November 29, 2015
AWAITING THE ALREADY – 1. Slow Down, Pay Attention
Mark 1:1-8
Preface to the Word
Today is the first Sunday of a four-week season in the Christian Year known as Advent. It was
originally designed to help Christians get ready for Christ’s birth. But our culture throws at us a
challenging question: Why wait? In an age of instant gratification, why wait for anything? Why
spend four weeks pretending that Jesus hasn’t been born yet? Advertisers and retailers want us
to believe that the Christmas season is already here. It really gets started around Thanksgiving
Day and ends on Christmas Day.
Why get ready for something that has already happened?
Of all the seasons of the Christian year, Advent best captures the tension between the past and
the future in a way that fills us with hopeful anticipation in the present. When we journey to
Bethlehem, it’s not that we think Jesus has not been born and it’s not just that we believe Jesus
will come again. Advent is about allowing both the past and the future to amaze us again in the
present, as if the arrival of Jesus is happening again for the very first time. This isn’t a time of
pretending that Jesus has never been born – it’s a time of preparing for what that birth might
mean for us today.
This year, I’ll be doing something I haven’t done in 40 years of ministry. On each Sunday of
Advent we will be looking at one of the four Gospels of the New Testament – Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John – to see what each one has to say about the arrival of Jesus Christ into the world.
I’m doing it because it’s rarely done. We usually take parts of the four Gospels and mush them
all together as if it is just one story. But it isn’t, and I want us to realize that each of the Gospel
writers provides us a different perspective on the advent of God’s Christ. Like masterful
photographers, each of the four Gospel writers assumes a different angle on the action; panning,
zooming, and selectively choosing which parts of the birth narrative best capture their message.
And each of the Gospels offer a unique lesson they want us to learn about waiting for the Word
Made Flesh.
On this first Sunday of Advent we’ve lighted a candle on the Advent wreath we’re calling the
PREPARE candle and the first Gospel we’re going to consider is the Gospel of Mark. The
shortest of the four Gospels, Mark is widely regarded as the first on written, which is why we’ll
look at it first. Mark’s version of the Good News of Jesus was the first to appear on the scene
and formed the basis for the later portraits of Jesus. To do a complete survey of Jesus’ birth, it’s
best to start with the first Gospel written and see what he had to say about Jesus’ birth.
The first eight verses of Mark’s Gospel was read at the beginning of the service. Did you catch
what he wrote about Jesus’ birth? It turns out Mark says… absolutely nothing!
It might seem odd that the earliest story of Jesus we have says nothing of the Incarnation of
God’s Son. There are no angels, no shepherds, no mention of Mary and Joseph, no star, and no
manger. When we first meet Jesus in the ninth verse, he’s a grown man.
Sermon
I.
A. Mark begins right off the bat with John the Baptist. No long genealogy like Matthew or
Luke. No preliminary stories of Elizabeth and Zechariah or Simon and Anna. No long
discourse about the pre-existent Word. Mark begins in the most attention-grabbing, eyecatching way with this voice from the wilderness.
He wants to get our attention… “immediately,” (one of his favorite words)!
B. It makes me think of something that happened after the fireworks show last 4th of July. Jan
and I enjoyed the show on the front lawn of the church and when it was over, worked our
way through the crowds and traffic on our way home. By the time we crossed the river on
the Oak St. Bridge, the roads were clear and were making good time. Jan and I were talking
about the show and how much we enjoyed it, chatting as we went along.
Just before making the last turn, the red and blue lights of a police car were shining in my
rearview mirror. “How fast was I going?” I asked Jan. I rolled down the window and the
young officer asked for my license. “What did I do?” I wondered. He told me that I didn’t
come to a full stop at the intersection at Douglas and as he followed me down the road, I
weaved over the center line a few times. I’m sure he thought that this driver in front of him
had been doing some 4th of July partying! He ended up giving me a warning, telling me to
pay better attention, and wishing me a happy 4th.
I drove the short distance home very carefully!
C. Mark’s Gospel has John the Baptist bursting onto the scene as a voice crying in the
wilderness. Why? Because we need him to. You and I and most everyone else enter this
season before Christmas with such a modern mentality.
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In the first place, we live in an artificial, technological world of our won construction,
rather than a world that invites us into the mysteries of faith and trust.
We’re caught in a pressurized world of deadlines and instantaneous results, rather than a
world that values a lifelong commitment to gradual maturity.
We’re speeding through a world jaded by cynicism, fear and worry, instead of embracing
a world of imagination and possibility.
We might say we’re not even ready for Christmas or Advent yet, which is precisely the
point. We’re not ready for God to break into our lives because we’re too busy living in
our own self-made world.
And when we think we are ready for Advent, we jump right to the good stuff – the stuff
in Matthew, Luke and John. We go immediately to serene scenes of hillside shepherds,
starry nights, and lowing cattle. We cling to these images because they offer us an
anesthetizing nostalgia back to days before life became so chaotic and so confusing.
