There are no shepherds keeping watch by night in the Gospel of Mark. There are no angels announcing the child’s birth, no star-gazing visitors bearing gifts from distant lands, no ox and ass, no baby in the manger. Mark hits the ground running and jumps right into the Jordan with John the baptizer.
After opening with something like a headline — “The Beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” — the story begins with a voice crying out in the wilderness: John preparing the way of Jesus with a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Many have wondered why the headline says, “The Beginning” rather than simply, “The Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Some hear echoes of the opening of Genesis, the beginning of creation, and to them it sounds like Mark wants to emphasize that the good news of Jesus Christ is as good and grand as the story of life itself; that this is the beginning of life’s redemption from the powers that deform and disfigure it; that this is the beginning of God’s promised future for this beautiful, broken world. Others have suggested that Mark calls the story ‘the beginning of the good news’ because this story is meant to continue and unfold in the lives of all who hear it, in lives of faith and hope. Mark’s story is just the beginning, because it continues with us and for us and for all, in all the ways that we hear and live and tell the good tidings of God’s faithfulness.
So here we are, at the Jordan with John. At the very river where Israel gathered in the plains of Moab, after forty long years of wilderness wanderings, after their escape from slavery in Egypt — the river where they crossed over into the promised land. The river marks the border between promise and fulfillment, between exodus and arrival. At the Jordan Elijah was taken up into heaven, the great prophet who was expected to return before the day of the Lord to prepare God’s people — and Mark’s quick portrait of John suggests more than a resemblance between the two. Clothed with camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, John looks like the ancient prophet, and speaking of repentance and the forgiveness of sins, he sounds like him.[1] His diet of locusts and wild honey is untamed — he only eats what God provides and the earth produces on its own. And John’s message and practice are as undomesticated as his clothing and his food. Forgiveness of sins was priestly business, but this truthtelling wild man offers a cleansing ritual far from Jerusalem and the temple, and he announces the coming of another one, more powerful than he, who would baptize people with the Holy Spirit.
This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ — the remembering of the mighty acts of God, the resonance of the words of the prophets, and the call to repent, to reorient our lives in light of the nearness of God’s reign. The wilderness prophet urges us to look at ourselves and be honest, to name what we see and to name what is missing, to lament what is missing, and repent: to turn away from our complicity with the old order of things and reorient ourselves toward the kingdom of God, when all creation flourishes in the peace of God. John calls us to prepare the way of the Lord by becoming an Advent community, a community of the repentant and expectant who eagerly await the fulfilment of God’s promises. The old order is marred by sin, by idolatry, by injustice and violence. But in Jesus, in faithfulness and mercy, the God of Israel has embraced all people with the promise of salvation.
We meet John at the Jordan, in the borderlands between what is and what shall be, between the promise and the coming true. In the wilderness of these days, when the arrogant trample without shame on decency and dignity, we hear a voice calling us to live in bold hope, to let ourselves be immersed in the untamed flow of God’s grace, and to stand up and raise our heads, because our redemption is drawing near.[2]
Heidi Neumark wrote almost twenty years ago, “For as long as I can remember, Advent has been my favorite time. Before going to bed, I read again the text for tomorrow: Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places plain (Isa. 40:4).”
And she asks, “When will this be?”
The prophet’s words were recorded around 2,500 years ago and I haven’t noticed much movement in the right direction. The gap between the rich and the poor—Longwood Avenue in the South Bronx and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan—remains as wide as ever. We turn people away from the food pantry because we’ve run out of canned stew, canned beans, canned tuna, cereal and powdered milk. Yet this is the busy season at Dean and Deluca down in Soho where my husband, Gregorio, works on his feet 12 hours a day trying to meet the insatiable demand for imported foie gras, truffles and caviar. Sometimes he wraps up single sales totaling over $1,000.[3]
I don’t know what’s happened to Dean and Deluca since then, but there are more people waiting in line at food banks today, and more people placing fancy food orders online totaling over $1,000 and having them delivered by workers who themselves may well wait in line at the food bank after work to get groceries for their families.
A good number of mountains and hills have indeed been exalted, and some valleys have indeed been made lower. The uneven ground has become even more uneven, and the voices of the prophets speak the word of God with the same urgency today as in the past.
My colleague Bill Goettler shared a fine story:
Danny appeared on our porch on a cold December afternoon a couple of years ago, hat in hand. He’d been sleeping here and there since getting back into town, he said, mostly on the porch of the Red Cross headquarters across from the church. The people there didn’t seem to mind, and he always cleared out before anyone arrived for work in the morning. He didn’t want anyone to be frightened.
He needed some food, maybe some money for the bus. We’d just hung the Moravian star on our front porch and placed Advent candles in our windows. It was a pretty tough moment to refuse someone aid, so I dug into my wallet and found a few dollars. As he was leaving, Danny turned and looked me in the eye. “Is this the way it’s supposed to be?” he asked. He was off before I could reply or even register what he’d said.
He came back with one need or another throughout the winter and over the years that followed. Sometimes I’d give him some money or make a call to find him a place to live, but nothing seemed to work out for very long. I’d see him working downtown, selling newspapers in front of Bruegger’s Bagels or washing windows on Chapel Street. “Good morning, Reverend,” he’d call out, and just about every time he’d ask, “Reverend, is this the way it’s supposed to be?”[4]
That’s a mighty good question.
We meet John at the Jordan, in the borderlands between what is and what shall be, between the promise and the coming true. We hear the words of Isaiah, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God,” and we know it has nothing to do with, “Make my people a little more comfortable in their exile.” What the prophet proclaims is the faithfulness of God: there’s no mountain high enough to keep God’s people in exile, no valley deep enough to keep them away from the promised land, or to keep God from coming to us to take us there.
We’re facing enormous mountains, mountains of injustice, mountains of suspicion and distrust, mountains of guilt and shame. And between them run valleys of despair, valleys of resignation, valleys of loss and grief where the shadows are deep — but God is coming.
“Comfort, comfort, my people,” God declares in the heavenly assembly, “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her penalty is paid.” Then the prophet reports what appears to be a debate among members of the heavenly court.
“The people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.” It sounds like an objection or a lament. The people are short-lived, unreliable, hardly worth the effort, here today, gone tomorrow, they wither, they fade, they don’t have what it takes to reflect the divine glory.
But another voice replies, “Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.” The faithfulness of God’s people and their leaders may wither and fade, but God’s faithfulness to God’s people is firm. God’s commitment to creation is unshakable. That, and that alone, is our hope. That is why we look at ourselves and at the world, and we don’t say, “That’s just the way it is.” We say, “That may well be the way it is, but it’s not how it’s supposed to be; and it’s not how it shall be.”
And because God moves mountains to get through to us, we too take our shovels and go to work on God’s highway project, lowering the hills of distrust and suspicion with kindness, and filling the vales of fragmentation with acts of solidarity and friendship. We follow the way Jesus came to prepare for us; we live and tell the good news of God’s faithfulness until all things shine with the glory of God.
[1] See 2 Kings 1:8
[2] Luke 21:28
[3] Heidi Neumark https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2001-12/advent
[4] Bill Goettler https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-11/sunday-december-4-2011