Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC
Second Sunday of Advent – Sunday, December 10, 2017
To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.
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| Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC |
Pre-e-e-pare ye the ways of the Lord.
Pre-e-e-pare ye the ways of the Lord.
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God.” Mark the Evangelist comes right out with it. Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the anointed One of God, the Son of God. This latter is also a title of the Roman Emperor that Mark is subverting to identify Jesus instead.
And Jesus’ life, death and resurrection are very good news indeed. They were gospel in the first century of our era when Mark wrote. And they are good news in the first century of this third millenary, where we receive this good news.
Peter in his epistle tells us that “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” So, in God’s time we are at the very beginning of the Christ saga. We still are the newborn church, learning to walk in the world and learning to be what God desires of humanity. We are still coming to terms with all this good news of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God. Mark starts his gospel with an adult John and an adult Jesus. He does not need to build a genealogy or a childhood narrative. He comes right out and tells us; Jesus is the Son of God, end of genealogy.
And the John the Baptist that Mark presents is a little different than what you may recall of John the Baptist’s personality. This John doesn’t breathe fire and brimstone on his audience. He is about repentance, forgiveness and baptism. And even more, he is about pointing to the One who comes after him. His baptism is a start.
John’s baptism, is the precursor of our own baptism. And as far as we can tell, it was a novelty. Some Jews did a ritual self cleansing that involved bathing but it was an event one did alone and recurrently. There was also a baptism of proselytes, Gentiles who converted to Judaism.
But John’s plunging people into the Jordan was a baptism of repentance that happened only once and was open to all those who came forward for it (whether native Jew or proselyte). It was a baptism of transformation, healing, and belonging.
We are also told that John’s baptism happened in the wilderness and in the Jordan, two symbolic markers for Jews. The wilderness is those areas beyond the zone of influence of cities and villages. It can be equated to the desert. It is both a positive and a negative place in the culture of John’s contemporaries.
It is a positive place of God’s saving acts and betrothal with the people. It is the place where God delivered the people from Egypt and entered into covenant with them at Sinai. It is a negative place where Israel’s testing and rebellion against God took place.
The Jordan also is a symbolic place. It is the boundary between the wilderness in which the Jewish people wandered through their Exodus and the promised land in which they cross to live their covenant with God.Today, we still need to go the wilderness sometime to hear God more clearly. We need to retreat to places like this monastery or we need to retreat in the inner room of our heart to let the usual busyness of life recede and to dwell in the silence that feeds our relationship with God.
Though for most of us our baptism took place a long time ago, we still need conversion of life (you may call it repentance too). Conversion of life does not end at baptism; it starts in earnest at baptism and continues to our last breath.
John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. For our sins to be forgiven, we need to acknowledge them and turn our lives around from sinful ways.
You may or may not feel you have sinned. You may feel guilt at errors and omissions of your life. But dwelling in guilt does not in itself turn your life around to God. You need to give up your sins by giving them to God and letting them go to focus on the business of living your life in God’s unconditional love, as God’s instrument of love in the world. Action is needed for repentance; new action, graced action, love in action. "Love must act as light must shine and fire must burn" as James Huntington, our founder, wrote.
Or you may not feel guilt at particular actions or non-actions of your personal life. But guess what? That does not exonerate you from repentance. We each are involved in corporate sins committed in our name or with our active or passive complicity.
Let’s ask ourselves a few questions. Have we turned a blind eye to sexist, racist or exploitative behaviors? Have we made our peace with a political system that consistently favors the richest and most powerful classes of our society at the expense of the least privileged? Have we given up on protesting the death penalty, the solitary confinement of hundreds of thousands prisoners, the mass incarceration of non-white folks? Have we decided that our way of life is non-negotiable regardless of how greedy in resources and unsustainable for the planet it is? Have we decided that climate change is for future generations to worry about?
So you see, repentance is probably never over for any of us. There is always more conversion of life possible. But Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit. We still use the symbol of water in our baptisms, but the real action comes from the Holy Spirit who graces us with our lives and in our lives. That is good news for today too.
With the help of the Holy Spirit there is no end to the conversion of life that can occur in us individually and as groupings (from our families, to our nation and the world community). Our late Br. Ronald used to wear a t-shirt that said; “God is not done with me yet.” And God is not done with us either. And with today’s gospel, Mark is just getting started with the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. God is helping us in our conversion. Get ready for more good news in the weeks to come.
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