04 December 2011 Wilderness Survival Mark 1:1-8

04 December 2011 Wilderness Survival Mark 1:1-8

I admit to a wave of nostalgia every time I hear the old 60’s protest song, “Abraham, Martin, and John.” It may sound familiar, “Has anybody here seen my old friend John? Can you tell me where he’s gone? He freed a lot of people but it seems the good die young. I just look around and he’s gone.” The song, first recorded by Dion, is a tribute to the memories of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John and Robert Kennedy.

“My old friend John” refers to the late President John F. Kennedy. But I wonder if during this second week of Advent we might consider a reference instead to John the baptizer? Has anyone here seen our old friend John? The one who first appeared in the wilderness.

Perhaps John is someone like Jason Cole, the associate pastor at Parkway Baptist Church in Natchez, Mississippi who happened to answer the phone when National Public Radio called in late September 2005, and he spoke for the heroism of a church that was in its fourth week of providing shelter to hundreds of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Jason reported, “We have said several times during our worship services that we don’t want to go back to being ‘normal.’ People have stepped up to be involved in ministering to people. We have seen a lot less self-centeredness and a lot more servant hood. We’ve grown very close to the people taking shelter at the church; we’ve loved them as if they were our own family.”

Pastor Cole and his congregation have learned a valuable lesson. In the midst of providing Christian witness to people who were taken from the comfort of their homes and their cities by a fierce force of nature and then thrown into a place of desperate isolation without resources, a strange and imposing wilderness, both groups have answered the Advent call and are preparing the way of the Lord. Normal will never be the same normal again. Jesus’ path has been made straight.

In the midst of a violent wilderness, peace and tranquility had a chance to overcome sin. Repentance was given a chance in the form of the challenge to provide for those in desperate need. Repentance was given a chance in the form of the challenge to accept assistance from that desperation.

I wonder, where has our friend John the Baptist gone now? The one proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
John is Jesus’ break out prophet. He lived in Judea and had close contacts with the wilderness where he began his public ministry by proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In obedience to the words of Isaiah, John was in the wilderness crying; “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

The wilderness of Judea was the center of religious hope as well as a place of refuge. It was the symbol of the wilderness in which God had led his people for forty years before bringing them to the Promised Land. In the wilderness, the way of the Lord was to be made straight, and some believed the Messiah would first appear there. Jesus had been baptized by John in the Jordan River. He did not really have any sins to confess. He was baptized as a sign that he was willing to obey God fully.
Following his baptism, Jesus remained in the wilderness for forty days. His waiting represents a period of waiting upon the Lord, a period of temptation and discipline corresponding to the forty-year period of preparation Israel spent in the wilderness before entering the Promised Land. Sounds like an Advent time doesn’t it?

From my earliest recollection I have this image of our John as that of a wild man. He looks and sounds like a hairy fire and brimstone preacher, whose breath smells of locust and honey. Not a likely candidate to attract us to baptism, I dare say, especially if we have to go to the wilderness to find him.

The wilderness. Just speaking it brings thoughts not to dissimilar to those of John. Wild looking, wild acting, unpredictable and potentially dangerous. The wilderness can be a very dangerous place.
As we sit here this morning in the comfort of our sanctuary, I do wonder, where is our friend John? The one who freed a lot of people. The one who told us that Jesus, who is more powerful, is coming after him.
About this time of year Christmas begins to take our attention from such questions whether we want it to or not. Christmas certainly isn’t the enemy here. But the preparation for Christmas with lights, sales, parties and Christmas cards is not the sort of preparation the gospel calls us too this Advent season. Admittedly, for many of us, the holiday preparation becomes a real distraction from our Christian witness.

But we are here and our minds, hopefully, have the time for the question. Where is our friend John? It seems he has left us. We won’t find him rushing about town at Wal-Mart or Target. John’s words of repentance, his good news preached in the wilderness doesn’t sell well in the days before Christmas at the shopping mall. Christmas and the shopping mall are normal for us. We know what to get there. Presents and stuff. Gifts for loved ones and ourselves too.

But John is not at the mall. John offers something the mall doesn’t offer. What John offers we can only get in the wilderness where the message is different. Something quite different.

John promised that someone was coming, someone so spectacular that it was not enough simply to hang around waiting for him to arrive. No, this is no pre-Christmas sales line to get in. But, it is time to get ready, to prepare the way in our hearts, our minds and our actions, so that when he comes he can walk a straight path right to our doors.
This is the good news John brings. Yet, one of the striking things about John is, he was not near a church or synagogue. He was in the wilderness and only those willing to go there were able to taste his freedom.
I suspect John the Baptist would not be welcome in most churches today. He wouldn’t be affirming, sensitive, or inclusive. He’d peak out loudly and forcefully and tell us to mend our ways. His message is short, unmistakable, and simple: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Admittedly his message is inconvenient. It is demanding. Most of us would rather forget it. But this message is the key to our completely new life. That is why crowds poured out of Jerusalem to hear John’s preaching. They confessed their sins to John and begged him to baptize them.

