I’m tired. Here’s a sermon.
Mark 1:1-8; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Psalm 85:1-2,8-13; Isaiah 40:1-11
“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.” It’s a pretty good way to start out a prophecy, as ways to start out a prophecy goes. I swear, I think it’s about 50/50 happy starts and really depressing starts when it comes to prophecies.
For example, if you look at the immediately prior chapters in Isaiah, Hezekiah, the king at the time, had been near death, yet had miraculously recovered thanks to the Lord’s intervention. Because of Hezekiah’s faithfulness, God also pledged to protect Jerusalem from the threatening advances of the powerful Assyrian empire, keeping them from being conquered.
But around that time, some emissaries from Babylon came by Jerusalem, to bring gifts to Hezekiah celebrating his return to health. Hezekiah gave the emissaries a grand tour, showing them all the riches he had accumulated, leaving nothing out. Isaiah, a bit later, asked about who the emissaries were and what they wanted, but when Hezekiah told him, Isaiah prophesied, “The time will surely come when everything in your palace…will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left… And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away.”
So this declaration of comfort is even more striking. God, speaking through Isaiah, is reminding His people that even in desperate times, He is their comfort and he will bring them peace despite what is going on around them.
The people of Jesus’ time would have felt similar apprehension to the people of Isaiah’s time. They didn’t live under the threat of being conquered by outsiders, they had been conquered. After a rare 100 years of self-rule, the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem in 63 BC. By the time of Jesus’ ministry, there was a good deal of tension between the Jewish leadership and the Romans, which came to a head in 70 AD with the destruction of the Temple during the First Jewish-Roman War.
And so Mark’s gospel begins by quoting Isaiah 40, and referencing John’s job to “prepare the way for the Lord, [and] make straight paths for him.” He hung out at the Jordan river, and baptized people there, all the while looking rather, well, weird. And most importantly, he said, “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Bad grammar aside, John was preparing the people for the arrival of Jesus. Now, there’s a curious thing that happens in Mark’s gospel. It begins with John preaching about Jesus, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy; it ends with 3 women told by an angel to tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus is risen, but they do not. The bookends of this gospel are all about telling others about Jesus, only the one at the end doesn’t say anything.
In our Advent preparation, both during this season and in the constant watchfulness we’re to have for Christ’s Second Coming, we are called to tell others about Jesus. There really is no question about it. The question really is, are we more like the woman at the tomb or John? We’re help others prepare for Christ as much as we prepare ourselves for Him.
Now I’m not suggesting we go out and buy camel’s hair clothes and eat grasshoppers and wild honey, but in terms of his proclamation, we should be like John the Baptist. He boldly went out and told everyone around him that they needed to turn back to God and that Jesus was coming.
This kind of thing is what Mark is so good at — asking his reader to enter into the story and ask themselves what they would do. So, the question is, are we John or are we the women at the tomb? Do we boldly proclaim the gospel, or say nothing out of fear?