Advent II

Gospel

Mark 1.1-8

1The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

2As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, 

‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,

who will prepare your way;

3the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

“Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight”’,

4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 

5And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 

6Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 

7He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 

8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

Sermon

Starry heavens

THERE is one simple thing about the wilderness: that is where you see the stars. If you can’t get to a wilderness, Norfolk is quite a good alternative. The view of the stars from there is also breathtaking. This might be part of the reason why God seems to speak so clearly to people who go into the wilderness. The sight of the stars puts us in our place. They speak of time, space, and creation, inviting belief in eternity. They make us wonder and want to shout something profound. Today’s first reading records what Isaiah wanted to shout in response to his overwhelming sense of the impending presence of God: people are frail, fickle, and mortal, but the word of God will stand for ever. The wilderness experience of amazement at the stars is the setting of the message of Advent, which reverberates across centuries, from Old into New Testaments. There is something solidly unremitting about its confidence: “Here is your God.” If we have been captured by the wonder that breeds that sort of confidence, we should be able to set in a much larger, deeper context the shrill and superficial sounds proclaiming this as a season of Winterval or Cool Yule. Actually, I secretly love the sight of Christmas lights on the shopping streets of our towns and villages. At their best, these public decorations beckon us to participate in something shared by everyone. Nor does the Christian message of the coming of God in Jesus Christ diminish respect for people of other faiths: it values and promotes faith, while also articulating the Christian faith in God as the creator of all that is good, and Jesus Christ as the guarantor of the dignity of every human life. Our anxiety quite properly awakens, however, when the decorative lights of Christmas mistakenly become Christmas itself. The message of John the Baptist in today’s Gospel is a direct challenge to this tendency towards mistaken identity. The emphasis of John’s ministry is uncompromising. He is calling people not to himself, but pointing them to God. We are not used to this in a celebrity culture. Cult status is reserved for people who are themselves the substance of their own message. John is not like this: “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.” Exclusive fascination with the lights of Christmas is like listening to the voice of John the Baptist because we like the sound of it, while failing to hear what it says. And when we get hooked on sound, not substance, we begin to lock ourselves into a cycle of frustration and boredom. The expression of this frustration is in marked contrast to the wonder inspired by the stars in the sky. Such frustration is brilliantly captured by a word in the cartoon series, The Simpsons. “Doh” says Homer Simpson in response to so many situations, particularly, in one of the earliest episodes, as attention to Christmas trappings, not content, builds greater and greater tension in the Simpson household. Returning to the experience of the wilderness, the wonder of the stars, the moon, and the rising and setting of the sun lies at the heart of the spiritual experience common to religious belief throughout the world and throughout human history. If a festival that marks the changing of the seasons and the celebration of the rhythms of the earth has influenced the timing of our celebration of Christmas, this does not invalidate our meaning: it underlines the beginning of our message about God. From the Hebrew scriptures the Christian Church inherits a profound conviction that the creation narrates the mystery of God to us, as Psalm 19 puts it, and Haydn so brilliantly elaborates in his oratorio, The Creation: “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” This is only the beginning of our cause for celebration. Yet more profound is the good news that God, whose glory is seen in creation, has also shared and transformed our lives. The wonder of the stars is only a first step in appreciating the message of the wilderness. The wonder of us, our capacity for astonishing greatness and demonic destruction, must follow next. As the world’s economy heads into crisis at the close of the first decade of this new millennium, our celebration of the coming of God must look unflinchingly at the message, not the medium, of Christmas. It is not the “doh” of the Simpsons that Christians are called to echo, but the transforming simplicity of the prophetic message: See! Look up and look around you! Stop for a moment, and reflect on something greater than the Christmas lights. See the dawning of the light in which all human actions are revealed and judged. From the seventh century, Chris tians have sung about this Advent hope in these words: Creator of the stars of night, Thy people’s everlasting light, Jesu, Redeemer, save us all, And hear thy servants when they call. Are you ready to stand in that light? Canon Martin Warner is Treasurer of St Paul's Cathedral. He is an experienced retreat conductor and spiritual director, and a former Administrator of the Anglican Shrine at Walsingham. His books include The Habit of Holiness (Continuum, 2004) and Known to the Senses (Continuum, 2005).