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Texts: Psalm 85; Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8a ● I love what Christmas does to us as humans. I love the way it causes us to notice each other; to temporarily suspend our irritability and extend even the most basic of courtesies which are often absent most of the year. Maybe we get a glimpse at who we were created to be. ● What I don’t like is that sometimes life makes this story hard to believe. If we’re honest, it’s not that we don’t want to believe, it’s just that we don’t want to be disappointed; it’s just that it’s so hard to move forward with such conflicting evidence. Our willingness to embrace the story in that context makes us appear so desperate that we are too ready to believe anything! ● The message always seems to evoke some pretty strong sentiments. For those who have chosen to believe, it evokes ‘hope’--- hope that God really has acted in such a way as to overcome evil and restore order. For many, it’s hard to reconcile the manger scene and the crucifixion [what went wrong?!] I think we’re much more ready to embrace the cuddly-cooing tiny-infant-baby-Jesus than we are the revolutionary Jesus who said stuff like “if you’ve seen me you’ve seen God” and “if you want to follow me, you’ve got to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me”; that’s where things get a bit more complicated. “Ready to believe”… that’s how I would describe my heart toward Christmas this year. ● C. S. Lewis once said, “The Christian faith is a thing of unspeakable joy. But it does not begin with joy, but rather in despair. And it is no good trying to reach the joy without first going through the despair.” [bad news before it’s good news]. ● So, Advent reminds us that the joy of knowing Christ as Messiah [rescuer; world’s true King] can only be comprehended from the perspective of “hopelessness”. In a manner of speaking, all of our lives are characterized by “advent”: we are a people who often look to a past filled with brokenness and long history of infidelity and faithlessness; we all live in a present which is somehow filled with the promise of newness, but a constant battle with the ‘status-quo’ (same old issues); we all live with the image of a future that might somehow be different—better, yet see little evidence of such transformation. ● But, Advent is the point at which we are available for God. The words of hope they were hearing were coming in the context of exile; nothing had changed; the circumstances were no different. Except that they were given sufficient time to be convinced of their helplessness. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God…” Mark immediately grabs our attention; he wants to ensure that his readers are plugged into the OT story, without which much of the symbolism and references will not make sense. ● He introduces us to John the Baptizer whose actions typified that of Elijah the prophet. Like Elijah, John came with severe warnings for the religious elite and no hesitation to challenge the ruling authorities (Ahab: Herod Antipas). Mark locates John’s activity as the “desert”. The desert was a reference both to the place where God called the children of Israel to be his special people (made a covenant with them) and it was a place of preparation for the return of the exiles. Mark brings together images of the desert, the Jordan river, and repentance as a means of describing the new work of God in Jesus. ● John’s message is rooted in ‘repentance’ as a response to God’s movement toward and with creation. The primary OT word for ‘sin’ means ‘to walk in the wrong path’ or ‘walking in the wrong direction’. The repentance was not to be identified simply with a ritual at the river, but a call to return to faithfulness which would be worked out (or, walked out) in the context of life. ►There is a dual theme in advent: “Hope” and “Judgment”. “God with us” will always mean both judgment and restoration. To ‘set things right’, he must expose all that’s wrong and all that stands in the way of ‘peace’. Judgment is God’s “no” to all the injustice in his world. ● Mark borrows the phrase ‘good news’ from a Roman source. It was actually a phrase used to characterize an emperor- who was considered to be a ‘divine son’ or ‘son of the gods’. So, the emperor’s birth was announced as ‘good news’. It doesn’t take much imagination to see where Mark is going with this: he is saying that Jesus IS the son of God; the ruler whose Kingdom will subvert and overrule other Kingdom rules. ● What was really disturbing was that John’s message of repentance and forgiveness is taking hold outside the confines of religion and power (the Temple); in the margins where the message can really be ‘heard’--- where talk of hope “really resonates’. John says forgiveness is coming to the people--- come and get it! ● It’s just the beginning, Mark says… we have been given a vision of what’s possible in Jesus; we have been endued with the power for transformation by his Spirit; “Go and make it happen; what I initiated, I’m trusting you to implement”. ►The gospel is not just a declaration, it’s an invitation. It’s about what God has done and is doing in the world. Most often, we tend to speak about the gospel as it relates to our individual lives [and that it does as we are invited to participate in God’s new world]; but, the Bible speaks most often about the self-revealing God and how his movement toward us has affected the whole of creation. ● That invitation to participate will require “repentance”. Genuine repentance may be one of the most difficult things a human can attempt. We have a hard time accepting that we’re wrong; not just that the particular thing we are doing is wrong, but that the very foundation of our lives (that which establishes our direction) is faulty. ►Repentance is our response to forgiveness. It’s the gift that God offers us which not only allows us too admit our brokenness, but provides us the courage to actually live differently [only when you are convinced of the self-defeating nature of your ways that you are ready to listen to/trust someone else]. And, I am convinced that we can only genuinely repent if we are confident that our sins will not be held against us; that in the process of transformation, grace allows for failure! ►It’s not that our problems are too big, it’s just that our gospel is too small! Luke’s account of John’s activity provides specific cultural application of the gospel [e.g. if you have (2) cloaks, give one away; if you have more food than you need, give some to someone else; stop exploiting those in need by charging such high rates of interest]. ~The gospel speaks to our inhumanities; it has to have something to say to political systems and powers which rule through threat and exploitation; it has to challenge economic systems which celebrate the prosperous and widen the margins of equity; it has to confront social systems which develop distinctions and allow us to continue to ignore each other. ~The gospel deals with “super-sized” issues! It’s about Creator and creation, life and death, resurrection and new life! The gospel is an invitation for you to be who you really are—to stop the masquerade, to stop chasing all the ‘false images’ of God and hiding behind all the ‘false images’ of self. ● A gospel that only speaks to my personal relationship with God runs the risk of being self-centered and void of any sense of mission. On the other hand, a gospel that focuses merely on righting all the world’s wrongs on our own--- independent of our desperate need for reconciliation with God and his transforming Spirit, becomes a mere social project which temporarily ‘suspends’ evil. ~The gospel concerns itself with not just securing my spot in heaven, but with getting to be part of a new ‘exile’, a ‘new creation’, a new ‘land of promise’ with a new King and a new set of values. And, it says that my participation is essential; that salvation is not just something I ‘receive’, but something ‘in which I get to participate’. ~The gospel requires “all” [this is where it gets sketchy]. I am coming to realize that the problem lies not with the gospel itself, but with my lack of determination to take it seriously; my unwillingness to repent because of the demands it would make upon my life. It would demand that I think in larger terms than just my own devotional life! I’ve said before that I think it’s this ‘all or nothing’ approach to God that makes me most nervous, because I know I have never loved that way; I know there’s always a part of me that’s ‘holding back’. ~The gospel is about the lingering presence of God to ensure transformation. The really confounding thing about judgment is that God took it upon himself! He actually broke the powers by absorbing them into himself, confronting and overcoming all that blocked the way of peace for creation. John 3:18-19 “There is no judgment for anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only son. And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil”. ● God’s judgment is not just about ‘giving people what they deserve’, it’s about the refusal of some to receive ‘what none of us deserves’; some people will ultimately refuse to be embraced--- refuse to be made right. “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight”.
The hope of experiencing a
different life and your fears of never realizing it are met in Jesus today! |
