2 ADVENT, YEAR B
SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE
THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY
7 DECEMBER 2008
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Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1=2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ…” The beginning, says Mark. The beginning of the good news. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.
Two candles are lit now, on this second Sunday of Advent. The light is beginning to grow brighter. The coming of God in human flesh, in Jesus. The good news of God’s coming into the world once, as God will come again, we know, on the final day.
But there are questions. What was the “beginning?” When was the “beginning?” When did the good news of God’s coming actually start? Mark says it started with John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin. John, that odd prophet of the old school, John who had many disciples and who preached in the desert to all who flocked out to hear him. Mark says that John the Baptist was the beginning of God’s coming.
But John the Baptist pointed beyond himself to the one who would come after him. That one would be the beginning of the good news. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. “ John didn’t name that one, although we know him to be Jesus.
So Jesus was the beginning. But the beginning had roots. The beginning had its roots in earlier times. Isaiah and the other prophets knew about the coming of God. God at the end of time and God’s presence even in their own time. Isaiah knew that God would be reaching in again, available to the people in exile, to people oppressed by illness and poverty and political oppression. Isaiah knew about the beginning of God with them. “The Lord God comes with might….and he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them….” sang Isaiah.
The beginning has roots. “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…,” says the writer of Genesis. The beginning of the biblical story itself.
Last week we lit the first candle. Today the second. Next week it will be the third. The beginning started, continued and, if we take Mark at his word, it keeps on beginning. “The beginning of the good news…” The beginning of the gospel.
The gospel doesn’t end. God’s inbreaking begins but it does not end. Jesus, the flesh of God, who came, who lived and died. On the cross, Jesus uttered some last words: “It is finished.”
But we know that the Cross wasn’t the end. We know that things hadn’t finished. Things were just beginning all over again, brand new. Christ with us still.
I think the message for today, leaping at us in all the readings, is clear. We wait for God to come at the end of time. We wait eagerly to celebrate God’s coming in the person of Jesus at Christmas. And we wait and watch and pay attention to God’s coming over and over again even now.
We can choose to take God’s hand and accept his availability, or not.
But Marks’ gospel makes clear that taking God’s hand and following Jesus is no easy thing. Terrible things happen, even when we don’t follow Jesus. We know that. And taking God’s hand doesn’t make hard things go away. We know that, too. Even the commercial giddiness of Advent and at Christmas, the hard things don’t go away. It merely masks our brokenness. Temptation and suffering were Jesus’ companions because of his commitment to God all along his journey, and because of our commitment, they will be our companions as well. Real commitment makes that so. You may have heard the saying, “if you want to follow Jesus you’d better make sure you look good on wood.”
But still, even then, even in our struggles, God comes. We ourselves will be like grass that withers and as flowers that fade; but the word of our God will stand forever….and God will feed his flock like a shepherd and gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” (Isaiah 40)
We can choose to take God’s hand, or not. But even when we ignore the invitation, though, God comes, God is available. That’s the good news! God doesn’t come because of anything we do, or fail to do. God just comes. As one writer puts it, “God comes, again and again, because that is who God is; God seeks and finds us, again and again, because that is how God is….Our inconstancy cannot change God, nor alter God’s love, which compels but does not coerce us…” (Kari Jo Verhulst, Sojourners)
When we do say yes, and choose to follow, we open ourselves to the possibility of tasting and seeing the richness of what it is to be truly alive, even in the middle of sorrow and struggle. I also believe that when we reach out and accept God’s gift, we are giving a gift to God, the gift of ourselves.
And when we hand ourselves over to God at the very end of our lives, too, as Jesus himself did, we are making an offering to God. As my mother did last Wednesday when she took Jesus’ hand and accepted his invitation to slide over into God’s nearer presence. She knows now, I am sure, what it is to be truly alive.
God came, and God comes over and over again. Lots of beginnings. We Christians believe that the closest we can get to the “real deal” in this life is through Jesus Christ, who himself not only proclaimed the good news of God with us but was himself the gospel, the good news, God with us.
John the Baptist knew he wasn’t the “real deal”; he pointed to another. And so do we. We point to Jesus. Whether we teach or preach sell insurance or paint houses or work in the Food Pantry or at Community Lunch or visit the sick or sing in the choir or serve behind the altar—we ourselves are not the real deal. We don’t do these things to call attention to ourselves. We serve solely to let God through, to let the light of Christ through, to be so available to the one who was, who is and who is to come that others may know him, too, as yet another new beginning of the good news.