“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
That’s what we just heard in our Gospel reading. And let’s stop right there.
This is the first line of the entire Gospel of Mark – which is, as far as we know, the earliest of the four Gospels. So in effect, this formal-sounding announcement is the very first message we get from the entire written canonical gospel. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Sounds like there should be trumpets along with that.
And it might just sound like the normal kind of Bible-y wording to us – Jesus Christ, Son of God, blah blah blah. But this is heavy code, intentionally. Mark meant for every single word to be telling us something.
For instance, the good news, the Gospel – it already meant a lot in around 70 AD, it already meant God Among Us, which was a powerful claim, and upsetting to many. And then the first name of this good news, Jesus, but then the Christ, the Messiah – so, not just Jesus of Galilee, but Jesus the Christ. And the Son of God. There’s no time here to go into all the things this term meant in the Bible, but Mark was clearly trying to jolt people into the idea of kingship and being anointed – the highest possible space.
So with all this in-your-face wording – Mark’s making clear right at the get-to this isn’t just any story, this is the story, so sit up, shut up, and pay attention.
And so as we start paying attention, as we wake up – which, of course, is what Advent is about, to be vigilant and be awake – what we wake up to is that we’re in a wilderness. Sort of like waking from a dream to realize where you really are.
That’s what’s so interesting about Mark. For him, the beginning of this big important thing isn’t in a stable, or with a pregnant Elizabeth, or with family histories like in Matthew, or the cosmos like with John. For Mark, in the earliest line we have in the Gospels, the announcement of the good news of Jesus Christ starts in the wilderness.
Because right after his big announcement, right after this “may I have your attention please,” he quotes of the Old Testament prophets who were yelling in their own day about wilderness to a people who were in a wilderness, specifically the Jews in exile about six centuries earlier. That’s what this whole opening quote is about.
And by quoting these old prophets, by pulling up the picture of people out in the wilderness, Mark is reminding everybody of what it’s like to be in a wilderness and looking for a way out. And he reminds them that prophets say there’ll be a way out that was a lot easier than the way they got into the wilderness in the first place.
And then after calling up these old voices of these prophets, Mark comes back to the present and plops us straight down in the countryside outside Jerusalem, with John the Baptist who was a pretty wilderness kind of guy, too. John is one of the least appealing characters in the Bible, which is saying a lot. And he’s in his own loopy emotional wilderness, but it’s also a physical one. He’s in the countryside outside Jerusalem, and he’s baptizing people in a shallow river.
And what’s interesting here is that apparently people were coming out for this wilderness experience. I mean, we might take that for granted, but don’t take it for granted, for just a minute. Scripture never says he was out there alone, dunking imaginary friends. He was dunking real people in a Jewish cleansing tradition called baptism that existed well before Jesus. And people were showing up for this, which I think tells us they felt enough a hunger and a need that sent them out into the wilderness, and it also tells us that, in his wacky way, John had charisma. He was effective.
And he wasn’t just doing the traditional cleansing rite. He was pointing it in a new direction. “You may think I’m the one to come out see,” he says, “but I’m here to tell you, someone much bigger is close by. And the water you feel going down your back right now is nothing compared with the fire you’re going to feel when you meet him.” And of course, though that’s where our passage stops today, the next step in the story is that Jesus is, in fact, right there lining up to get baptized. And things start to roll from there.
But let’s stay in a wilderness. Because I think feeling like we’re in a wilderness is probably not too much of a stretch for us these days.
Being in a wilderness is what the reading from Isaiah is about. It’s the one Mark was loosely quoting, and it was written for the Jews who had been forced into exile six centuries earlier. Forced into exile by a conquering army, taken there in chains, losing their educated and religious leadership, losing the temple. In other words, for those people, everything they had needed to be normal or good or expected about the way the world works was completely shot. They were worn and raw.
And even as we hear about the people going out into a wilderness or when we hear about a people who were in exile, a lot of us probably feel pretty worn and raw, too, and without Isaiah or Mark getting us there. With how the economy has redrawn the map of what seems normal or expected; with unemployment at a staggering high, and underemployment – just as real a problem – also untrackable; with people who’ll never know what a 401(k) is even in the best of circumstances having to spend hours in line at job placement centers and food stamp lines; plus the terrorism that rankles around the world: we are in some kind of wilderness. Ironically, without ever getting near a church or the idea of Advent, plenty of people probably feel like they’re in a time of waiting and alertness or even exile.
