Isaiah 40:1-11 Mark 1:1-8
Advent 2
Location, location, location. We hear that expression when we are searching for a place to settle into so that we can renew our souls, a place to honker down when the snow comes, a place to build a life, a home. Location is important because the context informs and contributes to our understanding. You know more about a person when you find out if they grew up in Boston or in Gloucester, and if that was during the Great Depression or the Vietnam war. Both geographical and historical location are worth paying attention to in scripture.
Our reading from Isaiah this morning comes after a long time of turmoil. Israel and Judah were constantly at odds over theological and social issues. Conflicts arose among Israel, Judah, Syria and Assyria. Assyria took control of Judah, the southern kingdom, and destroyed the capital of Israel, bringing the northern kingdom to an end. In 597 and 587 BCE, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and took its people captive. The destruction of Jerusalem was seen as God’s judgment on Israel’s sins. People’s homes, their neighbors, their church and their favorite restaurants were gone. Now they were living in a foreign land with a different language and strange food. It felt like being in the wilderness. The prophets had warned them of the consequences of their behavior, but their ears were shut. The results of their sin were catastrophic, and they had no one to blame but themselves.
Into their state of hopelessness, God speaks, Comfort, O comfort my people. God will bring them home. Their exile will be over. This time, instead of warning, the prophet’s voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” The uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plane. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all the people shall see it together.
About 500 years later, Jews would revolt against their Roman oppressors, and the temple of Solomon would be destroyed. Into this place and time, the prophet John stood in the wilderness and cried out, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight…’ The words of comfort spoken into the wilderness exile through Isaiah are echoed.
Wilderness is a place and time of destruction. It is a place where we are left feeling that life is out of our control, and a place blind to all hope. Do you know that feeling? Have you listened to the news this year? The highlights of 2017 are chilling. Fear of “the other” pervades the reported stories. Racism and prejudice continue to be acted out in Charlottesville, and in places across the country. This is the year of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States, and yet there is no ban on equipment that turns a gun into an assault weapon. Fear of a nuclear weapon attack from North Korea looms in the background. Media coverage of sexual misconduct now dominates the news.
On December 12, there will be an election in Alabama for a U. S. Senator. One of the candidates has had nine women claim sexual assault. One of those women says she was 14 years old at the time. Roy Moore denies all allegations. He remains a strong candidate for senator. Time Magazine’s person of the year this year are all the women who have spoken up about sexual misconduct. Exposing these violations of the powerless is a good thing! But swept up into the chaos of allegations, we find guilty people who are exempt from condemnation, and innocent people who are condemned.
We have witnessed power that takes, dominates and inflicts abuse that denies dignity to God’s creation. It is even scarier when those who act on their dominance of the powerless and their hatred of “the other” profess faith in God. We are in a place of despair, and a place of fear. In the discomfort of our wilderness, God speaks to us through an unconventional man dressed in camel’s hair and eating locusts. A prophet who proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
The first words in Mark’s gospel are this: The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The good news of Jesus Christ begins with God’s messenger crying out in the wilderness. This prophet was John the baptizer who came preaching repentance. John makes it clear that the good news of Jesus is connected to repentance.
As bad as the events have been this year in our country, it is time to stop pointing fingers everywhere but in the mirror. It is time to stop calling bad behavior mistakes, and recognize for what it is–sin. The road that prepares us for Christ is confession. While we desire redemption without judgment, it is when we confess our sin that we can accept God’s forgiveness. It is when we admit we are broken that we begin to be healed. It is when we realize that we cannot save ourselves that we look for our savior, who comes to us as a baby.
If the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God starts with our repentance, then the good news is God’s presence with us in our sin. Not just our sin, but the sins of the world. God’s power lies not in God’s controlling, but in God’s ability to stay with us despite our attempts to ignore and even push God away. The good news is that our God comes to us as a baby in human flesh. God enters into our sinful world of mass shootings, and sexual assaults, and hatred of blacks and Muslims.
Jesus Christ, the son of God, not only comes to us in our wilderness, our exile, but stays with us in our pain, and our anger, and our tears, and our sin. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ will unfold into a God who knows vulnerability, suffering, and death on a cross. The good news of Jesus Christ will unfold into life that comes from death. For we who are in the wilderness, and for we who are in exile, this is the beginning of the good news. In 2017, what better news is there than this?
~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin