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Advent 2 – Year B

Preached on December 4, 2011

At St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

Isaiah 40:1—11, Psalm 85:1—2, 8—13, Mark 1:1—8

It is easy to imagine that, in the time Mark’s Gospel was written, lots of folks were spending a lot of time looking backwards; Lots of time talking about what happened “back in the day” when Jesus actually walked among them. I can imagine the stories being told over and over again around the family fires; stories about someone’s experience of walking with Jesus, handed down through multiple generations.

But Mark, in the very first sentence of the very first gospel, turns everyone’s attention around 180 degrees. What’s important about Jesus’ life, Mark argues, is not about the past, it is about the future. It is not about what those followers did then, as much as it is about what we do now.

By starting his Gospel with the words “the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” Mark makes his audience part of the ongoing revelation of the Good News.

While Advent is filled with imagery of the end-times, they are end-times only inasmuch as they are beginning times. It is the end of what has been, so that what will be can begin.

I recently heard of a sign that was being held by a young man at the Occupy movement downtown. It read, “The Beginning is at hand.”

Mark understands that the Beginning is at hand.

So Mark does not begin his Gospel with a manger scene. There are no shepherds, no wise men. Nor does it start with the beautiful hymn that John starts his Gospel with, which places Jesus at the dawn of time.

Mark starts with no Jesus anywhere on the scene, just a people desperate for something new to begin. Mark starts with the longing. Mark begins his story by setting the scene with the ministry of John the Baptist, or John the Forerunner, as he is called in the Eastern church.

Mark’s story opens in the wilderness. It is set in the context of a people who are, once again, longing for God. With a people who are oppressed by a political system and are left wondering where their God is.

Mark begins the Good News of Jesus by describing a people who needed that Good News even more than they could know. He puts John the Baptist in the River Jordan, the geographic boundary between the wilderness and the promised land.

There, a multitude of people are called from the wilderness to the very edge of the promise land by this wild and wooly prophet. They stand, literally and figuratively, on the edge, leaning into their new life in God, but not quite able to cross over until Jesus arrives and shows them the Way.

So, too, was Mark’s audience on the edge. So, too, they needed the way to be made clear for them so that they might understand how to continue the story of the good news, of which the written part of theGospel was just the beginning.

So, too, are we on the edge. It is hard for me to imagine a time when we have felt more lost in the wilderness of the world. Yes, we hear stories of the kingdom of God, we catch glimpses of it, but it feels so very far away.

We are lost in the wilderness of corporate greed. Whatever your take on the Occupy movement, and I have more than my share, I have little doubt that the rich are only getting richer and the poor are only getting poorer. Come visit the food pantry and see for yourself. We can imagine what it might look like for everyone to have what they need, to have enough, but we just can’t seem to get there. We stand on the edge of the wilderness, longing for the promised land.

We are lost in the wilderness of pandemics such as HIV and AIDS, Malaria and a lack of access to drinkable water for much of the developing world. We are told cures are conceivable in our lifetime. We can imagine a world in which clean water and medical care is a human right, but the promised land seems so far away. So, we stand on the edge of the wilderness.

We are lost in the wilderness of isolation and individualism. We are told, more and more, that our lives can be custom designed and everything we need can be brought to us through a computer in the privacy of our own home. I try to make it a point to go to a bank teller, a real live human being, at least once a month. I feared ATM’s would make human interaction unnecessary. Our children will wonder why we ever even left the house to use an ATM in the first place. We know the blessing of community and the soul-nourishing experience of deep personal relationships, but we seem to be swimming against the tide and the promised land, the banquet table with all humanity seated around it, seems out of reach.

We know wilderness in this world. And many of us know our own personal wilderness. We know, if we are honest with ourselves, that we stand at our own river Jordan, looking across to a promised land; a place in our lives for which our hearts ache, but we stand unsure how to get there; unsure if we can get there.

If the story of Jesus’ life and ministry, his death and resurrection was the end of the story of the Good News, we would have little reason to hope. If God’s intervention into the world began and ended two thousand years ago, it would have been a failed experiment; a brief glimpse of light in the darkness; a brief stay in the promised land before our return to the wilderness. But it wasn’t the end – it was just the beginning; it was the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And at the start of the story, at least in Mark’s version, there is no baby in swaddling clothes. There isn’t even Jesus the Carpenter’s son. Jesus the rabbi is nowhere to be seen.

At the start of the story, there is only the desire for the baby. There is only longing for the carpenter’s son, there is only aching for Jesus the rabbi to appear.

The people come to the river, at the edge of the wilderness and wait for the one who would bring them the rest of the Way. On the Way. As the Way.

Too often we think that, as people of faith, we must live the whole of our lives of faith in the manger, or at Jesus’ feet, or at the foot of the cross.

But what the Gospel of Mark reminds us is that God meets us wherever we are. If we are ready to sit at Jesus’ feet, Jesus will be there to teach us. If we are able to bring our gifts to the manger, Christ is there, ready to be born in our hearts over and over. But even if those places seem far away; God will find us, God will seek us out, even at the edge of the wilderness. God will meet us, even there, and bid us follow.

Mark knows that where most of us live out most of our lives of faith is in the longing. Where most of us spend our time is at the edge of the wilderness. Where most of us begin, is at the beginning. That is where Jesus will meet us, when we go to meet him. That is where the Christ will call us on the Way, when we listen to be called. That is where the story of our beginnings begins.

“The Beginning is at hand.”

That is a sign John the Baptist could have been holding. That is a sign we should all be holding. That is the message of Advent. Let’s not look backward at a story that has been told, let us look forward to a story that continues to be written by the lives we live.

Let our longing bring us to the edge of the wilderness, that we might be ready to meet the one who will call us into the Promised land.

Come, Lord Jesus. Come Quickly. The Beginning is at hand.

AMEN.

© 2011 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello