I’m sitting in my warm study in upstate New York, listening to Rachmaninoff. Outside weather is bleak: rain taps on the window, clouds are dark; all but the hardiest birds have long gone to brighter climes, remaining leaves are brown & soggy. The operative word for this Season is DARK. Overrun with guilt for the sad state of the world, I’m having a hard time summoning Hope. On Sunday we lit the First Candle of Advent, which brought some light to my gloom–but children in the Kid’s Time were more starry- eyed about Santa than the ChristChild.
In counterpoint we hear a Word in the Wilderness: the Prophet cries out, “Prepare in the desert a highway for our God!” (Isaiah 40:1-11) Preposterous! Can we really clear the decks of materialism and selfishness? The latest tax-scam is no Christmas present for the needy! “All people are grass…the grass withers, the flower fades…. BUT the word of our God will stand forever!” So we have not only permission, but directive, to lift up our voice with strength, to shout in the Darkness, “Here is your God!” Those who read this portion aloud in worship must declaim it with great drama–for it is.
The message of II Peter comes to those who’re anxiously waiting out civic harassment and persecution: “…with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise…” (3:8ff) Evidently “waiting” is a familiar stance among Believers, and in some ways marks them off from the rest of impatient humanity. So Advent can be a yearly focus on waiting “for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.” In the meantime, until the ChristChild is once more physically among us, we try to prepare the way by cleaning up our own act, “without spot or blemish”.
Mark begins his gospel account (1:1-8) with a segue from Isaiah’s bold announcement: John the Baptizer fulfills this role as the Messenger, appearing in the wilderness (naturally) to light some Candles of Hope. His message is simple: turn it around, get rid of your selfish baggage and pick up the free cookies God is providing in the perceived Messiah. Bonhoeffer reminds us that “repentance means turning away from one’s own work to the mercy of God.” (sermon on November 19, 1933) Watching and waiting involves looking for and recognizing these Messengers who point out the New Things that the Creator is already about!
The book study group at our church is currently reading Bonhoeffer’s “God is In the Manger”–a series of Advent devotional musings written while he was held by the Nazis in Tegel Prison. From that dark and cheerless place come words of light for every age: “And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God.” May your sojourn in the wilderness be seen to come from God…
God Bless Us, Everyone Horace Brown King
My encounters with Biblical passages assigned to the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com
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