Being Prepared - 12-10-23
Being Prepared
Is 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8
Is 40:1-11
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever. Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. 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.
Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
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:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He 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.”
Prayer – Come, Lord Jesus – come find us, even when we try to evade you. Come, Lord Jesus – be present to us, especially when we feel that we are alone and on our own. Come, Lord Jesus – speak to us, a new word, a bold word, a promising word that we might be prepared and ready to follow you every step of the way – amen.
We meet him every year at this time, though we meet him in different Gospels in various guises. John the Baptizer is the first to announce the dawn of God’s kingdom and to call people to be ready, to be prepared, to have their world rocked by Jesus. How does this new era begin? It begins with Jesus the Christ, God’s beloved Son, who not only announces the dawn of God’s rule but also enacts the beginning of that rule by his bodily presence.
Mark’s gospel begins with these words, “The beginning of the good news about Jesus . . . The assigned gospel for the second Sunday of Advent is a preface that lets us know, in a few bold strokes, that the appearance of the Messiah is so momentous that there must we must be prepared, we must be ready with an active response, a willingness to change in order to greet God with us. Here, God is making a new beginning with all of humankind.
Our gospel passage this morning begins with a jarring proclamation that this is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This sets the stage for the entirety of Mark’s Gospel, the shortest of the four and the most fast-paced, with its short sentences, action verbs, and a narrative that focuses more on what Jesus says than what he does. After a quick orientation with a scripture from Isaiah, John “appears” in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. There is no birth narrative, no poetic pericope describing Jesus’ heavenly origins, just a quick dive into the work of John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus.
I suppose if we had to characterize John the Baptist we would likely put him in as an OT figure. A messenger would go ahead of the One, would go and prepare the way for the coming Messiah. His location in the wilderness and his peculiar clothing did signal a certain kind of prophetic bona fides. His camel-hair frock and leather belt would have signified a connection to Elijah. The peculiar diet, locusts and honey, also would have nodded to Elijah as they demonstrated a kind of desperate dependence on God for sustenance that mirrors what Elijah went through. John is like a new Elijah, who has returned just as Malachi said he would.
On this second Sunday of Advent, we might learn from the urgency of this text. We may not know exactly what we are preparing for, but whatever it is, it is for RIGHT NOW! There is no time to waste in this endeavor. And the people in the text weren’t wasting much time making their way to John either. Something was beginning.
John calls out to people, get ready, be prepared, right now. John’s call for baptism and repentance, or turning around of one’s life, or changing the way of one’s heart – all of this indicated that a change of heart and mind and way of life was expected for the beginning that Mark proclaimed as good news. John’s baptisms take place at the Jordan River, a boundary, in the OT, to the Promised Land. In the exodus story, God’s people wandered in the wilderness for 40 years until at last they reached the Jordan River. When they entered those waters, they knew their wandering was over and that God’s promises were about to be fulfilled.
John is the forerunner who points toward Jesus as the advent of the beginning of God’s kingdom on earth. Forerunners are often unseen figures and unsung heroes. Their back stories are unknown. The details of their lives are underimagined or undervalued. They garner minimal attention, because they are forerunners—those who plow the ground, destabilize the terrain, and make ready for change that is to come. They are not The One; they are those who come before The One. Every movement needs those who function as the advance team, that is, those who prepare the way for something beyond the present state of affairs. In today’s reading we find John preparing the way for Jesus.
As Mark’s gospel begins, he quickly moves from Jesus to John, as he echoes prophetic proclamations from the Hebrew scriptures: ‘the voice of a messenger, crying in the wilderness, preparing the way’. A glimpse into the synoptic gospels lets the 21st-century reader know that the lives of Jesus and John run parallel, at least until John is beheaded. John the Baptizer’s tragic end reminds us that the journey of forerunners is not without risk and consequence. Like other forerunners across the ages, many who were imprisoned and ridiculed for what they believed was right. In the same way that John called early believers to repentance and suffered for his message, forerunners have called communities to equity and just practices and suffered for their message. Even today, those who dare to defy the status quo and speak truth to power, even naming what can be before it is realized, experience threat, peril, and endangerment. Yet with fortitude, forerunners persevere.
Perhaps the most important scripture for understanding John is Is 40:1-11, which was our first passage this morning. The passage announces that God’s intention is to visit God’s people. God gives direction for the way to be prepared. God doesn’t say, ‘Tell the people to get ready and when they have done so, I will come to them.’ Rather, God says, ‘Prepare the way! I am coming to my people whether they are ready or not.
Indeed the voice of God in the Isaiah text has the character of a wounded lover. God is desperate – ‘I will come to my people, and nothing will keep me from them. Mountains will be torn down, valleys will be filled in, rough places made smooth – whatever it takes.’ It is hard not to think of the old Diana Ross song, ‘Ain’t no mountain high enough.’
Our passage this morning from Mark is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. Mark is announcing to the followers and non-followers of Jesus that this plan of God’s to come to God’s people is about to be fulfilled. John is one of God’s agents preparing the way for the Lord to come. And for John a baptism of repentance is a means of being prepared, a means of getting ready.
So, the basic Advent theme sounded throughout our two texts this morning is that the time of a promise is coming to a close and the time of fulfillment is drawing near. For Isaiah, the probable context was the end of exile for Israelites in Babylon. For John, it was the coming of Israel’s long- awaited Messiah.
The announcement is gracious, with only the dimmest echo of warning. Neither Isaiah, nor John, nor Mark intended to say, “God will come to those who are ready; those who aren’t ready will be left out.” The accent is simply on God’s imminent, certain advent, though such an announcement obviously calls for a response – from listeners then as now.
God is coming to us! This is fantastic news! So, what do we do to get ready, making sure we are prepared. John suggests, confess your sins, get baptized, change your heart and ways of living. Later, Jesus will add, ‘and believe in the good news.’ In other words, accept that my grace is sufficient for you, for your neighbor, for your enemy, for the stranger. God will come and fulfill all of God’s promises whether or not we do any of those things – so at the end of the day it is less about what you and I do and totally on what God did, does and will continue to do – come to us with love and grace. And knowing God is on the way – why wouldn’t we want to do any of those things to be prepared.
To take a somewhat silly analogy, can you remember as a child or teenager playing “Hide and Seek”. All of your friends would gather about dusk before getting called in for the night. Everyone goes and hides so that the person who is ‘it’ tries to find all of those who are hiding. When the game goes as it should, everyone gets found. The game is interesting from one point of view because ‘hiding’ is not really very much fun. If you ask most kids, ‘Do you want to sit somewhere all by yourself and keep quiet while everyone else is running around and screaming I found you?’ My guess is you wouldn’t get many takers. What’s fun about Hide and Seek is not hiding, but getting found. Everyone likes to get found.
So as our advent season continues this week, may we be reminded that God is coming to find us. We may have our ways of hiding, or eluding our friends and playmates. But when John the Baptist shouts, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” it as though God has just called out, ‘Ready or not, here I come’ and we are reminded once again, God will always find us and love us – thanks be to God – amen.