December 4, 2005 - The Second Sunday of Advent - Mother Stephanie Parker

FIRST READING: Isaiah 40: 1-11
PSALM: 85: 1-2, 8-13
SECOND READING: 2 Peter 3: 8-15a
GOSPEL: Mark 13: 24-37

(Audience participation will be noted in bold print and italics)

On this second Sunday of the season of Advent, the Word of God is announced to us as it is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah and fulfilled in the ministry of John the Baptist. Long ago, as the Israelites languished in exile, God declared: "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight'".

In other words, God sends his prophet and says, "Tell them I'm coming to bring them home".

As Christians, we are familiar with this message, "Prepare the way of the Lord,", because it is the central message of John the Baptist. It's the main thing that we see him proclaim. John the Baptist is the prophet whom God has sent to set the stage for the coming of Jesus as the Savior of the world. Jesus, John says, is the One who will lead us, once and for all, if we want to follow, into God's promised land of mercy and forgiveness.

John has something to say to the world, and, like the prophets of old that came before him - nothing or no one is going to stop him. He doesn't care what other people think about him; all he cares about is proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Perhaps, after revisiting John and his message, Advent after Advent - because we read this lection every single Advent - we have ceased to pay attention to its urgency and its power. We get locked in the image of John, with his camel hair and eating locusts and honey; but, just as last week's Gospel warned us of the dangers of becoming complacent and exhorted us to be alert at all times, John is also telling us very important things - things we need to know, or to remember, as we prepare to welcome the Messiah. John the Baptist is far more than a man in strange clothes that eats bugs and honey. John is the bridge - the bridge that spans generations of prophetic silence - and he joins the ancient wilderness of exodus and exile, and the ancient prophets, like Elijah, to the new wilderness of a people, sometimes like us, who are lost and in desperate need of a change of heart.

The prophecy of Isaiah promises a new action of God, who will make a victorious way through the wilderness to bring his tired and troubled people home from exile. In today's Gospel, this new prophet, John, points to Jesus Christ as that way. John the Baptist offers a wake-up call. Today, we are reminded of the stark reality that, though we may, in fact, live in this new Promised Land, we can still find ourselves lost and wandering. The nature of life is such that, sometimes, we can become the most lost amid all that is comfortable and familiar to us. The life of the world is full of promises of happiness and fulfillment, and all we have to do to win that promise, the world says, is make more money, spend more money, and, above all, never show any weakness or vulnerability, like maybe admitting when we are wrong, or saying we are sorry, or forgiving those whom we believe have wronged us.

Cynicism and fear can also keep us from the new Promised Land; and the false prophets of this modern age will whisper to us of self-protection, and they will tell us to be suspicious of others, especially others who are not like ourselves. They try to teach their own Golden Rule that will tell us to look out for #1 and to do unto others before they can do unto us. What passes for wisdom in the world can sometimes blind us to the reality of God's love and steal our hope for the future.

I am reminded of a story I once heard about an old man who lived in a desolate and hopeless inner-city neighborhood. The man would walk outside of his house, and he would go out onto the streets and yell, "Love! Peace! Righteousness!" The next day, he would do the same thing. He would leave his house, walk outside onto the street, and yell at the top of his lungs -- You can do it with me!

"Love! Peace! Righteousness!"

He would do this every day, rain or shine, like clockwork. So, one day, as the man was coming out, his next-door neighbor, who was tired of the daily yelling, went out on the street and confronted him. He said, "Hey man, are you crazy? What the heck do you think you are doing? Every day, you come out of your house and yell, "Love! Peace! Righteousness! Are you an idiot? Don't you know that nobody is listening to what you have to say? This city is full of hate and crime and hopelessness. There is no love of neighbor, and there is no peace and righteousness to be found! So, shut up old man; give it a rest; save your breath! Don't you know that you can't change the world?" The old man looked at him and said, "You're right! My yelling and shouting about love, peace, and righteousness may not change the world, but one thing it will do is stop the world from changing me."

