Let's Get Down to Business

'The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, had its beginning in this way.  It was written in Isaiah the prophet:  "Behold!  I am sending my messenger before you to prepare your way.  He is the voice of one proclaiming in the wilderness:  make ready the way of the Lord; make his paths straight!" 

Now it happened that John, the one baptizing in the wilderness, was proclaiming a baptism, based on repentance, for the remission of sins; and all those dwelling in Jerusalem and in the region of Judea were going out and being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.  John wore a cloak of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his loins; and his food was locusts and wild honey.  He said also in his proclamation:  “There comes after me one that is mightier than I, the strap on whose sandals I am unworthy to undo.  I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

--Mark 1: 1-8 (P.H. Epps Translation)

There’s a lot of reasons why the Gospel of Mark is my favorite. My great-grandfather translated it, for one. It’s the earliest, and a great many scholars suspect, the most accurate retelling of the story of what is sometimes called the Jesus Event. Also, Mark wastes no time getting into the story; I’m probably dating myself here, but one of my favorite albums just out of high school was The Eminem Show by the rapper Eminem, and one of the first songs on the album is called "Let’s Get Down to Business." That’s Mark’s Gospel, getting right down to it because, to quote a line from that song, Mark “ain’t got no time to play around.” 

Cover of the 2003 album 'The Eminem Show.'

Unlike the Gospels that would come later, Mark wasn’t written, at least not initially. It was a performance piece, done in the same style as the Iliad or the Odyssey. Someone would stand in the middle of a town square and shout: “Ἀρ¦χὴ τοῦ εὐ¦αγ¦γε¦λί¦ου Ἰ¦η¦σοῦ Χρι¦στοῦ.” and launched into the story. This is why Mark’s attribute – the symbol that is used to represent this Gospel – is a lion, because it begins with all the force of a roaring lion. In case you can’t tell, when it comes to talking about Mark, I can do this all day!

I find it somewhat humorous that in this week's Gospel we hear Mark start off with a proclamation that this is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but we don’t actually hear from Jesus. Instead, we are introduced to John the Baptizer, a person we will learn later in the Gospel of Luke, is Jesus’ cousin, himself born to parents who had given up all hope of that ever happening. John, we’re told in these opening moments, appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance – the Greek word is metanoia, which means to turn oneself around. John was likely part of a group called the Essenes, which, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, were a group of Jews with their own ideas and practices, and in their case, they had grown weary of city life and its various corruptions, and moved into the wilderness because, after all, that’s where the Israelites had met God in the first place (remember Exodus?). The ascetic practices of the Essenees fascinated the folks left behind, and so they headed out to seek wisdom from these desert-dwellers like John, who compelled them to be baptized – the Hebrew word is mikvah, a ritual bath that cleansed a person, both on the inside and outside.

An Eastern icon of Saint John the Baptizer

To be sure, John wasn’t exactly patient, or even friendly. Not many folks, I suspect, would want to call John the Baptizer as their Rector! He called people out for their hypocrisy and warned them against merely coasting by on what they thought to be true. But in Mark’s introduction of this itinerant preacher, there’s something that characterizes John’s proclamation to the people, and that’s hopeful anticipation. John looks ahead to the promised time of one coming who was more powerful than he, who would baptize with the Holy Spirit, as John had baptized with water. 

This hopeful anticipation is a theme that runs through all of our Scriptures from this past Sunday. The despair of last week is replaced with the assurance that God’s mercy is soon to be made manifest in a fresh, new way. Isaiah writes in anticipation of the exiled Jews going home (Isaiah 40: 1-11). Several decades after Mark’s Gospel, the author of the second Letter of Peter reassures the faithful that, despite Jesus not having come back yet, God’s timing isn’t ours, and that that promised day of salvation is still on its way (II Peter 3: 8-15a). Even the Psalmist recalls God’s saving grace in the past and looks with hope for that to happen once again (Psalm 85: 1-2, 8-13). This is the same hopeful anticipation that Mark’s Gospel roars at its listeners out of the gate.

