Peace

Isaiah 40:1-11

Mark 1:1-8

You know what I love about Mark? It is that he goes straight to business.

The remarkable thing about Mark is that he is in a hurry – he has this urgency about getting the good news to us. Listen, he says. Pay attention. Here it is.

Here is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Listen up, people, I’ll only say it once.

Which is not exactly true. He does repeat himself – a lot, but that’s okay. It’s how you give emphasis to something you know is important: you say it twice. Like Isaiah saying, “Comfort, comfort my people; speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” Comfort. All caps, underlined and highlighted, comfort. 

Here is the beginning of the good news, Mark says to us. It’s like what Isaiah said hundreds of years ago: Clear a path. Make the way straight. Level every mountain and lift up every valley. Let everyone know, let everyone hear the good news, Isaiah said. 

It’s just like that now, John the Baptizer says. Clear a path, make way for the Lord.

Even though Isaiah and Mark are speaking hundreds of years apart, the message is the same. What ancient Israel in their Babylonian exile needed to know is the same as what first century Palestine under the Roman Empire needed to know, which is what 21st century people here and everywhere need to know: There is comfort, there is hope, there is good news. God is with us.

And yet, I bristle at the words – comfort, comfort my people – because, on the one hand, I know the hard times are not over. Certainly not for Israel. And not for us, either. Because we live in a world in which hate is expressed loudly and frequently, where all scores are settled with a gun, where wealth increases in the hands of the wealthy and slips through the fingers of those with the greatest need. How is there any comfort in this?

But on the other hand, I want to shut my door on all of it. I want to turn off the news of Israel and Gaza, of Ukraine, of the refugees at our border, of the hungry and homeless people down at the Acme parking lot – I want to shut my door and sit in the blessed peace of my home. I want to shift my attention away from the hard times and the ones who are on the front lines of hard times, like the kindergartener who touches his teacher’s arm every day and tells her how hungry he is. I want to tell him to be quiet, because I don’t want to hear that children in our community are hungry. I want to light the candles and sing the carols, and I want to wrap the gifts and tie the ribbons, and I want to sit and gaze at my beautifully decorated tree.

Funny thing I noticed about the prophets, though: They don’t have the choice. They can’t not see the bad news and at the very same time they are being asked to proclaim that there is good news. They cannot ignore the discomfort all around, and yet they still have to proclaim, “Comfort, comfort my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem that her time of service is ended.

The prophet doesn’t have the choice, and the prophet wants to make sure we don’t have the choice either. Listen, the prophet calls out: the world suffers, and God is in control. Death is all around, and God is good. 

But I cry back: this is not making sense. The math does not add up. A plus B does not equal C.  

I don’t understand such things and I want another choice. I want to scramble up on Isaiah’s mountaintop, looking out across the days, weeks, years, and see the Lord coming. I want to look past all the suffering down below in the valley. Just let me gaze across from on high, see the newborn babe nestled in the hay, the loving mother, protective father, wise men kneeling before him. I want this good news right now, right here.

But Isaiah pulls me away from that scene again, insisting that we have work to do. We must clear a path through the wilderness, raze those mountains, lift up those valleys. Straighten the craggy, crooked roads. Mark insists that I save that tender story of the newborn babe for another day, that now I should pay attention to the prophets: Isaiah, John the Baptizer – this, we are told, this is how you prepare the way of the Lord. 

I tell the prophet, I am not comfortable with that. 

The prophet says to me, I know, dear. But in the midst of all of it, God will bring you comfort. God will give you peace.

I want to ask the prophet to tell me how this will all happen. But the prophet makes it very clear that he doesn’t really know either, and that is the point. It is not my place to bring comfort – that is for God. It is not my place to save the world – that is also for God. So, what is there left for me? What is it I am called to do?

There was another prophet, Micah, who said to Israel – about 200 years before Isaiah, 700 years before Mark told of John the Baptizer: 

This is what the Lord requires of you: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. 

It was true then, it was true 200 years later and 700 years later; it is true today and will hold true for ages to come. This is what the Lord requires of you: Do what is just. Act with lovingkindness. And always bear the light of God. 

Do this and there will be hope. Do this and there will be peace.

Photo: Unsplash.com

Advent 1: Being Present with Hope

 

Mark 13: 24-37   

Every year I begin the season of Advent feeling the urge to apologize about the scriptures. This text from Mark. It’s not very cheery, is it?

