Love Came Down in Peace

Sermon Mark 1: 1-8 December 7, 2014 Advent 2 yrB

Love Came Down in Peace

We are deep into our Christmas shopping and preparing our way for the day we gather with our families and friends to celebrate this precious day. We are looking everywhere for signs that will keep us focused on the good thoughts, the joyous thoughts, the moments that melt our hearts and fill us with joy and peace.

The last thing we want is for the realities of the world to crash into our time of worship. We come hoping to be seized with the sentiments of the season that warm our hearts. Those puppy dog commercials about saving the dogs who are left out in the cold send us to our checkbooks and we are quick to do what we can to save those poor puppies.

The commercials on TV do what they can to help us catch the sentiment of the season and I find myself with wet eyes when I watch them. A long time ago, really long time again, back in 1971. It was a time that the country was supposed to be free. Civil rights had just passed and everything was supposed to be all well with the world. But, it wasn’t, there was still a long road to go and people were looking everywhere that season to find a bit of hope, a little slice of peace. And so a TV ad came on and I cried my eyes out every time I saw it.  

A large group of people stood on a hillside and started singing.

It went like this:

I'd like to buy the world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees
And snow white turtle doves.

Chorus:
I'd like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I'd like to buy the world a Coke
And keep it company
That's the real thing.

The song came about because the song writer had spent the night with a group of frustrated travelers whose flights had been delayed and the result the next morning was that they found themselves laughing at their situation as they were drinking a coca cola.

Would all our problems be solved through a song and the world would be a better place.

Which brings us to our text today from the gospel of Mark.

The times were tough for those people in Judea thousands of years ago. They were surrounded by heavy handed soldiers. The people were driven by fear. There was unrest. Mixed messages were coming from leaders, some saying give in to the Roman rule while others were crying for revolt. What kind of future could the people offer to their children? A question we still ask today.

The gospel of Mark written about 60 A.D. some 30 to 40 years after the death of Jesus begins with words that proclaim the promise of the prophets. The ‘good news’ of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He doesn’t enter the account of Jesus by telling of his birth, or giving his credentials of his ancestry, he begins with the proclamation that Jesus is the Messiah, the entrance of God into the world.

God has come and broken open the world.

This gospel writer thrusts us into the beginning of a new era, into a world shaken up and turned upside down; to be turned right side up under the reign of God and not humankind.

God has come seeking out humanity whether they are ready or not, whether they want God or not, God has come! (Mark Allen Powell)

Yet, before God has entered in there is a preface, a preparation, a setting the stage, so to speak.

Before Jesus, there was another, there was John. And John spoke the words of another that was before him, Isaiah. Long, long ago the story of God’s people who had lived in slavery and then in the Promised Land and then exile and then returned from exile and again in captivity…the words of Isaiah promise restoration from Babylonian captivity. These words of Isaiah were written when the people had returned to their own land again. Even though they were a free people they continued to live as though they were still under oppression.

The words cause for a time of inward reflection. A time of recognizing one’s own responsibility for the circumstances they find themselves in.

And so John the Baptist brings forward the words of Isaiah to the time at hand.

The people need to hear these words of preparation once again. John is crying out that the people must be released and loosed from the chains within that bind them.

He calls for people to examine themselves, to look within, to find the place that blocks them from a relationship with God and one another .

He calls them to turn around, to go another way, to repent.

He proclaims to them that the One-Jesus will come who will truly release them from all that binds them: the things of oppression within the heart and breaking through the barriers the world has created.

Jesus will come and he will baptize with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus will fill the hearts of the people and bring them peace.

John the Baptist is a change agent.

He is preparing the way for the Lord to come.

He is a weird fellow. He is not like others at all. He wears camel hair and eats locusts and wild honey!

He put people ill at ease and had the authorities keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn’t do anything outside the law. And isn’t this true about us today. We would have wiretapped his phone and had video cams on his every move.

People who change things look weird to us. (Jill Moffett Howard)

All those major players in the history of our lives have always been weird to the norm. Look at the scientists and astronomers of the past; those who risked claiming that the earth revolved around the sun and not the sun around the earth-those who dared to tell the world that the earth was round and not flat-major players who were weird beyond measure-they even lost their lives for pointing out the truth of what they saw.

I read this passage year after year, And this year it makes me pause

                                                                       

          am I willing to look weird for the sake of change?

Am I willing to be weird to share the truth? (Jill Moffett Howard)

God did that. God took the risk of incarnation, of being hurt, of loving without being loved back, of showing up and not being accepted, of sharing and not being received, of healing and not being thanked, of giving everything, even his life and not being noticed.

                                       Am I willing to take the risk God took?

And here is where we find ourselves on this second Sunday in Advent; seekers of a peaceful world, one that lives in harmony.

We hear the words of the weird prophet John the Baptist ring out, “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

And so we too ring out loud and clear in our weirdness and declare that God is coming whether we are ready or not.

God will come. God will find us. God will fill us with peace.

And this IS the good news.

Amen.