Isaiah 40:1-11 • Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13 • 2 Peter 3:8-15a • Mark 1:1-8
Happy New Year! We’re in the second week of the new church calendar year in this season of Advent. It’s an advent time in many ways in the church, a time of advent for new beginnings, especially at United Lutheran. A new vision for our future was adopted on November 27, the last Sunday before this new church year began. It’s a time for the new beginning of this vision to take hold in us, a time for embracing, living out and turning into reality what the advent of a church that’s “Centered in Christ, and at work in the world” would look like. It’s a time of new beginnings, of discerning how it is each one of us will participate in and give to United Lutheran’s 2012 ministry. It’s also an advent time for church leaders: of planning budgets, sending letters asking for pledges, recruiting volunteers, and re-organizing teams.
It is more than fitting then that in this New Year advent time of the church that we begin engaging a new Gospel for this next liturgical year. Today we hear the very beginning of that Gospel, which is Mark: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (1:1) The grammar geeks, editors and English teachers among us will notice that there is no verb in that sentence. It is for that reason why many scholars believe Mark’s beginning serves as a kind of title for this book of the Bible. This is a book where it is OK to judge the book by its cover. It is itself what it says: a proclamation to us, today: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.”
Patricia Lull, the author of the Bible study that many of the Women’s Circle small groups started working through this past September, says the following about the way Mark’s Gospel starts: “Mark begins with a unique and powerful declaration that the very text of the book itself is a message of good news about the one called Jesus. While we call the first four books of the New Testament Gospels, only Mark claims that designation for itself.” Mark’s Gospel begins by describing this Gospel as “the beginning.” It is as if all of Jesus’ ministry described in this book--his life, death and resurrection--as if that is just the beginning of God’s story of good news. There is a sense in which this Gospel is unfinished and is just starting by the time it ends. The ending verses of Mark also come across as seemingly unfinished, with scene of women fleeing Jesus’ empty tomb, which is the last picture we see in Mark—these women who “said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” (16:8) There are no appearances of the risen Christ, no celebrating...just an open-ended question: “What now?”
In the ways Mark bookends his Gospel, his proclamation to us becomes a message that God’s gospel is just getting started. It's not old, antiquated or outdated. It’s just getting started...it’s just beginning...and will not end until Christ comes again. And not only that God’s gospel does not end with Jesus’ death...but it ends by Christ coming into our lives, and through us into the world. God’s gospel story is a story God includes us in, and longs for us to be a part of-a story of God’s saving mission to redeem and love the world--a story of good news that God wants to begin again in us today.
Good news--living through us. That’s what this time of year is supposed to be about, isn’t it? It’s supposed to be a time of good cheer, compassion and happiness? So why then does the story being told in our world and in our lives seem more like bad news? Why is our nostalgia for shopping, evergreen trees, decorations and peppermint sticks not feeding our souls and leaving us, yet again, feeling empty? Why in this season of “good news” are so of us many finding ourselves again facing one of the loneliest times of the year when many are so isolated from family and friends? How is it that despite our familiarity with the central story of this season--of Mary and Joseph, of a baby in a manger, of shepherds in the field--we still doubt whether this story of good news really has anything new left to say to us at all?
The good news of this season that the title of Mark’s Gospel speaks of, which we won’t find by looking inside ourselves, does not start with us. God's good news starts...God's good news begins...God's good news is born...with God who doesn’t gospel us with a cozy memory, with something we’ve heard before, something we know, something that we’ve become numb to. God gospels us with news that is new and good and worth sharing...that sets us free to begin again...and that puts us at the beginning of an untold story--God’s unfolding story of Jesus Christ, at work through you and I. God is just getting started telling that story of Jesus' love, redemption and healing for the whole world. We cannot proclaim the good news of this season to ourselves. As Isaiah says, the words that we speak will wither and fade like the grass. But the word that God speaks...the good news of Jesus Christ...stands forever. He is the one who gospels us into God’s heart, proclaiming that no matter what dead end we may be facing, it is never too late for God to renew restore and recreate us. We are never far from the beginning God speaks to us, and that beginning is the Christ whom John the Baptist foretells. God speaks Christ into our lives. God doesn’t speak a sentimental feeling, or a memory into our lives. God speaks the living Christ to us...centering our lives in his mercy...and that is always good news to celebrate.
The season of Advent reminds us that as we wait for the fulfillment of God’s kingdom, God is never finished proclaiming that good news to us, and God is never finished with us in being a part of fulfilling God’s dream for the world. What is God trying to begin in us this Advent season? What do we need the good news of God’s coming in Christ to set us free from...so that we can be a part of what God wants to begin in us? Is it bitterness towards a relationship that’s stuck in stagnancy? Is it shame for a past decision that we have never managed to get over? Is it fear that hard times will never be able to change? Whatever it is, we will not be able to free ourselves from it. But God in Christ can...and does. God announces a news flash to us that proclaims we are completely loveable and worthy and capable of being a part of the ongoing story of God’s people even though we do not deserve it. It’s that proclamation that makes all the difference in this season that can seem so familiar and almost routine.
There once was a couple who adopted a son from a Russian orphanage, and they wondered why it was that he had so much trouble being consoled, and why as he aged he had so many challenges socially and behaviorally in school. They loved him to pieces and did everything they could on their own to help, but nothing changed. So they tried to get him help. Medications, counselors, doctors...nothing changed. Eventually they discovered a study that was done on the orphanage where their son had been raised. It turned out that this orphanage had approached caring for babies by giving them far less physical touch than normal. Somehow they thought this holding and cuddling was harmful. But it turns out, and studies have been done to prove this, that especially in the earliest stages of life, we can’t console ourselves. We need someone else’s physical presence to hold us, surround and love us, so that we can develop into our truest selves and to fullest potential.
In the same way, our broken lives cannot grow or be sustained on our own. We need God to give us the good news that enfolds, fills and sustains us. We will not find God being born within us in this season of watching and waiting for Christ to come...but we can look to God—rather than putting it on the shelf, we can keep the Gospel storybook open. We can open up the story of our lives to God. We can be humble enough to become beginners again, and find Christ coming to break the bonds of our brokenness.
The Christian mystic and activist Thomas Merton once said, “Advent is the beginning of the end of all in us that is not yet [filled with] Christ.” (my addition)
Come once again this new Advent year, O God, and begin again the work of Christ's power and love in our lives.
Amen.
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