You know what I love about Mark? It is that he goes straight to business.
The remarkable thing about Mark is that he is in a hurry – he has this urgency about getting the good news to us. Listen, he says. Pay attention. Here it is.
Here is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Listen up, people, I’ll only say it once.
Which is not exactly true. He does repeat himself – a lot, but that’s okay. It’s how you give emphasis to something you know is important: you say it twice. Like Isaiah saying, “Comfort, comfort my people; speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” Comfort. All caps, underlined and highlighted, comfort.
Here is the beginning of the good news, Mark says to us. It’s like what Isaiah said hundreds of years ago: Clear a path. Make the way straight. Level every mountain and lift up every valley. Let everyone know, let everyone hear the good news, Isaiah said.
It’s just like that now, John the Baptizer says. Clear a path, make way for the Lord.
Even though Isaiah and Mark are speaking hundreds of years apart, the message is the same. What ancient Israel in their Babylonian exile needed to know is the same as what first century Palestine under the Roman Empire needed to know, which is what 21st century people here and everywhere need to know: There is comfort, there is hope, there is good news. God is with us.
And yet, I bristle at the words – comfort, comfort my people – because, on the one hand, I know the hard times are not over. Certainly not for Israel. And not for us, either. Because we live in a world in which hate is expressed loudly and frequently, where all scores are settled with a gun, where wealth increases in the hands of the wealthy and slips through the fingers of those with the greatest need. How is there any comfort in this?
But on the other hand, I want to shut my door on all of it. I want to turn off the news of Israel and Gaza, of Ukraine, of the refugees at our border, of the hungry and homeless people down at the Acme parking lot – I want to shut my door and sit in the blessed peace of my home. I want to shift my attention away from the hard times and the ones who are on the front lines of hard times, like the kindergartener who touches his teacher’s arm every day and tells her how hungry he is. I want to tell him to be quiet, because I don’t want to hear that children in our community are hungry. I want to light the candles and sing the carols, and I want to wrap the gifts and tie the ribbons, and I want to sit and gaze at my beautifully decorated tree.
Funny thing I noticed about the prophets, though: They don’t have the choice. They can’t not see the bad news and at the very same time they are being asked to proclaim that there is good news. They cannot ignore the discomfort all around, and yet they still have to proclaim, “Comfort, comfort my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem that her time of service is ended.
The prophet doesn’t have the choice, and the prophet wants to make sure we don’t have the choice either. Listen, the prophet calls out: the world suffers, and God is in control. Death is all around, and God is good.
But I cry back: this is not making sense. The math does not add up. A plus B does not equal C.
I don’t understand such things and I want another choice. I want to scramble up on Isaiah’s mountaintop, looking out across the days, weeks, years, and see the Lord coming. I want to look past all the suffering down below in the valley. Just let me gaze across from on high, see the newborn babe nestled in the hay, the loving mother, protective father, wise men kneeling before him. I want this good news right now, right here.
But Isaiah pulls me away from that scene again, insisting that we have work to do. We must clear a path through the wilderness, raze those mountains, lift up those valleys. Straighten the craggy, crooked roads. Mark insists that I save that tender story of the newborn babe for another day, that now I should pay attention to the prophets: Isaiah, John the Baptizer – this, we are told, this is how you prepare the way of the Lord.
I tell the prophet, I am not comfortable with that.
The prophet says to me, I know, dear. But in the midst of all of it, God will bring you comfort. God will give you peace.
I want to ask the prophet to tell me how this will all happen. But the prophet makes it very clear that he doesn’t really know either, and that is the point. It is not my place to bring comfort – that is for God. It is not my place to save the world – that is also for God. So, what is there left for me? What is it I am called to do?
There was another prophet, Micah, who said to Israel – about 200 years before Isaiah, 700 years before Mark told of John the Baptizer:
This is what the Lord requires of you: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.
It was true then, it was true 200 years later and 700 years later; it is true today and will hold true for ages to come. This is what the Lord requires of you: Do what is just. Act with lovingkindness. And always bear the light of God.
Do this and there will be hope. Do this and there will be peace.
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