of the store.
“Comfort, O comfort my people.”
It is surely not the secular,
commercial Christmas that we are eagerly awaiting.
Later this week, I turned on the TV. Injustice
poured off of the screen and into my living room, casting shadows over my
little creche. I saw a young boy getting shot; a father being strangled. I saw
guns and violence; fear, crime, and racism covering us in darkness on all
sides. I also saw crowds marching, and I heard strong prophetic voices crying
in the wilderness of injustice. However, they were not saying, “Prepare the way
of the Lord.” They were saying, “We can’t breathe! We can’t breathe!”
“Comfort, O comfort my people.”
Something is being born this Advent,
but I’m not sure that it is the sweet infant in the hay or the cozy Christmas
family dinner that they are awaiting on the streets.
Is it, then, the Day of Judgment that
we are waiting for? The day of God’s justice? The triumphant return of Christ,
when all will be set aright? A new heaven and a new earth, where right
relationship is finally at home? Isn’t that what we are all longing for? Like Robin pointed out last week, though, we
modern “progressive” Christians tend to assume that all of the excitement about
Jesus’ Second Coming was over a long time ago. Indeed, already by the second
century after Jesus’ birth, when 2 Peter was written, Christians were starting
to wonder what was taking so long. Now it has been over 20 centuries. We wonder
if we misunderstood the Lord’s promise. Today, we certainly don’t know what to
do with all of this language about a fiery end to our world. We don’t like to
hear the threats. We roll our eyes over the grand metaphors. We are tired of
waiting. Our faith tells us that transformation has to happen, so we tell
ourselves that it is up to us to bring about justice. It is up to us to be
“Christ’s hands and feet in the world,” after all, and to live lives, as Peter
says, “of holiness and godliness.” Aren’t we now the ones who are supposed to
start digging out those highways in the desert, moving mountains to get our
world right with God? And yet … How can we, lost and adrift in the
commercialism of Christmas, find our way out of the desert? How can we, so
oppressed by sin that we are unable even to breathe, bring about God’s Kingdom
on earth?
Scholars believe that the first line
of Mark’s Gospel, “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God,”
is really the title of the entire
Gospel of Mark.[1]
(Ancient scribes didn’t have room for fancy spacing and punctuation in their
manuscripts.) According to Mark, the beginning of Jesus’ story is his life and
death on earth, followed by the announcement of resurrection to the fearful
women at the empty tomb. Everything we read about in Mark’s Gospel is just the
beginning! The middle of Jesus’ story of Good News is all of our reactions to
his life, after we hear the beginning. The middle of the story is how Christian
lives are lived in the light of resurrection. The middle involves our attempts
at righteousness, our attempts at repentance, our attempts at courage, our
attempts at justice. But that’s just the middle. All stories have an end, too. The
end of the story of the Good News doesn’t depend on our best attempts or worst
failures. The end of the story is the new heaven and the new earth: the
salvation, healing, and forgiveness that are God’s doing.
We are gathering on the Wednesday
nights of Advent at St. Thomas to tell our own faith stories. We tell about our
childhood and our beginnings in our families of origin. Like Mark starting with
John the Baptist, we might even tell how our families’ stories before our
births influenced our childhood. Then we tell the middle of our stories: we
talk about the lives that we try to live and the highs and lows that unfold in
our relationships with God. But we are not yet at the end of our individual
stories. Our lives are not over. Even as we age and grow close to death, we
know that our lives with God after death have yet to unfold. The stories that
we tell on Wednesday night are of necessity unfinished stories. The story of
the Good News in Jesus Christ, though, has an end. You can dress that end in
the language of the Day of the Lord. You can drape it in the images of Christ’s
Second Coming. You can paint it in the colors of a New Creation. But because
Christ rose from the dead, it remains an ending in which goodness triumphs, an
ending in which Evil does not have the last word. It is an ending that gives
hope to the middle.
Hold that hope tenderly! Hear the words
of comfort that God offers us as we plug away at transformation. Remember that it
is God who comes down to us at Christmas. It is God who clears off the path and
levels the hills, over and over and over again. This Advent, when the days of
waiting seem dark and long, I long for us at St. Thomas to acknowledge, with
our lives and with our voices, the comfort and hope of the story’s End.
“Comfort, O comfort my people … Lift
up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up,
do not fear. Say to the cities … ‘Here is your God!’
Here is your God, flattening those
shopping malls to the ground and planting a garden in the wilderness. A garden
where plastic garlands become grapevines and tinsel turns into life-giving rain.
A garden where everyone has enough to eat and children and adults alike mirror
the joy of God in creation.
Here is your God, wiping out
injustice. Burning with fire the drugs and the poverty and the hatred. Bringing
down the powers the corrupt our souls and our world. Bringing young black boys and law enforcement
officers together in an embrace of trust and friendship. Binding us together as we are in God’s sight.
Here is your God. It’s not just a dream.
It is the end of the story—an end at which we can even take a peek. I’ve seen glimpses
at the Eucharistic Table. I’ve seen glimpses in the garden at Eastern Area Community
Ministries. I’ve even seen glimpses on the news media. Police and protesters embracing—seriously,
Rev. Anne? Yes, take a look at twelve-year-old Devonte Hart, a young black man facing
a line of armed officers in Oregon. He is shaking with fear and holding a sign that
says, “Free Hugs,” as tears drip down his face. Officer Darren Wilson, who is white,
comes over and talks with him, wrapping him in a bear hug. Somebody takes a photo.[2]
“Lift up your voice with strength, O
Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear. Say to the cities …
‘Here is your God!’”
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