December 10, 2023

Advent 2B

Epiphany, Winnipeg

Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8

I saw this on CBC a few days ago; maybe you did too. In the southern Gaza city of Rafah lives a man named Emad Soliman Robaya Robaya. He’s the father of six kids, and since sometime in late October, when their apartment building was ruined in an airstrike, they’ve been staying the night in a local school that has become a shelter for so many. Every morning, though, he goes back to the rubble of his home, picks up his flute from the counter in the ruined kitchen, and sits down to play some music. It’s traditional music, music that he’s heard his entire life in that place where he’s lived his entire life. He calls it an act of rebellion, but he also says that he plays it to lift his spirits, to cheer up his kids, and to feel at peace. The music is like a voice that keeps on speaking when it’s hard to speak, like strength rising up in weakness. And on the day the news item was filmed, his kids sat there giggling, and one of them happily tapped their toe to the music.

It's one part resistance, and one or two or three parts comfort. It’s some kind of good news in the wilderness.

Over the next year we’ll slowly work our way through the gospel of Mark, and one of the quirky things about Mark is that there’s no story of Jesus’ birth. In Mark, there’s no Bethlehem, no angels and shepherds, no Mary and Joseph and a baby. There are no dreams and visits from angels, no wise men and Herod and a mom and dad and baby fleeing to Egypt where it might be safe. In Mark, the whole story of Jesus starts in the wilderness. There’s a crazy preacher named John; a preacher who is not dressed in white and blue, and will ask for announcements after the service. He’s just this character in the wilderness, wrapped in animal skins and eating rough. The preacher says, “Repent, turn around, change your ways,” and baptizes all the people who say they repent, and will turn around and change their ways, whether they say it with good intentions or with fingers crossed. And the preacher says, “It’s not all about me,” and then he points off into the wilderness somewhere and says that someone way more important is coming along soon. And then Jesus appears in that wilderness, and the good news begins.

It’s not very good material for pageants or sculpted scenes like our nativity scenes, or holiday specials or singing carols around the piano. All of those things are fabulous, by the way. But the way Mark tells the story of the beginning of everything that matters about Jesus, right off the start you have crowds of people coming to the wilderness. Crowds of people who live under the thumb of the Roman Empire; some benefit from that Empire, most suffer under it, so many probably shrug and say, “What can you do?” Crowds of people who make a living somehow, crowds of people who are lonely or surrounded by all the love they need, crowds of people who love music and food and life; crowds of people who struggle to love much at all; crowds of people, crowds of people, and rich and diverse a hodge-podge as any crowd of people that might gather today.

They’ve all come to hear John preach about turning around and changing their ways, and about a new world changing its ways, and about making a way in the wilderness for this one who is to come, and who will change the world. Crowds of people in the wilderness. That’s where the gospel begins. It’s where Advent begins, in the thick of those everyday lives, and in the thick of these, our everyday lives.

That’s one word we hear as we go deeper into Advent. John says, “Repent. Stop hurting one another, stop cutting yourselves off from one another. Stop following gods of power and wealth and empire. Stop cutting yourselves off from the God who gives you life. And pay attention, look for one who is coming to change the world and bring the world back to life.”

There is another word we hear as we move more deeply into Advent. It’s simple and kind word that we heard as our readings began today: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Tell Jerusalem that its warfare is over. Make a path in the wilderness for your God, who will come with power and who will come with tenderness, like a shepherd gathering the lambs together.” It’s a simple enough word – everybody knows something about needing to be comforted. But it’s a complicated word too. As we heard it today, it is spoken about six hundred years before John and Jesus showed up, spoken to a nation that has gotten itself into a whole world of trouble, who are suffering because of what they and their leaders have done. It’s spoken to that same nation that has been oppressed and enslaved for so long. And to the innocent and guilty a simple word of comfort comes along, along with an assurance that the time of paying for their sins is over. It’s a simple word in a complicated situation, and that too is where the gospel begins. And at that time, the gospel began simply by saying, “Comfort my people. The suffering is coming to an end.”

And now just consider this for a moment: Although this word of comfort was first spoken in some kind of wilderness twenty-six hundred years ago, and we’ve been hearing it again and again and again and again through all that time. And we’ve needed to, because the wilderness hasn’t come to an end. From the time of Isaiah and through all those years leading up to John and Jesus and all that crowd, through the rise and fall of empires and through splits and reforms and more splits in the church; through industrial revolutions and crazy new technology like the printing press and the telephone and the internet; through times of residential schools and through times of reconciliation, through times of good leadership and times when leaders really didn’t – or don’t? – seem to have a clue what they’re doing. We’ve been hearing about wilderness and hearing about comfort over all these years, right up until now when the world waits to see what’s next, for better or for worse.

We’re still in the wilderness. And the good news is that that’s where the good news of Jesus begins. Where we are alone, or afraid, or far from home. It begins in the kind of wilderness that we just find ourselves in – things like the place of our birth, the families we’re born into, the genetic cards we’ve been handed. It begins in the wilderness of political events that happen beyond our control, or it begins in wars that are started by ones who will never be a part of the battle. The good news begins where strength always seems to push down weakness, the good news begins where sometimes nothing seems fair, but nothing will change.

You know where your own wilderness is. I know my own wilderness. We can see wilderness all around in the world. And that’s where the gospel begins. Fresh every day. And the good news never grows weary of speaking comfort and peace.

John speaks of repenting, and Isaiah speaks of comfort, and in the middle of both of their stories is a word about straightening out twisted roads, and making the hills low and lifting up the valleys. It’s like we’re being called to get all the stuff out of the way, all the stuff that keeps us from seeing hope on the way or that gets in the way of good news about our God who wishes and hopes and dream and will make their be peace and justice and joy and comfort and beauty and music in the wilderness.

Maybe that’s a complicated job where we need to struggle with policies and laws and the isms that keep people apart and keep some strong and so many others weak. All those things that keep us from enjoying the gifts of life together.

But maybe it’s a simple job too. It’s a simple call to be on the lookout for signs of life and grace and goodness, to look for signs of God coming down the road in the wilderness with gifts that make life full, with gifts that will heal and bring people together. We look for signs and point them out so others can see something good on the way. Things like a meal with friends. Things like music, any kind of music, from Bach to Palestinian traditional to Scandinavian Metal; like Emad the flute player says, anyone who makes music makes peace. Things like light – candlelight or LED light or good old incandescents – light that keeps on shining when the sun goes down and helps us to see that the darkness is a beautiful place too. Look for people caring for each other, comforting their friends who grieve, making goofy peace signs to each other at church. Look for a head tipped back in a full-throated laugh, or see a quiet and peaceful place in a park or a forest…or a mall. Dig around for stories about Israelis and Palestinians working together for peace. The stories are out there, you know. And every one of those stories and sights points down the road to our God who is coming to bring peace in the wilderness.

There’s always wilderness. It’s where we live. It’s where the gospel always begins again, with comfort and a promise of something new, as this one whose coming we expect comes into this world that we know. Even here, we taste and see the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, a Jewish baby born in Palestine way back when, who comes down the road to us here and says, “This is my body, my blood, my life given so that you will live.”