Second week of Advent (Wednesday)
Mark 1:1-8 The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
It is written in Isaiah the prophet:
"I will send my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way"—
"a voice of one calling in the desert,
'Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.'"
And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
John the Baptist is the last prophet of the Old Testament; the first of the New. He marks a transition for all who are ready to be done with their old lives and enter into something better. He comes with a symbolic ritual, immersing in the waters of the Jordan, the river that marked the ancient boundary between the wilderness, where the people had wandered for forty years (a traditional lifetime), and the Land of Promise that would be their inheritance forever. John is a wild man. He’s independent, dressing simply and eating only what the land will afford him. And, because of this independence, he is free to stand against the community: political, commercial, cultural and religious.
Faith needs people like John, who will stand against the domesticating influence of religion. Without prophets our spiritual lives grow stale and predictable. Our life of faith inexorably degenerates into a life of church: a stupefying procession of services, sermons, mumbled prayers and responses, potluck suppers, feast and fast days, bible verses, theological distinctions, sentimental memories. And the faith community becomes a little club, a memorial society, a bulwark against the juggernaut of change.
But, every now and then, God sends a Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, John the Baptist, Teresa of Avila, Martin Luther, Dorothy Day or Martin Luther King among the sheep. These are God’s border collies. They startle us, unsettle us, and generally shake us out of our pastoral complacency. And they remind us that we are not our own; we belong to a shepherd whose will is not our will, whose purposes we serve.
The prophets bring new insight and open up new possibilities, but, in the end, it is the shepherd who loves and leads the sheep. John the Baptist immerses in water, Martin Luther in reformation, Dorothy Day in social justice, Martin Luther King in racial equality. But there is one who immerses in the Holy Spirit, who changes us from the inside, who makes us new.
We celebrate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem because, in Jesus, there is the possibility of a new birth for everyone.
O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!
Philip Brooks - 1868
If you are reborn this Christmas, how might you be different?
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