"A Way to the Future"

Debbie Cato

Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-8

Peace Presbyterian Church

December 7, 2014 – Second Sunday of Advent

“A Way to the Future”

Picture the scene. YHWH the God of Israel has assembled a heavenly host; a council. At issue is the situation of God’s children, the people of Israel. We can hardly imagine their misery. Stripped of the institutional structures that shaped their lives, their temple destroyed, their homeland laid waste, the people of Israel languish under the thumb of Marduk, the Babylonian god. The Israelite people are victims of a nearly successful attempt to destroy their culture and their religion. They have lived this way for 50 years.

God responds by calling together this heavenly council. God is prepared to announce a message that He intends for all the people of Israel. In it, we can see the depths of the character of God.

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

and cry to her that she has served her term,

that her penalty is paid,

that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.

God commands the heavenly council to tenderly comfort His people with the news that their punishment – their life removed from the presence of God, is in the past. It’s over. He commands a way into the future; a future to be found through the way of the wilderness.

God has not forgotten His people. Their punishment is over, the future lies ahead. God will rescue His children. God will come like a warrior – with all His might and all his power. Yet, in His power and might He will be like a shepherd to his flock. Isaiah tells us that, “He will gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom and gently lead the mother sheep.” God encompasses all traits. He is both mighty and powerful and gentle and loving.

Now jump ahead 730 years or so. Imagine that you live in Galilee around 70 AD. There’s a war on. Some radical Jews have revolted against Rome.

Jerusalem is under siege. Reports are that conditions in the city are bad. People are divided. Some see the answer is to push the infidels from the Holy Land. Others urge submission to Rome as the path to peace and security.

Everyone is anxious; caught between resentment of the heavy-handed soldiers and fear of extremist guerrillas. Furthermore, Emperor Nero died last year, and there is unrest in Rome. In the past year, four men have been crowned emperor, only to be assassinated. Now Vespasian, the general besieging Jerusalem, has been crowned. What does this mean for the war? Things are uncertain. The price of oil is skyrocketing – olive oil that is. The world is in turmoil. Where do you look for the future?

Tensions are high. Your village population is a mix of Jews and Gentiles. Neighbors fear one another. Families fracture along ethnic lines.

One small sect refuses to fight on either side. They are followers of a Galilean rabbi named Jesus, the man who was crucified for insurrection about forty years ago. They claim that Jesus’ crucifixion is a symbol of God’s “good news” for Israel and Rome. But you wonder, if this Jesus really was God’s prophet, how can his execution be good news? Someone hands you a scroll with a title scribbled on it, “The Beginning of the Good News about Jesus, the Messiah, The Son of God.” You have been handed the Gospel of Mark.

The title intrigues you, so you open the scroll and begin to read. To help his readers understand their troubled situation, Mark proclaims Jesus. But to understand Jesus, he looks back to the Scriptures of Israel. Indeed, we cannot understand the Christian faith without understanding our Jewish roots. Whatever we think God is doing in our world today, and whatever we think God did in Jesus Christ, should be consistent with what God was doing all along in Israel.

Mark says the beginning of the gospel is “just as” Isaiah said. Six hundred years before, the heavenly host proclaimed to the Israelites that the way to the future was through the wilderness. And now Mark begins the good news of the gospel with John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness, exhorting all who can hear to repent and proclaim the coming of the promised One – the One more powerful than John. One who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. For Mark, John’s voice is like the voice that announces “comfort” to the exiles in Babylon. Although first-century Jews were not in exile, they were under foreign occupation.

John the Baptist is preparing the way into the future that God promised to His people. After Isaiah’s prophecy, John the Baptist makes a big entrance. He has a huge following. There are people around him, captivated, who tell him that he is enough. John could decide that he was the end of the story. But instead, John looks out to the future with a humble heart and imagines the One who will really get the job done.

Imagine the reaction among his followers when John says, “The One who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.” John knows his place. He knows that he is a servant of the Lord, not the Lord himself. John knows that as a servant of God, he is called to tell the truth. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.”

“Get ready,” John says. “Repent. He is coming. God has not forgotten us. I am God’s messenger crying out in the wilderness: Prepare a way for the Lord. Get ready.   Repent. He is coming.”

During Advent, we wait for the Savior. Waiting is hard. Waiting is humbling.

But waiting gives us the chance to get prepared. To be ready.

Advent is a time to hear the promises spoken to the community of faith thousands of years ago and today. Advent is a time to sit with these promises again. It is a a time for the faith community to find its own voice, overcome its objections, and speak words of comfort and assurance to anyone who feels separated or abandoned by God; words of good news that God will arrive. Good news that God will come in gentle power.

Advent is a season of hope and expectation. One of my seminary professors, Dr. Jeff Keuss, said that Advent “is knocking on the door and hoping beyond hope that the God we casually evoke in prayers all year long will throw open the door and meet us face-to-face.” “Maybe this year…” we wonder to ourselves “perhaps this will be the year.” But like generations before us we too live in the cynicism of expecting that nothing will noticeably change and we will just continue on into the next new year.”

At this time of year we tend to think that only the church is the recipient of these words of comfort from on high. We like to cast ourselves as the shepherd who hear the choirs of angels broadcast the startling announcement of God’s coming as both warrior and shepherd. Surely the church does need to hear these ancient words again and again, to be reassured that the God in whom we trust does indeed honor promises and covenants.

But these words of comfort; these words that tell of a way out of the current pain and suffering in the world; these words that tell of a way into a new future for all the world to hear. These words of good news need to be heard by everyone who struggles, wondering where God is in our world today.

Where is God with so much of the world at war; so many people living in violence? Where is God with so much hunger and poverty in the world when there really is plenty to go around? Where is God with more than 2,000,000 children orphaned each year due to disease and war and famine? Many of you are caught in circumstances that challenge your hope for the future. Some of you are in the wilderness; needing comfort. Needing hope. Our world today – us, our families, our friends, our neighbors - need to hear God’s words of comfort just as much as the Israelites did so many thousands of years ago. The world needs to know that God hears our cries. To all of us, God speaks these words of comfort; “There is a way through the wilderness. There is a way into the future.” He is the reason for the season.

On this second Sunday of Advent, it is good to tell of new beginnings, to tell about a God who breaks into our time with good news.

In this Advent season He comes. Perhaps not as might be expected; perhaps not in the time frame desired – but He comes.

And that is good news. Amen.