December 6, 2020 – Mark 1:1-8
Mark 1:1-8
Preparation Time
Second Sunday of Advent – December 6, 2020
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
When you hear about John preparing people in the wilderness,
you could be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu.
After the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt, they spent time in the wilderness
preparing themselves for becoming a new kind of community in the Promised Land.
Hundreds of years later,
after the Judeans are about to be allowed to go back to the Promised Land after being in
exile for 70 years in Babylon, Isaiah this morning announces that the people are to
have a way made for them through the wilderness in preparation for
their return journey.
And now, this morning, hundreds of years after that, John announces that
the people are to prepare themselves in the wilderness for the one who is coming.
You can see the pattern, right?
Each time the people were to prepare to become the people God intended them to be
in the wilderness.
After they were freed from slavery in Egypt, the people needed to take 40 years to learn to
become a new kind of community in the world,
a community based on manna-sharing and mercy-giving rather than
manna-hoarding and mercy-withholding.
That went pretty well, and at first, God was their king in this arrangement.
Then the people insisted that they have a human king like the peoples around them.
Eventually, human kingship became a destructive force in their society and
they were overrun by the Babylonians – and the line of Davidic kings came to an end and
the people were taken into exile.
We’ve traced this trajectory in the Psalms, which eventually speak again only of God as king.
After 70 years, the Persians defeat the Babylonians and allow the people to return to their land –
but without a proper king and under Persian rule.
The people prepare to be a new kind of people once again and Isaiah summons
all the hope he can muster with his beautiful words announcing a new day for them.
Back home through the wilderness they go.
But their return is not an easy one under foreign rulers.
Eventually the Hasmoneans will rise up in revolt and rule themselves for a 100 years or so
shortly before the time of Jesus.
But the Hasmonean kings are in many ways not much better than the foreign kings and
their rule is on the whole oppressive and disastrous.
Their rule comes to end when they are defeated by the Romans just before Jesus is born.
And then, when the time is right, God calls John to once again call the people
into the wilderness and prepare them for another attempt to become the people
God has been imagining they could be all along:
A people of manna-sharing and mercy-giving and peace-making and justice-doing.
In Mark’s Gospel, John prepares the people by calling them to “repent,” or, perhaps better,
to “turn around,” to “have a change of heart,” or to “change what they care about.”
This is fleshed out more in Luke’s Gospel where he instructs the people to
share their food with one another and share their clothing.
Tax collectors are told not to hoard and to collect no more than the prescribed amount and
soldiers are told not to extort money from anyone and to be satisfied with their wages.
John is, in short, telling them to change what they care about: forget about the values of
the Roman, Egyptian, fill-in-the-blank reign of accumulating and hoarding.
Instead, align yourselves with the reign of God first outlined in the wilderness
after the Exodus from Egypt.
And then John tells them that the one who is coming will help them do that.
As a sign of the people starting over and committing themselves to becoming this new people,
John takes the people into the Jordan River and takes them out again,
just like when the people were first finished with 40 years of wilderness school
and they crossed through the River Jordan into the Promised Land
to live what they had learned.
Just like they might have done after their return from Exile to once again commit to
becoming the people God was calling them to be.
Only this time, something is different.
This time, something new is introduced into the pattern.
And what is new is a person to inaugurate this new reign, whose name, Mark tells us,
is “Jesus Christ,” or “Jesus Messiah” – in other words, “Jesus King.”
Get it? They’ll have a king again.
This person Jesus will form a new kind of community around himself,
a community that will reflect God’s reign of manna-sharing and mercy-giving.
A community that will tend the vulnerable, share its gifts with any in need,
and that will welcome all.
This will be a community that will prioritize forgiveness and healing and reconciliation.
This will be a community of love.
A community that will intentionally nurture friendship with God, friendship with others,
and friendship with creation.
A community that sets its sights on God’s fulfillment of all things in peace, healing, and justice.
This person Jesus will – far from hoarding the Spirit or energy that is at work in him –
share his Spirit or energy with his community so that
it is empowered to do all the things he is capable of doing in order to bring life.
This is the story that Mark begins to tell in his Gospel, in his “Good New for the World.”
This story he tells is, he says, just “The beginning of the good news of Jesus King.”
His story is indeed just the beginning – it is not over yet, even now.
You might say it is just starting when his Gospel ends with the news of Jesus’ resurrection.
For now, the risen Jesus is present and working and bringing in God’s reign wherever
communities are gathered in and by his Spirit.
Like at First Lutheran Church.
The story begins in a wilderness preparing place.
If you read a bunch of stuff like commentaries on passages such as this –
or any commentary on “wilderness” in the Bible – you will usually be told that
the wilderness is a harsh, terrible, daunting wasteland that is a metaphor for
all the terrible, godless places in our lives.
Friends, I am sure that is not the whole truth.
Yes, the wilderness is difficult and the wilderness is a very hard place to be.
But in the Bible it is also imagined as a place where the people honeymooned with God.
It is the place where God provided manna and quail for the people.
It is the place where God gave enough manna on the sixth day so the people could rest and
enjoy each other on the seventh.
And it was the place where they prepared to be God’s people and learned to be a loving,
caring, sharing people.
The wilderness was a place where the people prepared to be a people of love.
I began by saying that the wilderness is a place in the Bible that God returned the people to
on several different occasions in the Bible.
So perhaps the wilderness is not a once in a Bible experience, or once in lifetime experience,
or even a once in a generation experience.
Perhaps the wilderness is any place we are able to learn more and more to become the people and
the community God is calling us to be.
My question is: are we in a wilderness time right now?
Is this COVID time a wilderness preparation time?
Or perhaps the question is: can we learn to look at it as a wilderness preparation time?
This is a very difficult time for many, to be sure.
But can we learn something about being God’s people here?
Can we prepare to be God’s people better when we cross the river back home and
are able to gather as a community once again?
For myself, I can say that I am learning to sit and be still in a way I am not accustomed to.
And this sitting and being still schools me in understanding that God is working for
good and for life even if I am not able to, even if I cannot see it.
I can also say that I am learning to connect with people in new ways and that
these new ways bring something new to the relationships I have with you.
I am also learning that what we have at First Lutheran Church and the kind of community life
we have is something that is very very precious and is something I miss very much and
is something that benefits the world around us a great deal.
I think, together, we are learning something about generosity, and commitment, and endurance.
I think, together, we are learning something about hope and perseverance.
I think, together, we are learning something about God’s dependability and presence.
I think, even though we are prevented from gathering together,
we are being prepared for something great when we can.
For the wilderness is not only daunting – it can, with God, be a place of preparing.
And what we are being prepared for, I believe, is God’s reign of love and peace and communion.
I have to believe that, just as I have to believe that God can bring something good out of all this
difficulty and struggle and death and grief – I just have to believe that.
And I know I will see it.
So be of good hope, friends. Jesus has inaugurated something amazing.
And this is just the beginning. Amen
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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