Lectionary Readings
O come, O come, Emmanuel. Amen.
If you’re anything like me, you like to make plans. Even if you’re not a super-organized person, we all like to know when certain things will happen and when action is required of us. So, our cars have little lights that remind us that it’s time for an oil change. Or these days, we have to think through our Christmas plans more carefully than usual – how can we gather outside to be safer? And a lot of our planning deals with timing – figuring out when to ship gifts so that they arrive on time, figuring out the best time to go to the grocery store to avoid crowds, figuring out the right time to have a sensitive conversation. Whether it’s a marketing campaign, our daily routines, or personal relationships, so much of our planning revolves around finding the right time to do something.
Well, St. Mark in writing about Jesus Christ lives in a different sort of world. For Mark, there’s no such thing as the right time, there is only the immediacy right now. It’s been said that Mark presents us with the Reader’s Digest version of the Gospel narrative. Mark comes in at only 16 chapters in length, whereas the other Gospels are between 21 and 28 chapters. And despite its relative brevity, Mark uses the word “immediately” more than any other Gospel. In Mark, Jesus is immediately going from one place to the next – healing one person before immediately going to cast out demons.
Last week, we heard the prophet Isaiah share the prophetic prayer that God would tear open the heavens and come down. Well, in Mark, this is exactly what is happening in the ministry of Jesus. When Jesus is Baptized in Mark, the text notes that the heavens are ripped open when the voice of the Father declares, “This is my beloved Son.” Mark sees the coming of Jesus as the ushing in of the Messianic age and thus portrays the Gospel in immediate and apocalyptic terms. There is a sense of urgency – we’re not waiting until the timing is just right, we’re not waiting until everyone is ready to receive him, we’re not waiting for anything – the Messiah has come and so there’s no time to waste.
You’ll notice that we started this morning with the very first chapter and verse of Mark and there’s no announcement by the angel to Mary or Joseph, no story about Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, no genealogy given connecting Jesus to King David or Abraham, no early stories about the holy family. Instead, we start with something like a lion roaring in the wilderness – “Prepare the Way of the LORD.” Though Mark only names Isaiah, what we have here is actually a polyphony of prophecy, as Mark is pulling from Exodus, Isaiah, and Malachi. No time for introductions or pleasantries – in the first four verses we get the introduction “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” which really could be a sermon in itself, followed by three Scriptural allusions, and the appearance of John the Baptizer. Something is happening in Mark’s view of things, something that changes the nature of the world and the reality of our lives. And so there’s no time for planning, no waiting for the right moment because God has made this the moment that all of eternity is pointing toward.
And what Mark is highlighting does not only apply to his time, but to all time. As we know, time is a precarious thing. One minute, life is going on fairly normally and the next we are living through a pandemic. One minute, we are going about our day and then we hear the horn blaring or the phone ringing, and life is never the same. One day we have enough saved for retirement and the next the market plunges and all our plans go awry. The prophet Isaiah captures this reality when he records the voice of God, “All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass.”
Oh, how I wish it were different. I wish that I could tell you that if you just trusted in God and did your best to live faithfully that you’d never experience pain, that you wouldn’t fall on hard times, that time would move in a slow and steady direction without veering off course. But what is coming is that which shall make all things well. So the prophet announces – “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed.” Through the deserts of life, there is a highway for God to come to us. And this is why, even in the midst of pain and suffering, Isaiah begins by saying, “Comfort, O comfort my people.”
Yes, we are living through a difficult time, as was Isaiah. The invading Babylonians had sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, laid waste to the land, and taken many captives to Babylon. Yet the words of comfort come: “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” While it is true that we fade away as does a flower, our hope does not rest in ourselves. The Good News that God wants to announce from the mountaintops is that “the word of God will stand for ever.” Indeed, “the LORD God comes with might and he will feed us, his flock, like a shepherd and gather the lambs in his arms, and carry us in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”
The contrast here is in the precariousness of our lives and the steadfast and enduring love of God. We are fickle, inconsistent, and fleeting, but God is everlasting and dependable. Our sin wreaks havoc in our lives and our world, but God meets us with mercy and compassion. What better news could there be? For Mark, there’s no time to waste in sharing, receiving, and being transformed by this news. And so everything is immediate. To be sure, we might look around and ask where exactly is this highway that leads through the wilderness of evil and pain.
