Isaiah 40:1-11   Mark 1:1-8

December 7, 2008     Second Sunday of Advent

First Congregational UCC/Reverend Deb Davis

     There are many ways to tell a story … especially, it would seem, when it’s a story about Jesus … about his birth … about his beginning.

     In the Gospel of Luke … the author tells the story of Jesus’ birth by describing how an angel announces his pending birth to a young Mary … who then sings her revolutionary song. There are shepherds … awed by the angels’ proclamation on a Judean hillside … and then there is that word … that there was no room at the inn.

     In the Gospel of Matthew … the author tells us that an angel speaks to Joseph in a dream … encouraging him to take a risk … and this author gives us that star to follow … and those visiting, gift-bearing Magi … who on their journey home … elude the evil, plotting King Herod.  

     By the time we get to the Gospel of John … the gospel written at a time farthest removed from Jesus’ death …the author doesn’t believe there is a need for a birth narrative … because this author gives us a cosmic Christ … one who was present with God from the very beginning of creation … … in the beginning was the word … and the word was with God …and the word was God.

     And then there is Mark’s Gospel … that Lynn read from today … this oldest gospel … written just 70 or so years after Jesus’ death. This author doesn’t give us a Cosmic Christ …or a birth narrative. There are no angels or magi … no shepherds or a baby … no familiar characters to star in our Christmas Pageants.

     Rather … the author of this gospel begins the story of Jesus with the revolutionary and radical call of the Baptizer … who tells us we are a part of the birth story … that incarnation needs our response.

     Well … we have arrived at the second Sunday of Advent … and this year as every year … the Advent lectionary gives us the Baptizer quoting the prophet Isaiah.

     He is still dressed in his camel hair clothing ... still on his diet of locust and wild honey … a man of the wilderness … living and preaching far away from the religious establishment.

     He intrudes into our lives and proclaims to us that we need to prepare a path for Jesus to walk … we need to clear some space in our lives … unclutter our inner road if you will … so that our lives might be transformed … so that our world might become the world God wants.

     This author … this Gospel … begins the story of Jesus by talking about what’s expected of us … by telling us that we don’t have to remain as we are … that radical change is possible. 

     That is our challenge this Advent … and every other Advent of our lives. How do we … in the midst of the busiest and craziest … most hectic and most demanding time of the year … how do we pull back … and be still enough … so that we might ponder and discern what the Baptizer is saying to us … what it is that may need to change in our lives … if we are to truly make ready that path?

     How do we make use of this gift of Advent … instead of merely allowing it to become the comfortable backdrop to all our shopping?

     I received an e-mail from Nicki Verploegen last week … after she had journeyed back to Massachusetts from her weekend here with us … leading some of us in a spiritual retreat and then sharing with us after worship about her recent work in Africa.  

     Attached to her e-mail … was an article titled “Advent Musings,” written by a woman named Judy Fortune … an article that Nicki said she found to be of great help to her as she began this season of Advent.

     In this article … the author shares a story she had recently come across … about some westerners like us …who were traveling through the Kalahari Desert in southwestern, Sub-Saharan Africa. They had hired some native guides to help them.

     The guides were not used to moving at the pace these westerners were expecting … and at one point the guides suddenly sat down to rest … and no amount of persuasion could convince them to continue the journey until they were ready.

     The reason they gave for this much needed rest … was that they had to take some time … had to wait … for their souls to catch up … they had to just stop and sit down … so their souls could catch up with their minds and their bodies.

     Nicki is right … this story is a wonderful metaphor for Advent … a wonderful way to think about this season that turns the page to a new church year … offering us this time for our souls to catch up … so that we might arrive at Christmas in an open and receptive place … instead of a harried and multi-tasking and over-extended place. So that we might arrive at Christmas … with our path made ready.

      Advent offers us the opportunity … if we would take it … to sit down and let our souls catch up.

      During our retreat with Nicki a couple of weeks ago … the last question she asked us was to name one thing we could do … we could change … in our lives that could help us to fan the flames of our heart in our relationship with God … one thing that could help us to prepare that inner path … to smooth it out … to make it more accessible.

     For several of us at the retreat … that one thing was to slow down … so that we might really and truly observe Advent this year … to find a way even in the midst of all that is going on out there in the secular celebration of Christmas … to quiet our hearts and minds … and bodies.

     I suspect many of us here this morning would have the same answer if we were asked what needs to change in our lives … if we were asked what it would take if we were going to truly make a path … make a way … for the Spirit of love and peace to enter into our lives.

     I suspect many of us would say … in one way or another … that we need to start by finding the time to just sit down … so that our souls might catch up.

     Because most of the time … it seems we are running as fast as we can … so that we can out pace our souls … so we can make sure that our souls never catch up.

     Getting all the presents under the tree … making all the cookies and stuffing … doing all the racing around … all the endless stuff we do and buy … all of that keeps our minds and bodies busy … so we can stay way ahead of our souls.

     And we do that, very simply, because we know all of that will protect us from facing our own place of exile … from facing our own place of imprisonment … from tending to the wounds that we continually refuse to tend … from facing all those things that clutter our path … that block the way … that keep us safely where we are … instead of where God wants us to be.

     All this buying and spending and doing … all the running and running … during this season and every season … provides a wonderful cover-up for what’s wrong in our lives.  

     True repentance … literally turning and going in another direction in our lives … requires that we know where we are missing the mark … requires that we are able to name it.

     That missing the mark … sinning in more common biblical language … is caused by two things:: our own present behavior … and … all the ways we have been sinned against in our lives … all the wounds of the past.

     It’s important we spend some time with both things … because they are woven tightly together. That’s the work we are called to this morning … that’s the work that will clear the debris from our inner path.

     And figuring all of that out requires time … requires that we just sit down … and let our souls catch up … we have to ponder our own lives and tend to our own healing … and perhaps we can begin by asking ourselves some questions.

     Questions like: What wakes me up at 3 in the morning … is it fear or guilt or shame or despair?

     Where am I so shut down that I have lost the ability to care … where am I that detached from life?

     What in my world needs to give way … what do I need to disconnect from?

      What is my wilderness … and how does it get in between me and those who matter to me?

      If we could only trust the goodness of our God … only trust Jesus when he says again and again that we can change … maybe we could begin to take such an inventory …could just sit down and let our souls catch up … and not be so afraid of what we might learn.

     And then …perhaps … we might become aware enough of our own selves that we would recognize what it is … that is waiting to be born within us.

     Most of us don’t want to do this work … that’s why we keep out-running our souls … because as much as we know change is possible … that that is part of the Good News Jesus proclaims … it is also unnerving and frightening.

    Because all of the obstacles and impediments … the animosities and grievances … all the weeds of doubt and fear and anger growing on our path … that’s all so comfortably familiar.

     My hope for each of us … is that we might choose to make this Advent a time of preparation, pondering, thinking, musing, silence, stillness … a time when we allow our souls to catch up … so we can indeed be ready for incarnation.   

     All this work will help us to make space for a newborn babe … but more importantly … it will help us to make space for that grown up babe’s transforming grace … and his ongoing invitation to be part of the story.

     Amen.