Advent 2

 

Isaiah 40.1-11, Psalm85.1-2,8-13, Mark 1.1-8

 

“John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness”, says St Mark. That’s where he starts his story of “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” as he puts it in the opening words of the Gospel. He doesn’t begin with stories about angels and shepherds and a baby lying in a manger, or with Magi following a star, but with a rather wild looking man, who tells people to repent and washes away their sins in the river Jordan – a rather unimpressive, muddy river from my experience of it last year. Frankly, John doesn’t sound like a whole heap of fun, not very Christmassy at all. I’m not sure you’d want to invite him to a party, even if we were allowed to have them. For a start, I don’t think Sainsbury’s sell locusts in their party food section.

 

But Mark is clear that this man is part of the good news, and that his words and actions are the preparation we all need to be ready to meet Jesus. It’s easy to caricature John as a sort of hellfire and brimstone preacher, denouncing people for their sins and making them feel miserable, but if that’s all that was happening, it would be hard to understand why people came out to see him in such great numbers “from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem,” It’s clear, too, that many of them went home changed profoundly. You can’t do that through fear. You have to do it through love.

 

The truth which John proclaimed, his challenge to them might not sound much like good news to us, but it is, because John didn’t tell people that they should feel rotten about themselves – even if they sometimes did . He preached repentance for the forgiveness of sins – change that would lead to new life, and he pointed people towards Christ, who would show what that forgiveness, love and new life looked like in his ministry, his death and his resurrection.

 

We’d all like to think we were perfect, or at least to look as if we are. There’s often quite an emphasis in modern life on talking yourself up, dressing to impress, faking it till you make it – perhaps there always was, but I notice in things like the TV programme the Apprentice. It’s important, of course, to take proper pride in our achievements, not to do ourselves down out of false modesty, to have the confidence to give our gifts, but there’s a danger in it too. We can end up building a wall around us adorned with all the things we want people to see, while behind it we know perfectly well that we haven’t got a clue what we’re doing, and that we get it wrong as often as we get it right. The most dangerous thing of all is when we start believing our own PR – in the end even we can’t see ourselves truly. We hide from ourselves as well as hiding from others, and we even think we can hide from God too.

 

That’s why John the Baptist’s message evidently came as such a relief to so many. Instead of saying “fake it till you make it”  or “I’m ok, you’re ok”, he says “we’re not ok, none of us, but that’s ok, because God still loves us anyway”. Far from being all hellfire and brimstone, John’s message is really one of tenderness and love, which takes seriously our sense of frailty and fallibility and brokenness. His message allows us to admit that often we don’t know how to do this thing called life, for all the gifts and skills we might genuinely have.

 

“Comfort, O comfort my people” said the Old Testament reading from the prophet Isaiah, in very much the same vein. The people of Israel had been in exile for many decades in Babylon, and thought they would never go home. What made it worse was that many believed that they’d been abandoned by God.

 

Before the exile, there were many in Israel who believed that God would never let them be conquered by a foreign power. After all they were his people, and he was their God. The exile shattered that sense of exceptionalism, made them doubt and question themselves. They went from having an over-blown sense of their own wonderfulness to having no self-confidence at all. The truth which Isaiah proclaimed was that it had never been about them and their abilities. It had only ever been about God’s love, and it still was.

 

They’d never been out of God’s sight, out of his mind, out of his care, and now he’s going to take them home. This passage comes from the time when the Persian king, Cyrus was conquering Babylonian territories, and as he did so, he sent those whom the Babylonians had taken prisoner back home to their own countries.  Israel’s belovedness in God’s eyes had never depended on them and what they did – “all flesh is grass” says Isaiah. Our faithfulness flickers and fades, our power to act is here today and gone tomorrow. But God’s word, God’s love, God’s faithfulness stands forever. That is the comfort Isaiah proclaims. It’s not like the Danish concept of hygge  - a cosy blanket and a mug of hot chocolate by the fireside on a winter night - but comfort in the old sense of the word, strength that enables us to stand and face a world that can be very cold and dark.

 

God understands our frailty. “He will gather the lambs in his arms, and gently lead the mother sheep” When our cares are too great and our ability to cope with them too small, God is there, says Isaiah. We can’t do this; but God can. “God speaks peace to his faithful people,“ said the Psalm, not a uneasy truce based on posturing and deal-making, but the real peace which comes from knowing that there is no longer any cause for war. “Mercy and truth have met together,” it says, “righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”  The change Isaiah and John point us towards is genuine and deep-rooted, not just skin deep, for the sake of appearance. It is this deep change which “makes the paths of the Lord straight” lifting up the valleys within us, bringing down those puffed up hills of anxious, false pride so that we can walk with God on his journey of healing. As the Psalm put it – peace shall be a pathway for his feet. This is the message that Isaiah proclaimed, and that John echoed loud and clear in his ministry in the wilderness, and it is indeed the “beginning of the good news”.

 

I’d like to finish by reading a favourite poem of mine about John the Baptist, written by Charles Causley. It’s a simple poem, written originally for children, but like so many of Causley’s poems, and all the best writing for children, it lingers in the heart and soul and has great power in its simplicity.

 

John, John the Baptist

Lived in a desert of stone.

He had no money,

Ate beans and honey,

And he lived quite on his own.

 

His coat was made of camel,

His belt was made of leather,

And deep in the gleam

of a twisting stream

He’d stand in every weather

 

John, John the Baptist

Worked without any pay,

But he’d hold your hand

And bring you to land

And he’d wash your fears away.

 

Amen