This old man was a voice of hope, just like John, crying out in the wilderness for the world to have a change of heart. In today's Gospel, John bursts onto the scene as an outsider. John has kept his distance from the seductive murmurings of culture, and he dares to challenge our conventional loyalties and attitudes. The world speaks of fulfillment as coming from power and acquisition. John speaks of fulfillment as coming only from God, and repentance and forgiveness as the very foundation of true and unassailable joy. In his wild clothing and with his abrasive proclamation, John appeals to the memory of exile and homecoming, of being lost and then finding our way back home. He reminds us that we are lost if we remain rooted in dead-end attitudes and behaviors, and that we are found when we decide to admit that we're lost and turn around and move in a new direction - when we move in the direction towards God. John looks and speaks like a prophet of old, but he is also the messenger of a radical newness that is to come.

This, too, is the nature of this season of Advent. Advent is the time in which we are called to look at the old way of doing things and are invited to look at how we, too, can be made new again. John points us to how we are able to be made new when he proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Now, the word "repent", at least for me, coming from my region, where I was "sprung" from, reminds me of those fire-and-brimstone preachers telling us to repent and return to the Lord before we find ourselves in the flames of hell-fire.

This is not a life-giving message for me, particularly.

But, to repent simply means to come to our senses, to see a new way, to grasp a new hope that calls us to turn away from what we've been doing and move toward something new.

"True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, "I'm sorry," than to looking at the possibilities of the future and saying, "Wow! Anything's possible!" _

Repentance is a movement away from punishing resignation into hopeful expectancy. God does not want us to dwell in darkness and guilt. Nothing we have done or failed to do can defeat the beginning of the Good News. The beginning of the Good News in Mark's Gospel heralds the defeat, once and for all, of darkness. In Christ, John will tell us, the Light has come. This is the new understanding that John the Baptist is calling for, not only to those people way back then and there, but to us, here, today. God wants us to know new hope and new life. This is God's greatest desire for the faithful. God's prophets are calling us away from the things of the world that would bind our hearts and spirits and are calling us back home to God's unceasing and unending love. God is calling us back into the freedom of a life defined, not by the world's rules, but by God's merciful forgiveness.

In today's Psalm, one of my favorites, we hear the words: "Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." The words of this Psalm resonate with the true nature of repentance and the deep sweetness of forgiveness. Repentance and forgiveness are gifts from God - gifts that offer transformation and new life.

Now, this transformation only occurs when we examine the whole unvarnished truth of our lives and give ourselves over to God's mercy for healing from all that would rob us of our joy. This is precisely how mercy and truth meet, and righteousness and peace kiss each other - when we stand vulnerable and afraid before God and say, "We're lost, God, bring us home; bring us home." Repentance, or put another way, turning away from hopelessness, finds us letting go of doubt, fear, pride, greed, lust, or anything else - think of your own things that seek to enslave you - repentance finds us free of those things. God's forgiveness comes as a release - a release from old prisons and old debts. This is what Jesus means when he teaches us to pray, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." The mercy of God is so great that there is no dead-end choice that can't be forgiven - if that is, in fact, what we desire. Choosing to stay locked and lost in guilt, shame, anger, unforgiveness - all of this just keeps us indebted, when God yearns to wipe the debt clean and set us free.

___________________
Frederick Buechner


John is the messenger of God who is sent to make straight the path and announce the one who is coming. John points us clearly to the coming of Christ and does all he can to deliver the message that God is, once again, over all history and all time, calling us home.

God is calling us home from wherever we find ourselves exiled or dead-ended. God is calling us home from the wilderness of fear, doubt, mistrust, hopelessness, and pride, and God is calling us home from the exile of a Christmas season that can be marked by stress, sadness, and shopping, shopping, shopping.

Advent is a time of expectation and hope - a time for walking into the streets like that old man to shout,

"Love! Peace! Righteousness!"

"Love! Peace! Righteousness!" - to shout it at the top of our lungs to a world that may have forgotten.

We can start over, fresh, like a newborn. God forgives us and calls us home. This is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

AMEN