D. The last thing we expect or want is an Advent message from Mark. His words read like
flashing blue and red lights in our rearview mirror. “Pull over! Keep alert! Snap out of it!
You’re drifting off into a different reality rather than the one that is set before you.” They
grab our attention in order to recalibrate us toward what’s most important about the season.
Get ready for the Messiah. Change your behavior. And ask God for forgiveness.
E. It may not be the way we expect to start our Advent journey, but it’s the way we need to start
it! To really get the significance of Jesus’ arrival into our world and our lives, we need once
again to surrender to the mystery, the complexity, and the wonder of the Incarnation. And
usually that involves a dramatic, urgent shout to wake us up from our absorption with the
world you and I have made.
II.
A. As we listen to John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness, we hear him say that the best
way to prepare for the arrival of Jesus is to “make his paths straight.” Actually, all the Gospel
writers quote Isaiah 40:3 in reference to John the Baptist, where the prophet uses this
language of straight paths for the Lord.
B. The imagery of a straight path to describe the holy and righteous life is quite common
throughout the Bible.
In the Old Testament book of Proverbs, the teacher instructs all who wish to live the right
kind of life by telling them:
Focus your eyes straight ahead; keep your gaze on what is in front of you. Watch your feet
on the way, and all your paths will be secure. Don’t deviate a bit to the right or the left; turn
your feet away from evil. (Proverbs 4:25-27)
Then, writing centuries later, the author of Hebrews gives a similar image:
No discipline is fun while it lasts, but it seems painful at the time. Later, however, it yields
the peaceful fruit of righteousness for those who have been trained by it. So strengthen your
drooping hands and weak knees! Make straight paths for your feet so that if any part is
lame, it will be healed rather than injured more seriously. Pursue the goal of peace along
with everyone – and holiness as well, because no one will see the Lord without it. (Hebrews
12:11-14)
C. If you want to prepare a way for Jesus that leads to true, abundant, and holy living, then that
path must be straight. You can’t deviate to the right or left. You can’t choose to go your own
way along the way. You can’t wander off the path to chase distractions.
D. Preparing oneself for the imminent arrival of Jesus means continuing to move forward, step
by step, commitment after commitment to stay on course; all in anticipation of a God who
will become real in Jesus.
That’s easier said than done, since most of the time we are prone to going our own way. Left
on our own, we simply cannot walk in a straight line.
E. Literally! Human beings are unable to walk in a straight line on their own. There’s something
about our inner orientation that causes us to walk in a crooked or warped way.
Robert Krulwich, a science correspondent for NPR, reached this conclusion. In an interview
on Morning Edition, he spoke with a scientist from Germany, Jan Souman, who has studied
this phenomenon. Souman blindfolded his subjects and asked them to walk for an hour in a
straight line. Without exception, people couldn’t do it. They thought they were walking in a
straight line… that is until they removed their blindfolds and saw their crooked path!
Krulwich observes…
This tendency has been studied now for at least a century. On npr.org we animated field
tests from the 1920’s, so you can literally see what happens to men who are blindfolded and
told to walk across a field in a straight line, or swim across a lake in a straight line… and
they couldn’t. In the animation, you see them going into these strange loop-de-loops in
either direction. Apparently, there’s a profound inability in humans to go straight!
F. According to this research, there’s only one way we can walk in a straight line; by focusing
on something ahead of us – like a building, landmark, or a mountain. If we fix our eyes on
something ahead of us, we can make ourselves avoid our normal crooked course. As
Krulwich concludes: “Without external cues, there’s apparently something in us that makes
us turn [from a straight path].”
G. That’s pretty good advice for Advent. If you want to walk in a straight line, then stop
focusing on yourself, stop looking at the ground, and by all means, don’t look backwards at
where you’ve been. The best way to walk in a straight line is to focus on the One who is
ahead of you. If you can fix your gaze on Christ, then you can avoid the crooked course and
keep from turning away from God.
III.
A. No wonder Mark begins straightaway with the words of John the Baptist. His warnings burst
upon the scene like flashing lights in our rearview mirror to tell us that we’re going too fast,
veering from side to side, and that if we don’t change the way we are moving, there is the
real danger that we will harm ourselves or others.
B. I don’t know about you, but this holiday season is usually a crazy, frenetic, busy time for
me. We get so caught up in checking off our Christmas gift lists, attending or hosting parties,
and being so caught up in the merriment of the season we forget that the best and most
effective way of preparing for Christmas starts with what is in our hearts. It means setting
our hearts straight and asking God to reveal to us everything that is off-course in our lives.
C. That’s the central message of Mark’s opening to his Gospel. No angels, no shepherds, no
mention of Mary or Joseph, no magi – nothing we would expect to see in any Christmas
pageant or cantata.
Instead, there is this voice shouting in the wilderness. “Prepare the way of the Lord; make
his paths straight.”
It may not sound like much of a Christmas, but it sure sounds a whole lot like Advent, and
what this season is really all about!