The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of the 2nd Sunday of Advent
10 December 2017
Readings:
Isaiah 40:1-11
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
Last night we had been planning on a visit from several friends whom we haven’t seen in quite a few years. Jane and I both met them during our time as youth ministers in the diocese of California, where we each grew to know this amazing group of teenagers who formed a tight knit community of friendship that has now spanned over twenty years. They were a part of the community that drew Jane and I permanently together after we were reunited at their summer camp at the Bishops Ranch up in Healdsburg after not seeing each other for six years. In the year long process between our reunion and our wedding, may of them graduated high school and became young adults who came back to help lead the same set of camps with us the following summer after which we were married at the Ranch in August of 2003.
Working and playing together as camp staff, they drew us into that tight circle of friends, and were the only under-21 group individually invited to our wedding. Since then, I’ve married three of them to amazing spouses of their own, who have nearly doubled the size of the group. We don’t all get together at the same time very often anymore, and knowing they were coming for quite some time, it grew harder and harder to wait! Over the past few days as the hour grew nearer and nearer, we were in contact with them to plan for their arrival time and have everything ready. Of course, there is really no way to prepare for the unknown parts of any encounter that truly reawaken us to communities that have formed us and are a part of us now matter where we go in life—that part only comes with actually being open to it and being in it—a bit like a wake up call as we greet each other, catch up, and suddenly realize that it’s like no time has ever passed between us.
This whole season of Advent season of preparation is that kind of wake up call to us.
Last week we pined in waiting, with bated breath, seeking fruitlessly for God’s coming and wanting for the hour to be revealed, but over these past five weeks, including the three weeks leading up to Advent, we also keep being told that the hour cannot be revealed.
This week we’re reminded that it isn’t simply that God is coming to be with us, but that God IS with us. Perhaps the hour cannot be revealed precisely because were we prepared to experience God’s presence, we would already know it.
Were we doing God’s work of equity—bringing down the high places and raising up the low places until all were fed, clothed, and prepared both for and IN God’s way, there in the wilderness of our unknowing, in the journey of preparing God’s way, THERE we would encounter the one we have sought for centuries and yet who has been with us since the very beginning.
Then, says Isaiah, “Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together!”
Just as last week’s Psalm echoed Isaiah’s hope-filled lament as the people pined for God to rip open the heavens, so too this week’s Psalm echoes the message of peace and comfort in God’s graciousness, forgiveness, and perpetual accompaniment. “Mercy and truth have met, are meeting, and will meet; *righteousness and peace have kissed, are kissing and will kiss each other.” The message of hope and peace in this weeks readings are a message of completion in potential—what was, is, and is to come are all the same presence of God with us that we have longed for, and yet has been with us just outside our reach.
The letter of second Peter came at a time a generation or two removed from Christ’s life. Christians who expected Christ’s return to be a short time off had begun to have to rethink both the timing and the meaning of the Day of the Lord, which would yet come when, and increasingly HOW, they least expected it. For the epistler, the reminder is that God’s time is not our time, and, regardless, the time we are given is both a gift and an opportunity to live as agents of God’s reign. Whatever we may believe about “the day of the lord” in our own time and place, the message of today’s epistle addresses that in-between time, in which we live, and which we’ve also been examining for the past five weeks now, as a time for living out our calling to be Christ’s hands and heart in our world. In a sense, it is the same calling as from Isaiah—make straight the way of the Lord! Do all that you can to help create justice, equity, hope, peace, and love in the time you’re given. We never know when our time for making a difference in the world will be up. And perhaps even more importantly, we never know when in the process of our journey in working to prepare God’s way we’ll finally come to the realization that God is with us and has been all along.
Mark’s gospel draws this message of preparation and hope into imminent proximity to Christ’s birth, drawing us deep into the heart of the Advent promise that narrows scope in this second week, from the cosmic hope of last week’s readings to the pointed hope in the coming of messiah and the coming to fruition of Isaiah’s prophecy. John the Baptist’s proclamation as a voice crying out in the wilderness is the way Mark chooses to start his telling of the story of Christ’s life and ministry. It contains an urgency not present in the other gospels, and draws us immediately into Mark’s purpose of proclaiming and demonstrating Jesus as the messiah, the one in whom was fulfilled centuries of waiting. Make his way clear, turn back from whatever else you may be doing and heed God’s call to relationship—for here is the one who will baptize with God’s own indwelling Spirit!
Rounding out the theme of this second week of Advent, Mark’s gospel ties together the themes of action from throughout this week’s readings—the time is now! Our work to prepare for God’s accompaniment and our hope and expectation of some future time of encountering God’s presence in our journey is coming to fruition in our very midst. The intersecting work of God’s Mercy, Truth, Righteousness, and Peace will be revealed not in some distant future, but now. And just as Christ’s own revelation of God’s reign inspired people to action in his own time, the writer of 2nd Peter reminds subsequent generations, including us, that the state of God’s reign is still one that is unfolding, still one that is both here and yet to come in its fullness. As with Isaiah’s time seven centuries before Christ’s birth, as with John’s time in the midst of Christ’s life, as with 2nd Peter’s time a century or so after Christ’s ascension, so too we are called to the action of preparing the way of the Lord, for it is in the enacting of preparations that we may finally come to recognize God WITH us. Here, now, throughout our lives, and also perpetually on the horizon of our next actions and possibilities—perpetually breaking through in every moment we enact God’s abundance.
As it turned out, only our friend Nick was able to make it last night in the touch and go of changing and evolving plans. It was amazing to see him and spend some time together, and we are hoping to catch the whole group later today before they have to leave again!
But as amazing as it was to be with our friend last night, I think what was even more amazing was the feeling of familiarity, of closeness, of accompaniment and presence that each of us felt despite the years that have come between our last meeting and now. Somehow in the journey, we are connected no matter how distant we are or how long it has been. Of course it helps that this is also a group in which our collective awakening to God’s presence has fed into the depth and closeness of our mutual bonds to one another. In many ways it is like some of the friendships I have encountered here at Calvary. We find God not at some far distant place, not at the remove of centuries or of space and time, but wrapped up intimately in relationships where God’s love and care come to life and we suddenly realize in and through each other that God is with us—has always been with us, and will always be with us.
“Here is your God,” cries Isaiah from the rooftops, cries the Psalmist, cries John the Baptist from the wilderness, cries 2nd Peter… and “Here is your God,” continues the cry today in the wilderness of our own awakening encounters with the One who is with us and yet is perpetually just about to arrive. Let us prepare the way together!
Amen.