2nd Sunday of Advent – December 4th

2nd Sunday of Advent – December 4th
Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11
Psalm 85:9-14
2 Peter 3:8-14
Mark 1:1-8
Christmas rushes towards us, and God demands to come into our lives; allowing him in is not easy, however, amidst the noise of the Christmas shopping and the clatter of a consumerist society. So sometimes God has to take us out into the desert to listen. That seems to be the message of next Sunday’s readings.

The first reading is the beginning of the prophecy to the exiles in Babylon that the time has come for them to return to their beloved Jerusalem, from which they have been separated for half a century. So “Comfort, comfort, my people” is the song, and “she has received double for all her sins”. The difficulty is that they are quite comfortably settled in Babylon, thank-you very much, and between them and Jerusalem lies a thousand miles of inhospitable desert; so couldn’t we stay where we are? No, you can’t, is the answer; and we hear the invitation “a voice in the desert: prepare a way for YHWH, a highway for our God”. When God is in charge, nothing is impossible, “Let every valley be raised, every mountain and hill be brought low”. And out there, in the desert (wherever your desert may be, this Advent-time), “YHWH’s glory will appear”. The prophet is addressed as “herald of joy to Zion”, and instructed to “climb a high mountain” (no one said it would be easy). Then comes a wonderful vision of the Lord’s coming, with all the gentleness and affection of a good shepherd; but it is in the desert.

What will it be like when the Lord comes? That is what the psalm is asking, “I shall hear what YHWH God will say; for he will speak peace to his people”. Now peace is better than just the absence of war. Peace, as the psalm makes clear, is all about making the world as God wants it to be; and that means that we have to build a society that has “faithfulness and truth…justice and peace”, which are God’s faithful escorts; but they are not qualities of a society that has forgotten the demands of God. There is an urgent invitation to us here as Advent goes its way.

The second reading is addressed to those who argue that it isn’t very urgent, after all. “God is not slow”, the author insists, “…but patient”. There will be a “Day of the Lord”, but it will come “like a thief” (a rather audacious image for God’s action, we may feel!), and we have to be ready and waiting for the “new heavens and the new earth”; and like the psalmist, the author insists, “Justice dwells there”.

The gospel reading is the opening lines of Mark’s extraordinary gospel, “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Messiah”; and once again we are in the desert. Oddly Mark heralds a quotation from Isaiah, but the first lines that he utters are not from Isaiah at all, but from either Malachi or Exodus. Soon he recovers himself, though, and quotes the lines from our first reading, Isaiah indeed, about “a voice of one crying in the desert”. Then, still in the desert, we encounter the grim figure of John the Baptist, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”. He is impressively successful, “the whole Judean region and all the Jerusalemites were coming out to him” (so presumably there was not a soul left in the city). Then we hear of his uncomfortable clothing (“camel’s hair”) and unattractive diet (“grass-hoppers and wild honey”). But this is not about John; the Baptist is pointing away from himself, towards “the one stronger than me, and I’m not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals”. Better still, the one John points to “will baptise you people with the Holy Spirit”. That is the one whom we must listen for, in the desert, this Advent.