Second Sunday of Advent, Mark 1:1-8

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

In my six decades of life, one of the most earth-shaking trends I’ve noticed and experienced over these years is an erosion of deep community life in our society. Extended family members are increasingly scattered across the country. People are not joining communal organizations – like church and civic clubs and organizations – the way they used to. We don’t go to the theater or movies as much as in the past. TV paved the way for us to stay at home in our isolated cocoons. Now technological advances – like iPhone and tablets – exacerbate the problem in disconnecting us from each other. Have you noticed that even in communal settings people’s faces are glued to their little screens and they’re not fully engaging people they are with. Finally, the social isolation of the pandemic has continued for many, including myself.

And the voids created by the increasing absence of communal engagement have been filled with increasing levels of narcissism. For a long time, we’ve been talking about the “me generation,” a dynamic that’s in fact been plaguing us for over a generation. With more and more focus on the individual and less and less on wider communities, we become more self-preoccupied and self-focused.

People are commonly captivated by celebrities of one sort or another. Many seek to imitate them and clamor after likes and thumbs up on social media platforms, wanting to win the popularity contests of life. Some contrive to create their own personal brands. We tend to reduce ourselves to our particular, idiosyncratic identities, losing sight of any sense of common humanity that binds us together. We subdivide and subdivide until we find ourselves completely alone, and isolated from others.

Far from being a source of liberation and freedom and joy, relentless focus on ourselves apart from others in community creates much misery. Just look at the significant number of celebrities who end up committing suicide. They are the ones who achieve the kind of self-focused fame that we all seem to desire. But then they realize that there’s no there there. They conclude that their lives are an empty, meaningless void such that they no longer want to live.

All of this narcissistic self-preoccupation adds up to one of the classic definitions of sin in the Christian tradition: that of being curved in on oneself. Again, this view of sin is about being overly self-preoccupied, in a word, selfish. Yes, it’s a moral failing. But, as we see the ravages of narcissism, being curved in on oneself, again, is also a source of so much suffering and misery.

I fall prey to the sin of being curved in on myself, especially in times of prolonged social isolation. The longer time I spend with myself alone with minimal in person social interaction with others, the less good company I am to myself, the more I succumb to fatalistic negative thinking, a kind of woe is me dynamic, and on the downward spiraling goes. And I end up crying out, “Lord, save me from myself!”

How do we find rescue from ourselves in this age of narcissism? In the prophetic figure of John the Baptizer, we have a perfect role model of one who is not all about himself – despite his significance as the last of the great prophets before the coming of the Messiah.

The Gospel writer Mark makes it clear that John the Baptizer’s mission is not about himself, but about the One coming after him, when Mark quotes from the prophet Isaiah to introduce John, echoing today’s first reading: “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way.” In short, John is simply the messenger whose job it is to make room for someone else.

And this Someone else makes John pale in comparison, as Mark quotes John the Baptizer saying: “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but the one who is coming will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Or more succinctly, as John the Baptizer says of the Christ in the Gospel of John: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)

John the Baptizer is laser focused not on himself, but on the coming one, Jesus Christ, whom we confess as Messiah. Thus, John prepares the way of the Lord, making straight the paths of the Lord.

It’s great freedom, in fact, to be liberated from ourselves and to become part of something bigger, namely the whole divine mission of Jesus Christ. The role of John the Baptizer as forerunner is to preach a message that breaks through the hard hearts of our self-preoccupation, such that God enters in to reveal the fullness of what God is up to in Christ who fills the empty spaces of our hearts and minds.

Distracted from focus on ourselves, and with our gaze like John now newly fixed on the face of Jesus, we come to see that in Christ we are blessed with the fulfillment of what Isaiah prophesied as recorded in today’s first reading. Listen to these marvelous words again – and if you know Handel’s Messiah, you’ll hear melodies along with texts!

“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to the city that it has served its term, and its penalty is paid, that it has received from the Lord’s hand double for all its sins…. Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’… The Lord will feed the chosen flock like a shepherd; God’s arms will gather the lambs, God’s bosom will carry them, and the Lord will gently lead the mother sheep.” (cf. Isaiah 40:1-11) This describes life worth living!

For in Christ Jesus, all these promises have come to pass for us and for the world when we are drawn into Christ’s orbit, having been pulled away from our self-preoccupations.

These prophetic words of comfort and consolation break through our self-centered stupor in the desolate wilderness of our lives to draw us into something bigger than ourselves, namely, again, God’s mission in sending Christ to us, the one for whom John the Baptizer paves the way, making the paths straight for Christ to reach us and rescue us from ourselves.

Our way having been prepared by the likes of John the Baptizer’s preaching, we are inspired by the Holy Spirit to repent, to have our minds changed – for a change of mind is what repentance means in the original Greek of the New Testament. Our lives are reoriented from focus on ourselves to God’s bigger picture. Then we’re baptized into the dominion of God in Christ not just with water, as in John’s baptism, but water and the Holy Spirit, as John had promised of the Christ: “the one who is coming will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Thus, emerging out of these baptismal waters, we’re caught up in God’s cosmic mission in Christ via his death and resurrection. By baptism, we share in the Trinitarian life of God. Baptism paves the way for the coming of the Lord when we eat of his very presence and are given a foretaste of the feast to come in the Eucharist.

And in these means of grace, we are set free, losing ourselves in wonder, love, and praise. And we no longer see time on our terms, but on God’s. And we apprehend the truth of wisdom of the author of 2 Peter: “Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about the promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:8-9) “But, in accordance with God’s promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by God at peace…. And regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.” (2 Peter 3:13-15)

Being thus taken up into God’s eternity, our faith is enlivened and renewed and we trust patiently in God’s provident care and love for us, everything happening in God’s good time. God’s time, not ours. Friends, this is true freedom – freedom from ourselves and our self-preoccupations and freedom in Christ and God’s grace and mercy.

And when we are found in Christ, we also discover each other anew in Christian community, which is an effective antidote to the social isolation and loneliness of our day. Thanks be to God that we have been returning to our in person, worshiping assemblies on Sundays! Amen?

And then God in Christ sends us in the power of the Spirit to become John the Baptizers in our world to meet people in their lonely, desolate wilderness to assist them to see the bigger picture, thus helping them to prepare the way of the Lord. For so many of our companions on this earth are lost in the shadows of the night of their own loneliness. In our loving words and deeds, we invite others out of their self-preoccupations into the liberating, wider world of God’s dominion, offering them the very freedom in Christ we ourselves know in Christian community. What a Holy Day gift to our sorry world in this and every season!

In short, the Holy Spirit working through our mission of mercy, our justice seeking, our version of being John’s proclamation in the wilds of our world, opens the door, paves the way for the Lord to come yet again. Thus, we give voice to our Advent cry: Come, Lord Jesus! Amen.