Second Sunday of Advent, Year B
We often think that Advent is about us waiting for Christ, but in fact, it is God who has been waiting – for you and for me. From all eternity, the Lord has been waiting to have a heart to heart with us, to speak words of consolation to us, to fill us with the Holy Spirit.
And now that we are a week into December, and a week closer to Christmas Day, we unfortunately can lose sight of that fact. We start to become carried away with all the trappings of Christmas – the shopping and decorating and wrapping and secret Santa’ing and lights and parties and … well, you get the point – and we forget some of the real gifts of Christmas — gifts like learning how to love, learning how to care, learning how to be brothers and sisters to each other as Children of God..
Christmas is a time to be reminded of the God who created us, the God who loves us, the God who yearns to be with us, the God who follows us even when not invited, and – despite all the times we manage to tangle up our life – the God who remains with us through it all, always by our side.
It is also a time when we begin a new liturgical year and hear from a different Gospel … this year it is Mark. Mark doesn’t begin his Gospel with the telling of the infancy of John the Baptist and Jesus, like in Luke’s Gospel.. It doesn’t begin like Matthew’s Gospel who gives us the genealogy … the family tree as it were. And it doesn’t begin with the cosmic and deeply theological reflection on the role of the Christ in the creation of the universe that we see in John’s Gospel. Mark’s Gospel is action oriented. It is short, and to the point. And so, Mark goes right to the point … to the essence of the incarnation … by telling us that we need to be prepared to meet God.
And so we see Mark begin his Gospel with John the Baptist coming out of the desert, the last of the great prophets. It’s been over a hundred years since the people of Israel, the children of Israel, had seen and heard a prophet.
And he is very recognizable, because he is dressed like Elijah the prophet, his clothes are like those of Elijah the prophet, his words are spoken with the excitement of Elijah the prophet — the greatest prophet who never wrote a word but was the greatest and the first of the great prophets of Israel.
And both Elijah and John the Baptist had the same message.
The Lord has come. So prepare yourself for the coming of the Lord. Prepare yourself. Make straight His paths…..or to put it in more contemporary words —- he is telling us to straighten ourselves out. John the Baptist is telling us to be honest with ourself. Be truthful with ourself. Don’t lie to ourself. Don’t pretend to be something that we’re not.
He tells us to straighten ourselves out, so that the Lord can come and nestle into our hearts and help make us transparent and open, help make us no longer be afraid to be what we really are, because in God’s eyes we are much richer than we think we are, and held in more esteem in God’s eyes than we could ever make ourselves among those we would want to impress.
For it is our God who comes to walk down those straight paths and into our hearts.
And boy, do we need that right now. For we are a people struggling to remain faithful in a disheartening world. And as Christians, gifted with the Holy Spirit, you and I are called to be God’s witnesses on earth today; called to be like Elijah and John the Baptist, to be that voice calling out with a message of comfort and hope to everyone, reminding people that, yes, we are finite, frail, and mortal, but we are also held in the arms of a loving, faithful God through it all.
And there is no better time to spread this message, through our words but most importantly our actions, than this Advent season, when we wait and prepare for the coming of Jesus, the greatest manifestation of God’s love and faithfulness.
So amidst all of the hustle and bustle of the next few weeks, it will be good to remind ourselves that God is already making us into the person that we were created to be …. God’s beloved daughter. God’s beloved son.
And so the challenge for you and I today is to let our journey through this Advent to be one where – through our words and actions to others, we will be a reminder to them, and to ourselves, that the God who created us, who loves us and will give us eternal life, is coming.