But there it is, with its words of dread; one calamity after another. The sun will be darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will fall from the sky. It’s like a horror movie. And we can treat it that way if we want to. My son Joe spent some time in Mississippi when he was a young man and attended a church where the pastor preached in the fire and brimstone tradition. Every Sunday he stood in the pulpit breathing threats and terror against the disciples in the pews. Every week he would end with, “come back next week and I’ll tell you more about how it’s all going to end.” And Joe kept going back. He didn’t necessarily believe it, but he was always the kind of kid who likes horror movies. So it was entertaining, and he was riveted.

Fire and brimstone is not my style. I am not a fan of threats – except on the rare occasion when I have to threaten a misbehaving two-year-old. But for the most part, I am in agreement with the preacher who advised me to read such texts slowly and thoroughly and carefully, just not literally. That is frequently good advice for the scriptures. So let us approach the text from Mark carefully – but not literally.

And it isn’t really that hard after all. What Jesus is telling us in Mark’s text is that the ways of the world that we are accustomed to will cease to be. The old world will fall away as the new world takes its place.

And what will the new world be like? It’s what we have been talking about for the last few weeks, really. In the parables of Matthew 25, we have learned to think of ourselves as people who wait – we wait in expectation for Jesus. We have heard that this waiting is shaped by creative and courageous living, using the resources we have been given. We have learned that this life of waiting and expectancy is, most fundamentally, paying attention to those around us – it is a willingness, a readiness to see Jesus in each person we might encounter.

It is about being alert. Watchful. Awake.

As the one who watches the fig tree. When the leaves begin to bud, we know that the fruit is on its way. I don’t know fig trees, but I think of my orchid. I watch it every day. When I see a new stem appear, I watch. Eventually there may be buds on the stem, and so I watch. And when the buds appear, I wait for them to open, for the flowers to unfold. I never know how long it will be. It can take much longer than one would expect; the fig tree is the same way, I understand.

We watch. We wait.

It is like someone who travels abroad, Jesus says. They leave their home and put the workers in charge of things while they are gone. Each one has responsibilities as they await the return of the master of the house. It will not do to laze around the house carelessly until they see the master coming up the drive. We know that the right thing is to do the right thing, regardless of whether the master will return on time to see it.

We watch. We wait. We commit ourselves to the spiritual practice of paying attention to what is. And this is something the world needs now as much as it ever has.

There is a story from Jesus that is written in the gospel of Luke, about a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus. Lazarus was in a terrible state. He was sick, he was hungry, he was slowly and painfully dying. Every day, Lazarus lay at the gate of the rich man’s house. But the rich man never really saw him.

The purpose of the story of Lazarus and the rich man is to remind us of the importance of this spiritual practice of paying attention. To watch for everything we are given, to pay attention to how we might use our gifts well, to live as those who are expecting a better world to come even in a world that is crying out for justice, for peace. To live as ones who are expecting this better world to come and expecting to be a part of it.

Every year during advent we preach this message of watching and waiting, and frame it as a hopefulness. Yet, each year I know that this message of hope might not resonate with you. If your life is feeling just fine as it is. Because, quite honestly, hope feels pretty meaningless when life is just fine.

Hope is the kind of thing that just doesn’t mean much until you really need it. It is in the worst of times that hope has the greatest possible strength. It is when optimism is not even possible that hope comes alive. Because hope comes from God. And this is the good news.

When all seems like darkness. When we are feeling the cruelty of death, severing us from our loved ones. When we are watching the world at war – a state of war that seems endless. When we know that we do not have the answers, God steps into our darkness and brings light. When the sun and the moon and the stars fall away, there is the light of God that no darkness can overcome.

And this is the good news. The world is suffering, collectively. And we, each of us, are carrying our own private despair. But we are not responsible for fixing it. We cannot manufacture hope, and that is alright. Because hope is the thing that comes from God’s steadfast love and faithfulness.

Pay attention, I say to you. Watch. Wait, and you will hear the cries. They come from Ukraine, from Israel, from Gaza, from all over the world and from right outside our gates. Hear them. and know that the one we are waiting for is coming. No one knows how long it will be. Do what is right for as long as it takes. In expectancy we watch and wait for the one who is coming, knowing that he has prepared the way for us to follow. We travel that way with hope.

Photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Downtowngal