December 4, 2005 — 3:24 PM
Words of Comfort, Words of Hope
Isaiah 40:1-11
Mark 1:1-8
A sermon for the second Sunday of Advent
The season of Advent is a season of darkness. It is observed (for those of us in the northern hemisphere) when the daylight hours are at their shortest. Darkness surrounds us as we get up in the morning. Darkness surrounds us as we go out from work or school events in the afternoon. Darkness is a real part of our daily living during this part of the year.
But the darkness of the Advent season is not just about the physical darkness that gathers around us; it is about the darkness of the condition of all of creation. This darkness comes as a result of sin and separation from God. We see the effects of it everywhere in our world.
Wars rage seemingly without end. HIV and AIDS spread rampantly while we stand weakly by the wayside feeling powerless. The divide between those who have and those who do not grows ever wider. And those who have the power to right this wrong are more interested in watching out for themselves than watching out for the good of all of God's creation.
The season of Advent is a season of darkness. I would guess that the community of High Street Presbyterian Church knows what this darkness feels like as you find yourself without a pastor. The events of the last few weeks have thrown you into a place of confusion and scrambling while you deal with the sadness of saying goodbye to a pastor. All of that makes this holiday season loose some of its cheer.
And I would imagine that everyone here knows this darkness on an individual level as well. Maybe you are struggling to make ends meet each week. Maybe someone you love has recently died or gone away. Maybe your health is causing you to worry. There are many things that remind us that the world is not perfect as God would have it to be. And during this season we reflect on these reminders of the darkness that exists in our world.
The season of Advent is not only a season of darkness, but it is also a season of preparation.
By reflecting on the darkness of our world and our situation within it, we prepare ourselves for the miracle of God's coming to live among us in the form of a little baby. This is an amazing gift that we cannot truly appreciate until we understand how much we need it.
Have you ever been given a gift and thought, "Well, that's a fine enough gift, but I'm not really sure what I'll do with it"? You probably appreciated the act of giving even though you weren't so sure you appreciated the actual gift. Can you think of another time when you were given a gift that fit a real need that you had? You probably thought, "This is perfect! Now I will be able to do this thing that I really wanted to do." You not only appreciated the act of someone giving you a gift, you truly appreciated the gift as well.
The season of Advent is a season of preparation - preparing us to receive God's gift of bringing God's reign into creation through the birth of Jesus, God's Son. This is not a gift that we can receive lightly. It is a gift that has life-changing possibilities, but only if we are ready.
Many in the Christian tradition take the period beginning four Sundays before Christmas as a time of preparation. It is a time to reflect on the condition of the world and of our lives and to prepare ourselves to receive God's great gift of God's self -the very gift that we celebrate on Christmas day.
The season of Advent is a season of darkness that leads us to prepare ourselves for God's coming. And this makes Advent a season of hope.
If we were to only focus on the darkness of our world and our lives during this season, I believe many of us would soon be filled with despair. While we work for good in many ways, it often seems that our efforts are too small or that they just can't compete with the callousness and disregard that exists in our world.
And while we must take some time during this season to truly understand the state of our world, we also have to remember that ultimately it is in God's hands and not ours. And with that realization, we will be able to have hope for the future - a hope that is gloriously embodied in the baby of Christmas morning; a hope which is remembered each time we partake of the bread and the wine of Holy Communion; and a hope that allows us to look for the blessed return of Jesus Christ to establish God's reign forever in a new heaven and a new earth.
The Season of Advent is a season of darkness, preparation, and hope - no one piece alone will do, only the three together will truly allow us to appreciate God's great gift of Christmas Day.
Our Scripture lessons for today show us two different but similar seasons of advent.
The first, shown in the passage from Isaiah, was one experienced by the Israelite people. They were in the midst of a long period of darkness. Their land had been overtaken several times by the competing superpowers of the region - Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria. Their rulers had been exiled to foreign lands. Their food and livelihood were on the brink of collapse because of all of the taxation that they were experiencing at the hands of the foreign rulers.
Life was hard and it seemed that God had turned away from them. They knew that they had sinned and broken their covenant with the Lord. And they knew that the darkness that swirled around them was because of this very fact. It had taken them many years, but the people finally realized the error of their ways. They were prepared to renew their covenant with God.
God acknowledges their preparation with the words from Isaiah chapter 40 verse 2:
"She [meaning Jerusalem] has served her term, ...her penalty is paid, ...she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins."
