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2nd Sunday of Advent B
December 04, 2005
Delivered by Reverend Sandy Stayner
Isaiah 40:1-11
2 Peter 3:8-18a
Mark 1:1-8
At Christ Church in Greenwich there is a wonderful little bookstore, tucked away in a corridor as you head towards the church school wing. Mary Jane Marks, the woman who conceived of the idea and has run it ever since she managed to persuade one of the former Rectors to give her space for it, is just wonderful. She loves to help people find exactly what they’re looking for and sometimes I think that half the people go there simply because they like chatting to Mary Jane! It’s always fun to stop by the bookstore to see what’s new and exciting, but especially at Christmas time. Not only are there wonderful books and cards and Advent calendars, M.J. also stocks the largest selection of nativity sets I have ever seen. The little store in the corridor is packed full of creches from all over the world. There are so many now that during the lead up to Christmas the store has to overflow into the Parish Hall.
When I worked at Christ Church I would often take a break in the middle of the day and go and look at all the different Marys and Josephs and wise men. There were tall African tribesman carved out of black wood, and beautiful Italian Renaissance figure that cost the earth, wise men of all different shapes and sizes, and colorful Hispanic shepherds at the stable door. It was fascinating to see the vastly different ways the nativity scene was depicted in the different cultures from which they come. But although I saw plenty of Marys and Josephs and baby Jesus’ and animals, shepherds and wise men, there was one person who was always missing, and that person was John the Baptist. I never once saw John the Baptist in a crèche, perhaps because John the Baptist doesn’t fit into our romantic notions of what Christmas is all about. We can stomach shepherds with their little woolly sheep, because most of us have never known one personally. We don’t recognize them as the uncouth, low class, smelly riff raff they were known to be in Jesus’ day, so we don’t mind them at the stable. John the Baptist, that hairy wild prophet who ate locusts and wild honey – he just doesn’t fit the scene at all – never mind that he was Jesus’ first cousin and his mother was the one to whom Mary ran when she first found out she was pregnant. Nope! John the Baptist with his prophetic call to repentance has no place for most of us in the Christmas story.
But for Mark the good news begins not with Mary and Joseph and a baby lying in a manger but with the wild prophet John, drawing people into the wilderness to prepare for the coming of the Lord with the baptism of repentance – a new beginning for those who would receive salvation from on high. And it’s highly significant that John the Baptist was in the wilderness, when he called people, because the wilderness was always seen as the place where God’s people could reconnect with God. “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty year, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Deut. 8:2-3) It has been true for me over the years, and probably for some of you too, that many of the times I have most clearly experienced God’s presence with me are moments of great anxiety and pain, wilderness moments when all my usual coping mechanisms are simply not enough. For in times of great darkness and quite devastating despair the only person left to turn to for help is God. It is in the wilderness moments that we throw ourselves on God’s mercy and find he’s really there for us. John calls us into the wilderness to help us again prepare to receive the greatest gift we will ever receive, God’s son born in human form in a humble stable.
“Repent” cries John the Baptist. For repentance will bring us before God with an open heart, ready to receive the gift of God’s love. Instead we find ourselves like sailors on the Titanic getting ready for an evening banquet oblivious of the danger that lies ahead, when what they needed to be concerned about was changing course immediately to avoid crashing into an iceberg. John requires a radical permanent change of course from those who would come into the wilderness in response to his call. He asks us to take note of the things that prevent us from loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves – the little things that cause us to turn away from one another, that give us cause to withdraw from relationships of love, that allow us to feel we are “right” and others are “wrong.” Those are the attitudes we must leave behind if we are to be ready to receive the peace offered by the Christ Child again this Christmas time.
And perhaps the first step to perceiving the behavior patterns of which we need to repent is to “shut up!” Perhaps you remember that famous saying by Will Rogers who said we should “Never pass up an opportunity to shut up!” A wonderful old Monk used to say with great wisdom “Listening takes ‘shutting up’ but silence takes ‘opening up.’” What we need is a little of both. We would all be a lot better off if only we would quiet down, let go of some of our pre-conceived, self-centered ideas and open up to God in silence with space for God to show us the things in our lives of which we need to repent.
I wonder what John the Baptist would say to us today if we allowed him to be part of our lives. How would he enter into arguments about the death penalty and the fact that already because of the new DNA testing122 people have been proved to be innocent and released from death row? Perhaps he would ask us how many innocent people we are going to let die before we decide it’s too many. The oil companies who made billions of dollars as a result of the rise in prices these past months. What would John the Baptist say to them in the senate hearings when they were asked by a senator point blank if they really needed all the windfall profits they had made, if some of their gains couldn’t be passed on to those who will find it desperately hard to keep themselves warm this Winter. And what would John the Baptist say to those of us who reap the profits from the drugs being developed for AIDS while hundreds of women and children die daily because the drugs are unavailable to them? The figure of John the Baptist is not included in the story of Christ’s birth in a stable because the questions he asks are too uncomfortable, too heavy, too pointed for us to bear, yet he is an important part of the coming of the Good News, especially in the gospel of Mark. The church has long recognized its peoples need to encounter the Baptist and his message by the observance of Advent. Our readiness to receive the coming of the Lord and the salvation he brings is dependent on our hearing and responding to the Baptist’s call.
The snow is coming today, there is a chill in the air. Christmas is just around the corner and we are asked to get ready. There is a wonderful Christmas carol called “In the Bleak Mid Winter” that speaks of the longing in God’s heart for us to come to him this Christmas with an open heart and mind. Perhaps we can turn to hymn 112 and meditate on the words as RL plays the melody for us on the organ, and let us ask God to help us seek out the things in our lives that would prevent us receiving the gift of his love.
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