Hopeful anticipation often starts small and then builds into something unstoppable. A great way I’ve seen this play out was with the 2011 revival of the musical Godspell. It was done at the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York City, which, as the name implies, is a theatre-in-the-round. The show opens with a moving number called Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord set out in the wilderness where John is baptizing. In the revival production, the baptismal waters were depicted as a single drop that came down from the rafters into a small pool underneath the stage’s floorboards. But as the song picked up, more and more people joined, and eventually that drop turned into a full-on waterfall by the time Jesus showed up to receive his own baptism. Hope may start small – like the lone voice of one wild man in the wilderness crying out for people to turn themselves around – but when nurtured by God it grows and grows until the point that nothing’s gonna stand in its way. That’s how hope works, and it is mighty powerful.

The opening number from the 2011 revival of Godspell, note the water coming down from the ceiling.

God knows we need some hope right now, something positive for which to anticipate. As the war between Israel and Gaza intensifies along with bigotry at home, we need some hope. As we hear news of yet another mass shooting, this one at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, we need some hope. As many of us prepare our hearts for the first Christmas without someone we love, we need some hope. Dare I say, we need a John the Baptizer to speak truth to power, to proclaim a hope that is more than surface-level and that anticipates God’s light and love breaking through.

I’d like to think the folks who went out into the wilderness to hear John went back into their city lives changed somehow, eager to prepare the way themselves. I’d like to think the same thing about us, we who are the ones to prepare for the second Advent as John did the first. How?

We are, simultaneously, the messengers and the message; as we say where I come from, you might be the only Bible anyone ever reads; for good or ill. We try to listen for what is ours to do, but it can be so very hard to hear, can’t it? Are we to take the lead now and call forth others to follow, or wait and see how things play out? Are we to lay down old expectations, old hurts and habits, in order to heed a new way, a new idea, a new message? This is discernment, the process of listening for our place, our call into something new that God is doing in our midst.

This Jesus, whom we love, for whom we listen and look, is quite fond of the new; and to be sure, the comfortable lives we’ve been living mean little when compared with whatever new hope God is bringing to life right now. How will we respond? 

Prepare a path for the new, you who are inheritors of the Baptizer’s message and bearers of a newfangled one. Be submerged into the waters of hopeful anticipation cannot be quenched, that cleanse you from the inside-out. Turn yourselves around and see Jesus staring back at you, you who are a roaring lion, called to fiercely proclaim by word and example the evangelion, the good news, the Gospel, of Jesus that is coming into the world. Let’s get down to business. 

The Beginning Is Near

'Jesus said, “In those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”'

--Mark 13: 24-37

There is a meme that shows up around this time of year and makes its rounds on the social medias. It’s a picture of a rather dapper dressed man in a bowtie and horn-rimmed glasses, holding a piece of cardboard with the words written on it, “The Beginning is near.” I couldn’t find the origins of the image, but it seems obviously a reframing of those street preachers with signs proclaiming “The End is near,” and in that way, it’s a perfect encapsulation of Advent.

The beginning…of everything…of a new hope…of the kingdom of God, is near. Yes, preacher, we know. We’re good Episcopalians who understand that Advent not only marks the start of a new church year but also a season of preparation for the birth of Jesus. All this has happened before, and it will happen again, and the beginning of the greatest story ever told is right around the corner. We get it.

If that were the case, though, why does Advent not start on a joyful note? Instead, our Gospel fills us with something more like despair. We start the new church year the exact same way we ended the last one, with Jesus talking about a coming time that sounds anything but joyful. 

We find Jesus this week speaking with four of his apostles – Peter, Andrew, James, and John – while sitting on the Mount of Olives, opposite the Temple in Jerusalem. They had just been in the Temple, and one of his disciples had commented about how magnificent a structure the Temple was, to which Jesus responded that not a single stone of the Temple would be left standing when all was said and done, which prompts these four apostles to ask him what will be the signs that that time is near. Jesus borrows imagery from the prophet Daniel and paints this picture of doom and gloom – the sun darkened, the moon not giving light, stars falling, and heaven itself being shaken, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria; in fact, Jesus quotes Daniel verbatim when talking about the Son of Man coming in the clouds. It sounds pretty hopeless. Sure ain’t joyful.