The Israelites are facing the darkness of their advent season and are using it as preparation to open themselves to receiving God's gift of comfort. And, according to the text, a voice cries out and tells them that their preparation is to take a very specific shape. You may recognize the instructions given here from Handle's "Messiah." The people are to "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."
And when these preparations are made, then the people will find hope because, as verse 5 explains, "Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all the people shall see it together."
This is great news to those who hear it. This is what they had been longing for - to be in the presence of the glory of the Lord once again. When they had been their own nation, ruled by the leaders who they believed God had anointed, they had felt blessed and protected by the Lord. But that had gone away with the destruction of the Temple and the loss of their rulers. The people had been cut off from the glory of the Lord.
But God tells Isaiah to go and give good tidings to the people for God "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." The day is coming when God will once again love, care for, and provide for God's people. This is a real reason for hope.
And so, the people look for the "messiah," the anointed one of God, who will lead the people back into their own nation and reestablish their covenant with God. Their season of Advent is filled with darkness which leads them to make preparations, and this brings about hope for the people.
Our second example of a season of Advent comes from the Gospel according to Mark. And, like our previous example, it shows the same pattern of darkness, preparation, and hope.
This gospel is the shortest of the four that are included in our canon of Scripture. The writer was not concerned with filling in details or using fancy rhetoric to make a point. Rather, the writer was concerned with getting the good news of Jesus written down so others would be able to know it as well.
The spare writing style is evident from the very beginning of the Gospel. We are only given one sentence that reveals that the people are living in darkness. It comes in verse 4: "John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins."
We are forced to read between the words to understand all that is being said. The situation was such in the first years of the Common Era that people felt the need to repent and receive a baptism of forgiveness for their sins.
This period, much like that of Isaiah's time, found the Jewish people ruled by a foreign power, paying high taxes to that power, and feeling greatly distanced from their God. All of this brought about a great deal of unrest in the area surrounding Jerusalem.
The people see the darkness of their world and see the darkness in their own lives and this makes them yearn for something to be different. And so, they prepare themselves to receive something new by seeking out this man who was baptizing. They ask to be baptized and they confess their sins.
With this act of preparation comes hope - this baptizer tells of one who is to come. He says: "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."
In light of the quotes at the beginning of Mark from the prophets Malachi and Isaiah, we understand John the Baptist to be preparing the way of the Lord - making his path straight. Knowing this allows us to understand that Mark and the followers of Jesus saw Jesus as the messiah sent by God to right the wrongs that were evident in the world. And this brings great hope.
These two seasons of Advent, separated by hundreds of years, show us the pattern for our own season of Advent. First we must acknowledge the darkness in which our world and we are living, so that we can then prepare ourselves for something new. And with this preparation comes hope that God is working in and through creation to bring about a new heaven and a new earth.
When we have this hope, we can affirm with Ann Weems the great possibilities that exist as she writes in her poem "New Shoots":
Born in the light of the Bright and Morning Star,
we are new.
Not patched, not mended...but new
like a newborn...
like the morning...
The guilt-blotched yesterdays are gone;
the soul stains are no more!
There is no looking back;
there are no regrets.
In our newness, we are free.
In the power of God's continuing creation,
we are:
new shoots from the root of Jesse,
new branches from the one true Vine,
new songs breaking through the world's deafness.
This then is a new day.
New shoots, new branches,
new songs, new day...
Bathed in the promise of God's New Creation,
we begin!
May this season of Advent be a time for us to be aware that we are people walking in darkness so that we can pay attention to how much our hearts hunger to see the great light. Too often, in the business of Christmas, we do not take the time to sit with the meaning of the season of Advent. Christmas decorations and displays are in the stores before Thanksgiving, we need to buy gifts, and make plans for meals shared with friends and families, and suddenly, it's Christmas.
Worship is our way of living into the season of Advent, to be present to the spirit of Advent and to heed our hearts' yearnings for a deeper relationship with God.
This year, let us look around in wonder at all that God has done. Let us prepare the way of the Lord: in our hearts and in our communities. Let us see the season of Advent as an opportunity to make space for God in our crowded and busy world.
Above all, let us wait in faith and hope, remembering that the sending of the messiah, as well as the work God does in our own hearts, is God's work...not ours. And so we wait upon God.
May it be so. Amen.
