The Second Sunday of Advent, 10 December 2023, Austwick
Talking about the consumer chaos which is Christmas, a sage old friend of mine said to me, ‘We’ve got it all. What more do we want? Save what we need?’ He told me that his daughter had asked him what he wanted for Christmas. ‘I’ve got too much stuff as it is,’ he said, ‘of ‘toys’: books, music, video – some of which I’ll probably never read, hear, or watch again, at 77 years old’. Robert’s answer to his daughter’s question was, ‘Affection’. What he really wants for Christmas is affection. We might sympathise. Or we might add that what we really want, is belonging, or security, or comfort.
We are living through a deeply uncomfortable time, like so many generations before us, with world-changing wars in Europe and the Holy Land, the underlying nuclear threat, and the challenges to life caused by the world’s accelerating overheating. And we come to worship, each of us, with our own stories of discomfort, those bereavements, those personal tragedies which have shattered our lives, and from which we daily seek recovery.
We come to worship at Advent, and these are the first words we hear: ‘Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.’ After a time of suffering and pain, the most uncomfortable of times, when the grass has withered from the earth, the world’s flower has faded, God wants us to know that he is coming to create new beginnings.
And, to tell the world that this good news is coming, God is commissioning his messengers. Today we hear from Isaiah and from Mark. The book of Isaiah and the Gospel of Mark were written in, and describe, deeply uncomfortable times. They are both books of prophecy, for, as the Muslim guide warmly told the pupils of Austwick School on their recent visit to a Bradford mosque, like Isaiah, Jesus was a great prophet of his time. [1]
The prophets used picturesque language to describe moments in history of terrible loss and grief and discomfort. But from which a turning-away would be possible, a turning towards comforting new beginnings.
Focussing on Mark’s portrayal of Jesus, which we will be following all the way through this new church year, it's important to understand that Jesus wasn’t merely predicting the future. He was prophesying. There’s a huge difference. Predicting tends to mean something will happen without a doubt, that there’s nothing one can do to change it. To prophesy is to show someone that they are on a path that will bring likely consequences. Doctors prophesy to us when they tell us that our current bad habits will likely lead to times of illness and poor health. Through their prophesies, they try to get us to make more healthy choices.
We could say that the ghosts in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, are prophets. They are trying to get Scrooge to change the path he is on, a path leading him into a despised life and a lonely death. They are prophesying to him the path he is on, not because it is unchangeable, but precisely because it is. He can choose another path. He can become a different sort of person. He can… and, thankfully, he does.
Jesus was coming to his people of Israel, the Jews, to help them see that God has a wholly other path for them in the world. They are to lead by showing others how to serve. They are to be mighty among the nations by showing the other nations how to favour the least: the poor, the sick, the left-out. Above all, they are never to use violence. Those who live by the sword die by the sword, he taught. If they choose to go down the path of other nations, seeking greatness and power like them, they will end up as other nations do eventually, when someone bigger and more powerful comes along.
Jesus prophesied the terrible events which took place for God’s people, the Jews. Beginning in the year 66, about 30 years after Jesus’ resurrection, a majority of Jews launched into a rebellion against Rome. It ended badly: in the year 70, Rome destroyed and burned Jerusalem with its temple and slaughtered much of the population. This is the terrible reality that is still fresh to Mark, as he writes his Gospel in the aftermath.
So why does Mark’s story about Jesus become the first of its kind to survive and be kept? Why do we have this new kind of document in the world called a Gospel, that we’re still reading 2000 years later?
The first reason is because Jesus was a prophet who, unfortunately, was right. His fellow Jews continued down the same path and were met with the disaster he prophesied. Let’s imagine, for a moment, that 99% of scientists today are correct and that we are heading into a global warming. They warn us of undesirable events that will take place if we don’t change some of our lifestyles. And then let’s imagine that ten, twenty, thirty years down the road, those terrible events are fully upon us and are wreaking havoc in our world. Whose writings might we turn to? Won’t it be those who prophesied correctly about these events and told us what we could do to change the path we’re on?
That’s why we have the Gospel of Mark. Jesus was correct, not just about his own people, but he is correct about what makes for human beings to live in peace at any time and place. Over and over again Mark’s Jesus teaches us that true power and might comes through caring for the weakest among us; that true leadership comes through serving the least among us, not in seeking to be served; and the most important one: that, in Jesus, God is showing us precisely this kind of power and leadership coming true in the world.
How do we know? Because God has shown us the powers of this world doing their very worst to Jesus, but then raising him to new life, as the promise that God’s way is the true way to peace. ‘In this world you will have trouble,’ Jesus tells us. ‘But take heart! I have overcome the world.’ [2]
This is so crucial! That we see, even when we fail to heed his prophesies, that God comes to us in our weakness. This is the good news with which we can be comforted: that God comes with forgiveness, not vengeance, with the power of life rather than more death. This is the comforting reality which we can know: that God comes with the power to take our struggle and our mess and begin to turn it into gracious life.
What is the good news Isaiah brings to the discomforted people of Israel? That God will feed his flock like a shepherd; that he will gather the lambs in his arms, carry them, and gently lead them into a new way of life.
And what is the good news John proclaims to the people of Judea? That through Jesus God will sow the seeds of new life, and will open up to us the promise of the true way of peace.
In Mark’s gospel we hear Jesus telling his disciples to ‘Keep awake’, to ‘Watch and pray’. He’s not telling us to bunker down and wait for the apocalypse. He’s giving us the tools through which we can face the traumas of life with faith, the challenges of the world with hope; through which we can be comforted and comfort others; through which we can flourish and help others to flourish. [3]
‘Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.’ So let us keep awake to what God is doing in the world; let us watch for signs of his presence in our everyday; and let us pray, keep praying, for in so doing, we will draw ever closer to the one who walks with us on the true way to peace.
Notes
[1] This talk draws substantially on Paul Nuechterlein, MARK’S GOSPEL AS FULFILLING THE WAY OF PROPHECY, delivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran, Portage, MI, November 30, 2014. Paul’s words, lightly edited, are in the italicised section. Also acknowledging the help of Paul’s notes in Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Advent 1B. My Advent Sunday talk, Watch and Pray with the Prophet of the True Way to Peace, 3 December 2023, also uses this material.
[2] John 16.33.
[3] Mark 13.33, Mark 14.38.
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