Good timing for Advent -- good PR for this season of waiting and watching, right? --
--except … for one important glitch. And this is where we have to be careful.
The kind of wakefulness and vigilance the world calls us to is based in fear. As for the 6th century Jews, that kind of waiting is based in fear of what each day will bring. It’s based in being afraid of where the Dow ended up, or what the latest unemployment figures are. This worldly kind of vigilance is based in waiting not for the good things to come, but waiting for the other shoe to drop, or feeling like so many shoes have dropped that what used to be normal doesn’t even matter any more. It’s like one parishioner said to me earlier this week – he was talking about the financial problems of a certain company, and in trying to help me really understand how bad it was, he said it was not just regular bad, but Citibank-bad. We got a kick out of the idea that this could be a great new “it” phrase – something is Citibank-bad.
But the point is, our sense of high and low has gone out the window, and we can’t rely on what used to feel normal. And that’s really disorienting and fear-making. And I’ve just been naming the big public things – I know there are other things in your lives that have you waiting and fearing, for a painful phone call, for difficult news, for next steps. This is the kind of vigilance and awakeness that life circumstances seem to summon us to these days.
But here’s the thing, here’s the trip wire. Here’s where we can so easily slide from light to dark.
Everything going on around us right now might be calling us to wakefulness and expectancy. But let’s not confuse that with the things God wants us to watch for. Let’s not confuse that with Advent. The kind of fearful looking for the worst to happen is not the same thing as the kind of awakeness that Advent calls us to, or that God ever wants for us. And we’ve got to keep those two things separated out.
These urgent, edgy messages from Mark and Isaiah that were made for people in the wilderness are there to tell us to be awake to something better than we could have hoped for. Not worse, but better. Look for the things that give life, they tell us, and those things will be there. And these guys knew what they were talking about. Isaiah wrote for Jews in exile in Babylon, Mark wrote for people under Roman occupation, who were criticized for even being part of this new movement around Jesus. They had a double whammy.
Mark and Isaiah both knew what it is to be in a wilderness, and what they tell us is not to let the circumstances around us redefine what we seek and hope for and believe is possible. These readings tell us not to let our waiting become mere hopelessness. There’s a difference, and God wants more than anything for us to follow the trail of what is life-giving for us, not the trail that make us feel like life is being taken away.
Don’t mistaken the circumstances for the truth – the truth of who you are or what God wants for you. Way out in the wilderness, we are told: No matter what it looks like right now, the circumstances won’t get the last word. Because, of course, that is the good news of Jesus from the very beginning right on through the story.
That’s how God wants us to be alert, awake. God wants us looking for the good stuff, not the bad stuff. If we’re alert to the bad stuff, if that’s what we’re waiting for, then we miss out on the wonder of the wilderness, which is where some of God’s best work happens. The disorientation of a wilderness can break up rigidity in our lives. It can free us up, once we get over the anxiety of losing what had seemed normal, which might just mean losing whatever we were holding onto or maybe what was holding onto us. It doesn’t mean it’s not painful. And it does not mean that the pain is “good” for us in some kind of screwed-up tough-love image of God. But it does mean that the pain is not the only thing that’s going on.
So here’s the thing to ask yourself: Where is that wonder in your life? Where are the things that are life-giving in the midst of the things that seem to make life into less than what it is?
I don't know what it will look like for you – you’ll be the first to know that. But as you’re looking out for the right trail to follow, here’s a good compass.
Go back to the words of this amazing psalm, Psalm 85, where it tells us to look for the places where “steadfast love and faithfulness will meet,” and, in one of the most beautiful lines in all the psalms, “where righteousness and peace shall kiss each other.” These are all facets of God – in other words, love that won’t go away, right relationship, and peace. And to help out us humans by bringing it home to a level we can feel, they’re made to sound like lovers running into each other’s arms. Who doesn’t want to relate to that?! Only where they all come together is God.
Steadfast love meets up with faithfulness. Right relationship kisses peace. So huge, yet so delicate. Where are these huge, delicate things happening in your life? Because that’ll be the dead giveaway that you’ve found God at work. That you’ve found what God wants you to be awake to. The things that don’t come out of fear, but out of peace.
And then our wilderness wanderings might start to make a new kind of sense. And the wilderness might not look so wild. We might even start to cherish and claim our wilderness experiences. We might start to let ourselves expect something better than what we could have asked or imagined.
That’s the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. So be awake, be watchful, and see where it goes from here.