The Second Sunday of Advent, Year B, 2008

Mark 1:1-8

The Rev. Ronald N. Johnson

“I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:  ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

This is the Second Sunday of our Advent journey.  In the Old Testament reading, we heard a part of the prophecy of Isaiah, a forecast, if you will, of the coming, and the preparation for the coming, of Jesus Christ – at least this is the Christian understanding of Isaiah’s prophecy.  In Christian understanding, this prophecy was fulfilled in the ministry of John the Baptist.  John was  one of the strangest characters that we find in the New Testament.  Church historians tell us that John was for real and appeared just about exactly as described – strange to the extreme.

The Evangelist Mark, whose account of John the Baptist we read this morning, tells us about him.  He lived in the wilderness.  He dressed in camel skins.  He lived on locusts and wild honey. His appearance would scare almost anyone.  John was probably an Essene, an adherent of an extremist religious sect.  Today we would scorn him as something of a nut, a religious freak, or worse – a religious radical, the kind that stir up the people to overturn the established order. 

John, as Mark and the other Evangelists tell us, was on a mission; he had something to say to the world, and nothing was going to stop him.  John was filled with the Holy Spirit, and he believed himself the chosen messenger of God, chosen to prepare Israel for the coming of the Messiah.  John’s message was that redemption was at hand.  God was about to act in history, in a way that humanity had never experienced.  God was on the verge of taking the form of man.  The Messiah was coming.  John’s job was to get people ready. 

The gospels tell us that even though John was an unlikely messenger, he was the right candidate because he was God’s candidate.  He was very successful at his mission.  Thousands poured out of the towns and villages and traveled to the banks of the Jordan River to hear John preach.  “Repent,” John said. “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.  The Messiah is coming.  Make a straight pathway for the Lord.” John laid the pathway for Jesus, even as he assured the crowds that he, himself, was not the Messiah.  The Messiah was coming, and coming soon – so get ready!

How would we receive John today?  Would we hear him?  Would we acknowledge our need for Jesus?  Would we do what is necessary to prepare for the coming of the messiah?  Through the pages of the Mark’s Gospel, John’s message to us is the same one he proclaimed in the days of old.  If we are to know the Savior, if we are to welcome him into our lives and be transformed by him so that we are included in the family of God, we must prepare the way for the Lord in our hearts and in our minds.  Advent might be a confusing season, with its two polls of anxiety and joy, but above all else, Advent is a perfect time for getting ready to meet Jesus.  Advent is a time for cleaning spiritual house, a time for ridding the soul of the accumulated spiritual trash, called sin and doubt.  It is a time for making oneself a castle fit to receive the King.  It is a time to get ready for Jesus.  Amen.