December 10, 2023: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.
We just heard the opening verses from the Gospel of Mark, starring that locust and honey eating prophet of fame – John the baptizer, telling us to prepare the way for the one who is to come. To understand the entire passage, and what it means for us today, let’s dig a little deeper.
This is the earliest of our canonical gospels to be written, and scholars date it to around 68-70 CE – around the time of the second destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Now we don’t know the actual names of any of the gospel authors, so we will just call him Mark, since that is our tradition. He was a Jew, writing for Jews. As he wrote, the dust was rising from the rubble of the sacred space – traditions seemingly lost, a people scattered and afraid. Is it any wonder that there may have been a feeling that all was lost?
And this is how, then, he decided to tell the story of Jesus to them:
“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,’”
What? No sweet baby in a manger.
No “Peace on earth, goodwill to all?”
How is that any help?
But here’s the thing… we are looking at this from our context, not his.
Now, if I were to say to you “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house,
What comes next?
Right – “…not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”
We know that story by heart, don’t we? And, not for nuthin’, as Episcopalians, we should – it was, after all, it written by Clement Moore, who was a professor at The General Theological Seminary, the Episcopal Seminary in NY city, the land for the seminary having been donated by him. Clement Moore’s father, Benjamin Moore was not a painter as you might imagine, but an Episcopal Bishop! So in a way…our church, the Episcopal Church, has a deep tie to this story – go figure!
But in much the same way that we know what lines come next in that passage, the people to whom the author of this gospel was writing knew what came next too – and they needed to hear it. And so do we. So…it’s a good thing we did! It was read in our passage from Isaiah, and it goes like this:
“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…”
A people standing amidst violence and destruction, confused and afraid, crying out for justice, for peace, for hope… are reminded that God will every make things new out of the old that has been destroyed – valleys lifted, mountains leveled, rough places smoothed.
And… these words would bring to mind something just as important too – the verses just before it, where God says “Comfort, O comfort my people.”
“Comfort, O comfort my people.”
How they needed to be reminded of this, and we certainly need to hear this today.
In this world where war is creating orphans, refugees, and victims of violence and sexual assault, where people are killed at school or at work or while shopping, and where our country is facing a possible constitutional crisis, where people are afraid to be who God made them to be, and our earth is struggling from our abuse – we need to stop for a moment and remember something about what Advent is about, and especially what Mark is emphatically trying to tell us.
God will bring comfort to us.
God will restore us.
And, perhaps most important of all…
God is present with us.
That is good news indeed – then and now.
Amidst all the uncertainty of our world, we too stand amidst the rubble of destruction and we are given assurance that our God is present, our God is with us, our God will bring comfort to us.
But there’s more for those listening then, and for us today, because when we do read on in the passage from the gospel, when we go past those opening verses, what do we discover? That this good news did not first come to the powerful, the included ones, the insiders. No, John the baptizer goes to the ones on the edges of the wilderness, who live in the margins. God cannot be contained inside a temple, nor destroyed by any human force. God will be found most especially alongside the poor and the outcast, the stranger and the sick, the marginalized and the oppressed.
This good news of Jesus Christ is one that topples more than stone – it upturns the world order, making all things new, while uniting heaven and earth. As one commentator put it “There is a radical disorientation in the beginning and the ending of this Gospel…We might ask ourselves to what extent a season of preparation demands a certain disoriented expectancy. Anything for which we wait, everything in which we hope rarely turns out to be what we imagined.”[1]
A “radical disorientation.” A “disoriented expectancy.” Yes, that is what the birth of Jesus will bring. And it is very true that the things for which we wait or hope rarely turn out to be what we imagined – they can be, and often are, far more.
This disoriented expectancy portends a beginning…a beginning in us, because God’s response to our distress, this comfort we seek, isn’t about something long ago. The birth we await in Advent may have been the start of this radical disorientation, but surely didn’t end there. It was only the beginning – the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.
And we are the ones to prepare the way now. Baptized in the Holy Spirit, as we are in our baptism in Christ, we continue the story – we proclaim the good news of Jesus.
Out of darkness, from the depths of our mourning, over what is happening all around us, we cry out to God for comfort. And God answers back with love – and a call to prepare the way for God’s work in the work – the work of radical disorientation – the work of Jesus.
Perhaps that is why the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used this passage in his “Dream” speech. Dr. King said…“I have a dream, that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope.
This is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith…
we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith…
we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”
Advent prepares us to see the darkness of the world, not so we can despair, but so that we can act, so that we can continue the story. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, is one part of the larger story of God at work in the world, into which we are called to join in God’s radical disorientation for the sake of the world.
For if we are to be comforted, we must choose to make new paths for the light of God’s love. The paths we make will be forged by truth, the truth we proclaim. The light that guides us is the Christ within us. The places we will go will be to the ones God despairs for most – the hated, the oppressed, the poor, the marginalized, the earth and all the creatures that inhabit it.
We will prepare for a new way of being and bring about a radical disorientation that lifts every valley, and lowers every mountain, that makes the crooked paths straight, and levels the uneven ground upon which we walk.
It is our hope.
It was King’s dream.
It is God’s promise!
And from this, the comfort we seek we will find – because darkness will no longer be for us a cause of mourning, but an opportunity for partnering with God. A chance to be a part of that radical disorientation, to be part of the never ending story of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Amen.
For the audio, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here (also available on Audible):
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
December 10, 2023
Advent 5
1st Reading – Isaiah 40:1-11
2nd Reading – 2 Peter 3:8-15a
Gospel – Mark 1:1-8
[1] From Karoline Lewis, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-mark-11-8