This is where the letter of 2 Peter is helpful. Quoting the wisdom of the Psalms, he reminds us that “with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years.” He, like Isaiah, points to the precariousness of life and notes that there will come a day when the elements will melt away. But we are waiting for the new heavens and new earth. Why it seems like God is waiting indefinitely to bring about this new heavens and earth, that’s far above my paygrade. But, if I’m honest, I’m thankful for the delay. Certainly, I would not have been alive if the culmination of all things came during the lifetime of the apostles or at any other point in history when people have thought it might have happened. And I’m thankful for the gift of life. As we heard in last week’s reading from Mark, not even the angels know when that day will come, so while we might wonder about it, we really ought not to spend too much time there.
Instead, we read in 2 Peter, “Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.” Waiting is certainly something we’re getting a lot of practice at these days. Waiting is one of the thee W’s, along with washing hands and wearing a mask. We’re waiting for the vaccine to be available. We’re waiting to gather again. We’re waiting for some sense of normalcy to return. But these are all passive forms of waiting. What faith would have us to do is to practice active waiting. Perhaps “waiting” isn’t even a helpful word to use because it connotes passivity. Instead, we are marking time.
Some of you know this about me – in college I was in the marching band. This was despite the fact that I could not march, read music, or play an instrument. The fact that they let me in says more about the band director’s graciousness than anything else. But Tyler, who was in the band, suggested that it would be a good way to meet people in college and that you get front row seats to all of the football and basketball games, and you got to go to the ACC and NCAA tournaments for free – and I went to Wake Forest back in the day when we actually got to play in the Tournament. The point is that one of the things that I had to learn was how to mark time, that is, to move your feet while standing still in tempo with the beat. Even if you weren’t moving or playing music at that time, if you don’t mark time, when the time comes to act, you won’t know where you are.
This is what active waiting is about – about being plugged into the tempo of grace. Because the simple truth is that we don’t know when exactly when the day of the LORD might come, but our lives are made of holy moment after holy moment. This morning’s Psalm gives us a sense of what this sort of marking time looks like. In verse 10 we heard, “Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” In other words, we mark time by focusing on the things that matter most in life. Things like love and mercy, truth-telling and truth-hearing, righteousness and justice, peace and joy. These are the things that Jesus came to proclaim and enact. These are the things that are of the utmost importance. And these things are so urgent, that God was not going to wait forever to bring them to fruition in Jesus Christ.
There’s a lovely Advent poem by Madeline L’Engle called “First Coming.” In part, it reads “He did not wait till the world was ready, / till men and nations were at peace./ He came when the Heavens were unsteady, and prisoners cried out for release. // He did not wait for the perfect time. / He came when the need was deep and great. / He dined with sinners in all their grime,/ turned water into wine… We cannot wait till the world is sane / to raise our songs with joyful voice, / for to share our grief, to touch our pain, / He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!”
Advent is the time of year to consider our lives as one year is ending and another is on the cusp. Advent also puts our focus on the things that ultimately matter, on the sorts of things that will matter at the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer. These are the things that Psalm 85 clues us into, things like mercy, peace, and love. Life is short and we do not know what the next minute, day, or year will bring. Like the grass of the field, we all fade away. But we know that love shall endure and because we are loved by God, we shall endure in that love. And so this love is the most important thing. It is this love of God that we see in Creation, in the Crucifixion, and in the Resurrection that shall be our salvation. And so anytime that we can share in this love in our lives, we experience salvation, here and now.
He doesn’t get enough credit for it, but St. Mark is a literary genius. The first words of his writing are, “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ.” And when we get to Easter, I might comment on it more then, but Mark doesn’t have an ending. On Easter morning, when the women are at the tomb and encounter the angel who announces the Resurrection, the story ends with, “To no one they said nothing, being afraid because.” And that’s it. The final sentence isn’t finished, it ends with a preposition which is grammatically incomplelte. Now, put that in conjunction with chapter 1 verse 1: “The beginning of the Good News.” To what is Mark referring? Where does the beginning stop? Does it go through the reference to Isaiah? Through the appearance of John the Baptizer? Through the Baptism of Jesus? Through the healing and teaching ministry of Jesus? Through the Crucifixion? Through the Resurrection? And there’s the brilliance of Mark.
God’s urgent love is breaking into the world in Jesus Christ in an on-going beginning that has no clear end. We are enveloped in this beginning of the Good News. And the word that Mark uses for “beginning” can mean more than a temporal start; the word also refers to that which is foundational and normative. It’s not just that Good News began in this moment when Jesus came, it’s that the Good News is now the norm. It is how we mark time, in the grace, mercy, and love of God made known in Jesus Christ.
God has broken into our world in Jesus Christ with a sense of urgency. We do not need to wait to walk in the way of abundant life. We can build our lives on the foundation of love. Life is short – we don’t have time for lies, for division, for hatred, for grudges, for greed. There is no time for anything less than mercy, generosity, peace, or love. So, what are we waiting for?
