Advent one is always a bit of a weird start to the Christmas season. But we’re past it now, and into Advent two. And Advent two in Mark starts right where it seems like it ought, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The beginning. One could wonder why the lectionary waits until the second week of Advent for the beginning, but hey, we’re here now. And since it’s Advent, since it’s the season we are preparing for Christmas, preparing for the birth of Christ, “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ” means its time to get ready for some manger scenes, right. Time for angels appearing to Joseph and Mary, or the appearance of a star, or at the very least, some shepherds. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, starts with the birth of Jesus Christ, after all.
Except in Mark, it doesn’t. One of the things that sets Mark apart from Matthew and Luke is there is no birth narrative in Mark. No angels, no journey to Bethlehem, no wise men. In fact, Mark doesn’t even begin with Jesus at all. In Mark, the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ actually begins in the Judean wilderness, with John. And John, at least at first glance, does not seem like all that good of a starting place for a narrative that purports to be good news. Just a few of the knocks against him. One, he’s dressed weird. Folk in the first century dressed differently than we do today, but even then camel’s hair was not a first choice for garments. It is as scratchy and uncomfortable as you might imagine. Two, his diet. Who wants to hang out with the guy who’s eating bugs for lunch? There is no amount of honey that makes a locust seem appetizing. Three, his location. The historically recognized location of Jesus’ baptism is remote even by first century standards. It is a section of the Jordan river just a little bit north of the Dead Sea, an area of trackless desert wilderness, marked by rough and rugged terrain, extreme heat, and a decided lack of things considered necessary for human life, namely food and water. The location raises the interesting question of what the locusts that John ate were eating. There is barely food for insects out there, let alone the throngs of people who flocked to the river to be baptized by John. And last, but maybe the strongest knock against John the Baptist. John came preaching a message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The word translated as repentance is the Greek word metanoia, which literally means to be turned around and go in a different direction. The idea of baptism as ritual washing was not new to John; most major religions have some sort of a practice of ritual washing. What was unique about John’s message was the idea that this baptism would change those who experienced it. The message was not “repent and be baptized,” but “be baptized and be repented, be turned, be reoriented to a new way of being.” This invitation to be reoriented in a different direction seems like many not the smartest invitation to accept from the crazy guy eating bugs and yelling in the wilderness. This might be the reason for the decided lack of John the Baptist themed Christmas cards. Why highlight John, when if we hold out just a couple of weeks there will be a cute baby, fluffy sheep, and angels? Even camels seem like a better Hallmark card then the guy in camel hair with a mouth full of locusts.
But I actually think the greeting card industry is the poorer for its lack of John the Baptist Christmas cards, and here’s why. I think John the Baptist offers us a powerful message of hope that babies and mangers and fluffy sheep just can’t give us. Or at least, can’t give us alone. I think John the Baptist, as the words from the prophet Isaiah assert, offers us a messenger who helps us see what we might have otherwise missed, the gift of the Christ child born among us, and how much we desperately need this infant God.
One of the unique traits of humans is that we are incredibly adaptable. Scientists say we may be the most adaptable species on earth. Think about it, there is not another species on the planet whose range stretches from above the Arctic Circle to the tip of South America and everywhere in between. We can live in the most rural of settings, and we can live in densely populated urban areas. We adapt to our surroundings, and our surroundings become normal. I experienced our innate adaptability in college. As you know, I grew up in California, and the winter of my freshman year of college was the first real winter of my life. On the first really nice day in the spring, you know, that first day when it’s legitimately warm, and everyone blows off whatever they were doing in favor of wearing shorts and being outside, I called a friend back in California. Wow, I told him, it’s such a gorgeous day here today, so warm and sunny. Really, he replied, it’s pretty cold here. That’s weird, I said, what’s the temperature? Sixty-five. I looked at the weather gauge. Huh, I remarked, it’s sixty-two here.
The gift of this adaptability is that we can survive, even thrive, in a large number of places. But like any gift, there can also be a downside. And that downside is we can normalize things that really shouldn’t become normal. Like the metaphorical frog in a pot slowly raised to boiling, we can adapt to situations that are not actually healthy for us, but because they are all we know, they can seem normal. We can normalize fear, normalize pain, normalize injustice and violence and suffering, until it seems like it is just the way of the world, and there’s nothing we can do to change it.
That is why we need John the Baptist to come in and shake up our complacency. John the Baptist shows up right in the middle of our status quo with this message of hope that a Savior is coming. His unexpected appearance and urgent calls to prepare the way, to make straight the paths, to repent and to be turned, startles us to attention and opens us to see the subtle grace of the one whose power is displayed in humility and weakness. Around this time of year, we often hear the question, would we recognize Jesus if he came today, a refugee infant born to an unwed teenage mother. The answer, of course, is no, and while it’s a good question, I don’t think it is a fair one. No, we would not recognize Jesus, but neither did the people in the time that Christ was born. We won’t, we can’t recognize Jesus, it is the very nature of Jesus to be an outsider, and that is why God first sent us John the Baptist. Jesus’ arrival was not designed to be some great secret to be known only to those who were paying attention. God knew we were not going to be expecting the birth of the Word mad flesh, and had promised since the days of old, that we would not miss it, because first there would be a messenger to prepare the way. John’s whole job is to make us alert to the one who is coming, to startle us into awareness. That’s the first piece of good news at the start of Mark’s gospel. We won’t miss Jesus, because John whole purpose is to be impossible to miss.
But wait, you may be arguing. Sure John is a crazy character, but one of the knocks against him was his location. So there’s still a fair amount of sleuthing and effort that has to go into this, the crowds had to go out into the middle of the trackless Judean wilderness. It may be a baptism of repentance, but we still have to get to the river. Well, yes and no. The key to this is the little word “of” in that first verse of Mark, the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. The “of” in English is what is known in Greek as the genetive case. The genetive case indicates close association or belonging. What this means is that the good news of Jesus was not the message Jesus was bringing, it was the very presence of Jesus himself. Jesus, the God made flesh, was, is, the embodied good news. If Jesus had said nothing at all, had just shown up in anonymity, died and been raised, he would still have been the good news. Everything Jesus did on earth, all his teaching, his healings, every word and action, all of that was just extra, just bonus, just icing on the cake of the salvation of the world. The message John brought to the middle of the wilderness, as much as it was about Jesus, was not the good news, it was just an announcement of the coming of the good news. The good news, the only good news that mattered, was not news at all in the way we think of it. It was a person, Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God.
The other thing that’s key is role of John’s location. Like most settings in the Gospels, John’s location was as much theological as it was geographical. John’s appearance in the wilderness placed John in a long line of the prophets of old whose stories were centered in the wilderness. Moses, Elijah, and David, to name a few, all announced the presence of God in the middle of the wilderness. What John’s location assures us is that salvation comes out of the wilderness. Not just physical, but social, emotional, spiritual. Moses led people from slavery to freedom through wilderness, Elijah found water and never-ending wheat, David escaped his enemies and even his own evil deeds. John’s location promises us that God meets us in the wilderness, wherever it is, with a message so strong, so powerful, so strange, and so compelling, that we cannot miss the one who is to come. This is the promise God makes to us this advent. Into the wilderness of our lives, the savior of the world is coming. No matter how lost or alone or afraid we might feel. Or on the flip side how accustomed we may have gotten to our own brokenness, Jesus is coming here to save us. And don’t worry, you won’t miss it. Because John is coming first, and he will make sure that you don’t. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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