Advent 2 | Year B | Mark 1:1-8 | TJ Torgerson
Today is the second Sunday of Advent. Advent is a time of waiting and anticipation. In our fast-paced culture, we do not leave much space for waiting because waiting is hard, and we have engineered life in such a way to cut down on waiting as much as possible.
1. We have microwaves.
2. We have free Amazon Prime delivery.
3. We have the internet and all the information known to humanity right at our fingertips.
4. We are Veruca Salt. If you do not know that reference, see bullet point number 3.
For me, this sense of rush and hecticness is amplified during this season. The commercial “Christmas Season” starts before the Thanksgiving Turkey has defrosted. There are shopping lists to conquer, deals to find, and credit cards to max out (please don’t do that). There are Family Christmas gatherings, friends to have over, and work Christmas dinners. There are school plays, decorations to hang, and Christmas to get to. All this chaos in the name of Christ, but the story of Christmas starts with waiting. Before Christmas, there is Advent.
This week’s gospel text is Mark 1:1-8. This passage starts with a royal proclamation. It begins with an introductory sentence saying, “Let me tell you about Jesus!” But the very next thing is not about Jesus; it is about John the Baptizer. The story of Jesus starts with waiting. John’s task was to prepare the way! It was to be a voice saying, “you just wait, he is coming! The Messiah is coming at last!”
John the Baptizer tells the people, "I’m not the guy! I am not even worthy enough to tie the guy’s shoes, but I promise he is coming and as we wait, let’s get ready."
But the waiting wasn’t a brief momentduring John the Baptizer's life. The waiting began long before John came on the scene. In my Bible, there is a single blank page that separates the Old Testament from the New Testament. This one page covers 400 years of history. Some people call this the 400 years of silence. It was 400 years with no prophet, no Messiah, no message from God. Then John pops on the scene and proclaims, “the wait is almost over!” The story of Christmas begins with waiting. Embrace the waiting, make the best of it, do not hurry too fast into celebrating Christmas. That season will come, but for now, let’s wait.
What do we do in the waiting? John’s message was to repent. What does it mean to repent? The quick and easy answer is that it means to do a 180; it means to turn directions. You were once walking away from God, and now you walk towards God. Another way to look at it is that repentance is a change of heart and mind that leads to a change of behavior. Here is a more long-winded way to think about Repentance.
As we go through life and we collect a lot of information and experiences. This information is sometimes collected intentionally and sometimes not.
• We touch a hot stove, and we learn not to do it again.
• Someone betrays us; we learn to distrust.
• We study and do well on a test and get a good grade.
This list is virtually endless. Some of the things on the list are trivial, some deeply impact our whole lives, and it all comes together as pieces in a puzzle to form the big picture of how we see and understand and interact in the world.
This experiential, informational, and genetic framework determines how we live our lives. This framework informs our deliberate decisions as well as the less deliberate actions and ideas we might have.
We live our lives based on the information we have. We might sometimes make a wrong choice based on faulty, incomplete, or misunderstood information? We also sometimes choose the wrong path because of faulty motives and desires. Can you think back on a time, that if you had just 1 more piece of information you would have made a different decision? Or can you think of a time that you encountered a new piece of information and it completely changed the course of your life? Information that you encountered that was so compelling that you had a choice to make:
• Ignore the information and keep going on as normal.
• Change or distort the information in a way to make it fit our big picture.
• Let the information change us — we ponder this new information, and we realize that it’s just not another piece; it is, in fact, the piece that makes sense of the rest. And to accept this new piece will adjust how we see the world and how we interact and live in it. This is repentance.
The story of Christmas begins with waiting. What do we do while we wait? John the Baptizer preached repentance. While we wait, and to prepare for the coming king, let’s repent. Let’s begin to live our lives as if the king is coming. Let’s begin to live our lives as if Christ is king. This season has become a season of indulgence and in that type of atmosphere it becomes that much easier to see where we might fall short.
• Our materialism is heightened.
• Our selfishness and greed can be exposed.
• Our desire to “keep up with the Jones’s” is felt more clearly.
• The ease of putting Christ on the back burner of life is made evident.
As Christmas approaches, take some time each day to wait and reflect. Consider how Christ entering the world has and should change how we live. Reflect on where you might be hurried or rushed. Ask God to reveal any distractions or wrong motives. Turn your attention to Christ who is and was and will forever be. Christ, God in the flesh who was birthed into history and will come again one day.
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