The Rev. Kristin Krantz
Advent 2B, December 6, 2020
St. James’, Mt. Airy
Isaiah 401-2, 8-131-11
Psalm 85
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8
Gracious God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and work through them;
take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen.
There are two Christmas seasons that are celebrated yearly. The first is secular Christmas, and it begins sometime in November and ends on December 25th. The second is religious Christmas, and it begins December 25th and lasts 12 days, ending on January 5th.
I know one of our norms is to make “I statements,” however I don’t think it’s a stretch to say many, if not most, of us celebrate both Christmases.
Raise your hand if your Christmas tree is up and you’ve already decked the halls. Raise your hand if you’ve been listening to Christmas music – and raise both hands if you’re already out of the Little Drummer Boy Challenge. Raise your hand if this year more than ever you want to squeeze out every moment Christmas joy as possible because the world has been turned upside down.
Yes, most of us celebrate two Christmas seasons – but that doesn’t mean we can’t also keep the holy season of Advent, and in fact doing so might just be the balm for our spirit that we truly need.
Advent, which began last Sunday, is the beginning of the church year. It is a season similar to Lent in that it is time set aside to help us get ready. Lent helps us get ready to enter the Easter story and proclaim the resurrection, and Advent helps us get ready to enter the Christmas story and encounter the incarnation – when God became flesh and the fullness of God’s love was born among us in Jesus Christ.
All this being said, Advent isn’t really a season of preparation for Christmas, but rather a time of preparation for Christ.
That is why as we progress through these four weeks, our scripture texts point us ironically enough, first to Christ’s Second Coming in judgement, before then setting the stage for Christ’s first coming – that birth in Bethlehem we celebrate each year.
Last week we read from the 13th chapter of the Gospel of Mark about the end of the world and the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory, with the admonition to keep awake.
This week we hear from the opening chapter Mark’s gospel.
Mark, the first Gospel to be written down, has no infancy narrative. Instead it begins by quoting the prophet Isaiah about preparing the way for God, and then introduces John the baptizer.
We are told John was baptizing people for the forgiveness of sins, but that the one coming after him would baptize with the Holy Spirit.
And that’s it. That’s where our reading ends. Jesus doesn’t even appear. How is this preparing us for Christ? It does so by preparing us to follow Christ – to keep awake – because baptism is intimately connected to discipleship.
Mark, along with Matthew and Luke, record that John proclaimed a baptism of repentance.
One way to think of repentance is to “turn around” – the root meaning of the Greek word for repentance meaning “to turn.” We turn around – and return to God.
We include this repentance in our own baptismal service. We ask those who will be baptized to renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God; to renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God; and to renounce all sinful desires that draw us from the love of God. We then ask whether they will turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as their savior.
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Another way to understand repentance is as changing one’s heart.
Prophets throughout the Bible called God’s people to repentance by speaking to both hearts and minds – imploring them to hear God’s call in their lives.
Such was the case for the community of Israelites living in exile to whom Second Isaiah spoke words of comfort and hope to in today’s text from the Book of Isaiah.
Did you notice I said Second Isaiah? Bear with me, I’m going to digress a bit and do a little Biblical history here, because it’s both interesting and important.
For the first thirty-nine chapters of the book of the Prophet Isaiah, the prophet that scholars call “First Isaiah” delivered a word of warning to the people of 8th century bc Jerusalem. Two hundred years later, “Second Isaiah” picked up with chapter 40.