For his part, Jesus did not seek the counsel of a scribe or Pharisee – Jesus turned instead to John. His counsel was to baptize Jesus and open his life to receive the Holy Spirit. That was John’s counsel.

Advent reminds us that the Christian life means “living toward a vision.” That vision revealed to us at Christmas only means something when we see it as part of the larger story, God’s story. From Abraham and Sarah, to David, to Isaiah, to Peter and Paul, our faith has always strained forward to God’s future, God’s vision. The Christian community is always a waiting, longing, hoping people, looking beyond the horizon of the daily news to a God who has great plans for the creation.

Advent hope isn’t some pleasantry that sets us nodding off in our Christian comfort zone. People of hope don’t just shrug their shoulders at violence or injustice, or AIDS, or the poverty in our own community, or people displaced by hurricane or wildfire or economic collapse. People who walk in the light of the Biblical hope refuse to accept the world as it is, normal, because they cannot forget the vision of what it will be. Every time we reject violence, or feed the hungry, or hug those who weep, or work for reconciliation, we are living toward the vision, we are walking in its light.

Jim Wallis the founder of the Sojourner’s community says, “The new order of the kingdom is breaking in upon you and, if you want to be a part of it, you will need to undergo a fundamental transformation . . . God’s new order is so radically different from everything we are accustomed to that we must be spiritually remade before we are ready and equipped to participate in it.”

Perhaps it is time we consider the wilderness before us. Rhonda Van Dyke Colby tells a story of meeting John the Baptist one day at the Kmart. Kmart can be a scary place. Her John the Baptist was in the person of a disheveled man, a bit wild in the eyes, standing on the corner at the entrance to the store. He held a sign made out of a torn-up cardboard box. It read, “It’s time for a change.”

Once inside Rhonda didn’t think about him again. On her way out she heard someone ringing a bell, thinking it was the Salvation Army she turned to see her John the Baptist ringing the bell and still holding his sign, “It’s time for a change.”

‘Nice sign,’ she said as she reached in her purse for some change.’ Are you prepared,’ he asked her. ‘Well,’ she replied, ‘not yet. That’s what all these packages are about. I’ve got a lot of decorating to do, and my husband and I have our annual Christmas open house, and I haven’t even started baking. It’s more than a little overwhelming. So, I’ve started a list of things I simply must do to be prepared.’

‘Let me help you,’ he said. ‘Let me help you take your packages to your car. Then I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.’ When Rhonda opened the car door he saw her daily planner and said, ‘better bring that with you.’

Back in the snack bar at the store he leafed his way through my life – my lists and schedule. Most of the time, he just shook his head. Then he brightened up. ‘O.K. here is something I like. Get rid of clutter. Clear a path. Tell me about that,’ he asked.

I explained the den was stacked with boxes of Christmas decoration and I needed time to sort out the Santa place mats from the nativity scenes and clear a path through the den. He was clearly disappointed.
When he had finished he turned to a new page and with his old pencil stub he wrote, ‘Do List, number 1, hold a baby.’ Before I could ask him to explain I heard a woman let out a squeal. Her toddler had crawled under a table and was about to bump his head. Without a word, she passed me her newborn to hold as she ran after her little crawler. For a moment I wasn’t in Kmart but in Bethlehem. The tiny hand was the hand that would reach out to embrace the cosmos.

I looked back at my planner and saw Number 2, ‘Wonder.’ Wonder? Wonder what? Wonder why God chose a helpless little baby to bring salvation into a hostile world. Wonder why after thousands of years we still haven’t gotten the message. Wonder when Christ will come again.
I looked back at my planner and saw Number 3, ‘Look to the Stars.’ What did that mean? As I walked out of the store I looked up to see a clear sky, full of stars. There were thousands of them. They took my breath.

There in the parking lot, looking into the night sky, I had a strong sense that I had been looking in the wrong place for Christmas. I had been too busy rushing around to look up. I had been so busy worrying about what I had to do that I forgot to appreciate what had already been done for me. I had been so preoccupied with following the crowd that I had neglected to follow a star.

No matter how your Advent season is going so far, it is not too late. Not too late to hold a child, to wonder, to look up, to follow a star. It is not too late for a change. I learned it the night I met John the Baptist at the Kmart.”

The child is coming. Advent is our time to search for our John the Baptist. Advent is our time to find our real star. And thanks be to God, Advent is our time to be found by that baby who will come to be born in a manger.

I pray during this time of expectation our gracious Lord God will open our eyes and open our ears and open our hearts so we will not miss the miracle that awaits us. So that once found, we will walk in his way this day and for ever more.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit one God now and forever. Amen

Additional resource:
Lectionary Homiletics, volume XVII, Number 1, p. 11.

120411.gpc