Yet if we remember the purpose of this kind of rhetoric – the kind prophets like Isaiah and Daniel used and that Jesus’ own apostle John will use – it’s to reveal something to the people, to reveal hope in the midst of hopelessness. This is apocalyptic, a tearing away of the veil so that the people can see the truth. 

Advent is an apocalyptic season. It serves a dual purpose. The first is to remind us that, in spite of the very best intentions of the people of God, the Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel to already be here, hasn’t quite come in its grandest fulfillment, and so the prayer of Advent is that Christ will come again to rule among God’s creation with grace, mercy, and justice. This beginning of this day, we hope – in the words of our Creed – is near.

The second purpose of Advent is to take us back to the beginning, back to that time of Jesus’ first Advent. And in the midst of our own times of hopelessness, to capture the spirit of hope folks felt back then, a spirit of yearning for that which some might’ve said was too good to be true: a new and unique expression of God’s intention to save this broken world was breaking through.

Capturing that spirit of hope is, I suspect, what Jesus means when he uses a fig tree as a parable for being able to observe the signs of the times. Such observing means paying close attention to all that is happening in our world, regardless of what we are afraid to see. This hope enables us to see our day’s news with the eyes of the heart, and not hide out in the fog of secular numbness or hyper-sensitivity. We often pretend to be remote or untouchable, shrouding ourselves in willful ignorance, but to read the sign of the times is to dare to acknowledge what is hidden in plain sight – what is being revealed to us right now– and to dare to find our part to play, our song to sing, our small task to fulfill in the unfolding drama of God’s Kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven. No, we can’t take in all of the heartache and pain we see – our species wasn’t designed for it, our brains literally can’t handle it, which is why the overflow of information that we experience creates in us anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. Yet we can find that small task in our small corner; because we’ve all got our part to play in that promised day’s arrival.

Such a day can’t get here fast enough, we might say when we see all that plagues this world, which may lead us to reading such signs less as an invitation to participation and more as a portent to something we must fear, maybe even try to predict. But, Jesus reminds everyone, about that day or hour no one knows, not even him! So hurry up….but wait?! What kind of Messiah double-talk is Jesus going on about?

It's active waiting. Sounds oxymoronic, but that’s Advent, and it’s how we operate in a kingdom that has both already come and not yet. For those of you who host holiday parties or are expecting loved ones to visit this year, think about how you prepare for those guests. You wait for them, sure, but is it passive? Lord no! I bet you’re looking out for the stray dust bunny to sweep or making sure the beds are prepared for those overnight visitors. It’s the same way for those of us living in the Second Advent, waiting actively for Jesus to be born anew in our lives, neither trying to predict when it’s gonna happen, nor being passive – but surrendering to God’s timing while actively looking for the one who is already here, finding our place in this kingdom that is both already and not yet. If your head hurts, it’s ok, means you’re thinking. Trust God.

Lately as I’ve walked by the lake behind our house, I’ve felt a surge of wind each time. It’s overwhelming, so much so that I worry it might knock me off my feet. That’s Advent, coming like wind off the lake to wake us up to the truth. And what is the truth? The truth is that all that we see is not all that there is. The truth is that you, and I, and them, are more precious and more important than any of us can ever know. The truth is that the love that came down at Christmas is as real now as it was then, and it coming again – as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.

The winds are blowing. The signs are all around. So, you there, who keep falling asleep in shallow waters, floating on the surface of your life, wake up! Stop staring blankly, numb to the wonder of who you are and whose you are. The God who searches for you in the holy mundane of your life is near. The revealing of your true self, and your role in the unfolding of this kingdom, is near. The beginning of everything is near.