Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent, Dec. 10, 2023 

Mark 1:1-8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

²As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way;
³the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make the Lord’s paths straight,’”

               ⁴John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.⁵And people from the whole Judean

countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.⁷He proclaimed, “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.⁸I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

 

Mark starts at the beginning.  And the “beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” is a story about…?   [John the Baptist]

This week and next week—two of the four Sundays of Advent—this season of preparation for the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ, our lessons actually center the Baptizer, John.

And that’s because John plays a crucial role in the story, one which I can illustrate with a simple story.

A guy is walking along one day and he falls into a hole.  The sides are too steep and he can’t get out. 

A doctor walks by and the guy says, “Hey! I’ve fallen in this hole. Can you help me?”  So the doctor writes out a prescription and throws it down into the hole.

Then a pastor walks by and the guy yells up, “Hey, can you help me?  I’m down in this hole!”  The pastor writes out a prayer and throws it down into the hole.

Then a friend walks by and the guy yells up, “Hey, Joe, I’ve fallen in this hole!  Can you help me?”  And Joe jumps down into the hole.

The guy says, “What’re you doing?  Now we’re both stuck in a hole.”

And Joe says, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before and I know the way out.”

 

I’m willing to bet that story hit a few of you harder than it hit others.  Because you’ve been in that hole, and you couldn’t have gotten out without someone to show you the way. 

This world desperately needs those who can point us the right way right now.  Pointing may not seem like a big fancy job, but it is, in fact, the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. 

He’s called “John the Baptist,” or sometimes “John the Baptizer,” but how is he most often depicted in art?

Pointing.  Carracci. Grunewald.  Da Vinci.

Icons and paintings of John often show him pointing, and our gospel text for this morning explains why.  The first thing we hear from John, is “the one who is more powerful than me is coming after me.”  This message is so important that we will hear it two Sundays in a row as the new church year unfolds.

John was the first one to recognize the power of Jesus.  Maybe you remember the story.  Luke tells us that when a pregnant Mary visited her very pregnant cousin Elizabeth, Elizabeth called her “the mother of my Lord,” and declared that the baby in her womb had “leapt for joy” upon hearing Mary arrive.

That baby, a little boy named John, grew up and became a powerful prophet in his own right. He had many disciples and they grew into a movement so powerful that it was seen as a threat to Herod Antipas, the vassal King of Galilee. 

John was a powerful prophet in his own right, but he did not hesitate to show the way to Jesus.  The first words we hear from him—in every Gospel—are about Jesus.

John was keenly aware of his role, and it is why artists were still painting him centuries after Herod took his head. 

Every person in the Jesus Movement has a role to play.  All of the roles are important.  There were other great prophets in the time of Jesus, but the ones whose names we still know are the ones who showed the way to Jesus.  Most of them are unlikely heroes. 

I mean, John is kind of a weirdo.  He dresses weird, he eats weird food.  He hands out in the wilderness.

And how about those disciples? Whom did Jesus call to show the way to him after he was gone?  Fisherpeople, tax collectors, political activists (Simon the Zealot—look it up).  Not a doctor or a priest among them.  Because he needed people who would do more than throw scraps of parchment down to the ones who were down in a hole called the Roman Empire. 

He needed the ones who would jump in the hole.  The ones who had already been in the hole…and who knew the way out.

John the Baptist knew the way out. 

Peter knew the way out, and James and John—the Sons of Thunder—knew the way out—although you can be sure they took a circuitous route and got really dirty along the way.

Matthew the Tax Collector learned the way out.

The way out was The Way.  Our work as disciples is to show others The Way of Jesus.  And like John and the disciples, we do it in two ways:

1.     We point to Jesus.  We show people the one who is more powerful than us all—whose baptism is the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  We tell anyone willing to listen about the difference Jesus makes.

2.    And we do it by showing people what a difference Jesus makes for us.  A lot of people are not interested in what we have to say about Jesus because they have seen some nonsense from the church—a “gospel” of war, exclusion, and “prosperity” for the few.  For those folks, all we can do is point to the ways that life on the Jesus Way has made a difference for us, the ways that he has brought us peace, and shown us the way out of whatever holes we’ve dug for ourselves.

 

There are some pretty deep holes in our world right now, aren’t there? Holes filled with ignorance and prejudice and violence.  Until we find a way out of those holes, we will not have peace. 

In the Holy Land, centuries of hostility have dug a hole so deep it can be hard to imagine finding a way out.  So people waste time debating whose fault that is.  Who is more wrong—The Palestinians, represented by Hamas?  Or the Israelis, represented by the ultra right Likkud Party.  There’s no answer, because the terms of the argument are completely unfair.  Hamas isn’t Palestine and Likkud isn’t Israel.  And being “right” isn’t where we find peace. 

Jesus never called us to be right. Jesus was singularly uninterested in debating his “right-ness.”  He just did what was right, and told his people to do what was right.  Bless those who curse us.  Love those whom we would call our enemies.

That’s where peace is found:  in living as if we truly believe that loving our neighbors—all of our neighbors—works. Peace is found in letting our lives be “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.”

The world doesn’t need more noise.  It needs more peace.  Peace is not brought by debates and it is certainly not brought by war.  It comes from those willing to point to another way, willing to live another way, and willing to jump into the hole and show others another way out.