December 6, 2020
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8[1]
Imagine that you live in Israel, in the year 70 CE. Life is hard enough for most people,
most of the time. But add to that the war. A group of radicals has revolted
against the Roman occupation, and Jerusalem is under siege. Anxiety is in the
air as people fear the Roman soldiers, the rebel guerillas, and the uncertainty
of a world in turmoil. Some want God to bring military leaders to push the
Roman Empire out of the Holy Land. Others advocate submitting to Roman rule as
the only path to peace and security.
There is one group that doesn’t choose either side, the
followers of a Galilean holy-man named Jesus, who was crucified some forty
years ago. The rabbis say they’re heretics, the rebels dismiss them as
ineffective against the Roman occupation, and the Romans assume they are
continuing the insurrection of their founder. Interestingly, the followers of “the
Way,” as they call themselves, say that the death of Jesus is “good news” for
Israel. They make some other bold claims as well: that he was the Messiah and
that he was the Son of God.
This “Son of God” business, well that’s a pretty direct
challenge to the authority of Rome. That title in Latin, divi filius, is
written on coins next to the images of the emperors. That’s might have been
what got him killed. No one besides the Roman Emperor is supposed to call
themselves the son of God.
To claim that he was the Messiah is a threat to the
religious leaders, and probably doesn’t look good to the rebel zealots either.
After all, the Messiah was supposed to be the return of a ruler like King
David, who would restore the fortunes of Israel and usher in the reign of God.
If the Messiah was crucified like a criminal, that pretty much buries any hope
of getting rid of the Romans.
Sometime around the year 70, Mark wrote down his Gospel.
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” From that
title you might expect the story to talk of rebellion. But it begins with John
the Baptizer calling for repentance. John calls people out of the city, out
from their farms, into the wilderness, saying: confess your sins, be washed
clean in the river, and prepare for one who is to come.
Repentance and confession sound more like bad news than
good. They both require taking an honest look at ourselves and our past, and
changing the direction of our lives. Yet they do speak to a longing for
something different, something better. They speak to that longing within us for
a deeper experience of life, for a closer connection with the holy. Repentance
prepares us for the restoration of our relationship with God. We need to renew
that relationship because we’re lost, lost in the wilderness, lost from who
we’re supposed to be, in exile spiritually if not materially.
Mark sets the stage for what is about to unfold by taking us
back to the prophets of Israel. Isaiah spoke of God restoring Israel after the
exile in Babylon. In the sixth century BCE, Babylon invaded Judah, destroyed
much of Jerusalem, and exiled the leading citizens to Babylon. What were once
sources of stability and security – the temple, the monarchy, and the covenant
– were broken, destroyed. God, it seemed, had abandoned the Israelites, or
perhaps had been defeated by Marduk, the Babylonian god.
In the depths of their despair, God responds to the exiles
with a word of hope. “Comfort, O comfort my people.” Isaiah offers a different
source of security. Hope that is based on human institutions is destined to
fail. People are corruptible and break their promises. There is only one sure
source of security: “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our
God will stand forever.” Though everything else will fail, God’s Word endures,
and God will lead us home.
Although the Jews in Mark’s time are not in exile, they are
under foreign occupation, exiled in their own land. Again, the sense that God
has abandoned them is palpable. John the Baptizer offers the comfort of Isaiah
to these first-century exiles. “Prepare the way of the Lord.” The crowds listen
to John’s words of hope. There is a way out of despair, and it is a way already
known to God’s people: it is a way in the wilderness.
To be in the wilderness is, in a sense, to get lost. It is
to be disturbed from our every-day, carefully ordered, predictable lives. It is
to wander without a planned destination. It is to be alone, and yet open to the
presence of God. There can be a peace in being alone when we realize how tiny
we are, and yet we are one with the universe. In the wilderness we can be still
and know the presence of God.
Many of us are living in a metaphorical wilderness, a
spiritual exile. Our consumer lifestyle makes our lives into commodities to be measured
by our contributions to the economy. Our thirst for ever more scarce resources
has us at each other’s throats, in our communities and around the world. We can
hardly find the time to share a meal with our family, to play with our
children, to talk with a grandparent, or write a letter to a distant relative. Add
to that our current circumstances, coping with a pandemic that we know will
continue for months yet, with all the stress that is putting on our hospitals,
jobs, and schools. It grows more and more difficult to keep connected to God.
It is in the loss and the feeling of being lost that we find
ourselves in the wilderness. It can also be in the literal wilderness that we
feel the greatest need to be with God. In his book, Renewal in the Wilderness,
John Lionberger says: “This is why people, from ancient times to modern,
continue to seek out the wilderness: to leave the everyday, to simplify, to
open our lives to the possibility of God’s personal interest in us, and to
experience the transcendent.”[2]
Whether we seek out wilderness, or discover ourselves to be already lost, it is
there that we are more open to God entering into our lives to transform them.
We need the wilderness, whether it is the wilderness of the
natural world, or a more metaphorical wilderness of the spirit. We need to get
lost from the ordinary and steep ourselves in the extraordinary. We need to
encounter our mortality, to know that we are small beings in a vast creation;
and we need to know that we are not insignificant in the eyes of God. We need
to be shaken out of the ordinariness of our days and awaken to the peace that
comes when we drink deep of the living water.
Isaiah cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the
Lord.” Get out of the ordinary and get ready for the extraordinary. The
messenger calls to us in our spiritual exile to prepare for the one who is to
come. It is in the wilderness that the path is made straight for the coming of
God. John the Baptizer calls us to the wilderness to shake us from our
complacency. Repent and confess your sins. Prepare for something new. Prepare
the way, he says, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.” Get
ready for the changes that are taking place by preparing a welcome for the
Lord.
So, we repent, and prepare to start anew. And it is powerful
to feel the refreshing wind of the wilderness blow through us and stir the
flames of our smoldering spirits. But our journey is not over once we return
from the wilderness. Our personal spiritual fulfillment is not our ultimate
goal. Our work has only just begun. After all, there are others around us who
are still lost, who still feel exiled from God’s presence. A friend who was a
professor at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Richard Ward, wants us to know
that we have a great responsibility as those who prepare the way:
We like to cast ourselves as the shepherds who hear choirs of angels
broadcast the startling announcement of God’s coming. But these words are not
just for us to savor like food at a holiday feast. We are in the position of
the celestial ones, trying to find a way to speak the Word to God’s people.[3]
We are the angels. We are the heralds of the Messiah’s
birth. “God with us is now residing,” says the hymn. God is entering into human
life to bring us out of our exile. God’s compassion will bring us comfort in
despair. God’s light will bring us out of the darkness of our spiritual exile.
God has not abandoned us, and God’s forgiveness will restore us to right
relationship. God’s peace will bring an end to the turmoil.
What hope this was to the exiles in Babylon! What joy the
baptized must have felt on the banks of the Jordan. What good news this is for
a world in crisis, for those who are lost in the spiritual exile of today! This
Advent season is the time for us to be angels. We are the heralds who cry out
in the wilderness: Behold! “To you is born this day in the city of David a
Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”[4]
O come, Emmanuel. Gloria in Excelsis Deo! May the peace of Christ be with all
of you. Amen.
[1]
The scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard
Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the
[2]
John Lionberger, Renewal in the
Wilderness: A Spiritual Guide to Connecting with God in the Natural World (
[3] Richard
F. Ward, “Homiletical Perspective on Isaiah 40:1-11” in David L. Bartlett and
Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised
Common Lectionary, Year B, Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press,
2008), p. 29.
[4]
Luke 2:11.
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