Advent 1-Thunder in the Desert

FIRST READING—Psalm 130, often called A Pilgrim Song.
Help, GOD—the bottom has fallen out of my life! Master, hear my cry for help!
Listen hard! Open your ears!
Listen to my cries for mercy.

If you, GOD, kept records on wrongdoings, who would stand a chance?
As it turns out, forgiveness is your habit, and that's why you're worshiped.

I pray to GOD—my life a prayer— and wait for what he'll say and do.
My life's on the line before God, my Lord, waiting and watching till morning,
waiting and watching till morning.

O Israel, wait and watch for GOD— with GOD's arrival comes love,
with GOD's arrival comes generous redemption.
No doubt about it—he'll redeem Israel, buy back Israel from captivity to sin.

SECOND READING—Luke 2: 1-6, 16,17

In the fifteenth year of the rule of Caesar Tiberius,…John, Zachariah's son, out in the desert at the time, received a message from God. He went all through the country around the Jordan River preaching a baptism of life-change leading to forgiveness of sins, as described in the words of Isaiah the prophet:

Thunder in the desert! "Prepare God's arrival!
Make the road smooth and straight!
Every ditch will be filled in, every bump smoothed out,
The detours straightened out, all the ruts paved over.
Everyone will be there to see the parade of God's salvation."

But John intervened: "I'm baptizing you here in the river. The main character in this drama, to whom I'm a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He's going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He'll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he'll put out with the trash to be burned."
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God, we start our season of preparation in hope. Teach us to listen to the thunder in the desert. Show us how to recognize your voice in storm and in silence. God, Emmanuel, take the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts and fill them with your Holy Spirit. Amen

Welcome to Advent, that time of year filled with promise and hope, busyness and celebrations, happiness and, for some, if we are being honest, even despair. But we are called to pause and listen, to prepare and hope. Welcome to a different kind of Advent this year, an Advent of watching and waiting with expectant hearts, of seeking and learning with eyes that see, and of gratitude and exultation with hearts full of praise.
Now, like many of you, I grew up in traditions that never spoke of Advent. We went directly from “We Gather Together to ask the Lord’s blessings” to “The First Noel”, with barely a missed beat. Then, when I entered what I call my Episcopalian years, I made the marvelous discovery of a season when I could take the time to deliberately “change gears” if you will, and move gracefully from the fall season poignant with gratitude to a season of anticipation and surprise. This is truly reading the story with new eyes. For we know not only how the story begins but how it ends as well. But I promise you, God has more to teach us during this time and so I make a pledge to those of you who are reluctant to join us on the road to Bethlehem—if you will put aside what you thought you knew about the wonderful passages relating to the conception and birth of Jesus, our Savior, I will do my very best, with God’s help, to give us new ways to look at a very, very, very old story. For this is what Advent calls us to do, so put on your sandals, it’s a long dusty walk to Bethlehem.
Our first reading today is one of the Pilgrim Songs in the Book of Psalms. You can see why they are called such, they are full of the ponderings of a Pilgrim, a pilgrim such as we may be this day—tired, confused, and looking for answers—lamentation is mixed with praise, but what emerges, most of all, is hope. This Psalm, in its simple language shows us why we wait for the coming of our Lord, listen again—in honest words more like the way we are apt to approach God when our hopelessness and need overwhelm us. No long, theological words, here—just our hearts to God’s heart who hears us like this:
God, help us, our lives are not what they should be, God, we’re talking to you, are you listening?
We need you to really listen, stop what you are doing and listen to us. We need your mercy.
We know, God, that if you kept track of all the times we’ve have turned our backs on you, all the times we have not cared about living for you, we wouldn’t stand a chance of having you hear us.
But, we believe you when you say that you are a forgiving God, that you don’t count the times we have fallen short of your will for us. And we are grateful.
That is why, when things are not what we want them to be, we come to you again. We’re trying to keep you in the forefront in everything we do, and make everything about our lives a prayer to you.
Our lives, what you want us to be, are on the line this time; we’re watching and waiting all night for something better in the morning.
Wait! We hear your promise. You are coming again and you are bringing your redemption to the world in new ways, ways we haven’t experienced. There’s no doubt about it, you have something new and wonderful waiting for us to find.
And so we wait. And as we wait, we find ourselves in the exact same place as the Jewish people right before Jesus arrives. Like many of us, the Jews were waiting for something big—something royal, with loud parades escorting in the new ruler. We are not so different—we count on politics or the economy or a charismatic teacher and preacher to make the difference in our lives. We, quite frankly, not only want it all, we want it all in a Triple X-large portion.
And God knows all about us, knows that it is not likely a baby could come and make a difference, or even warrant a glimpse from us folk so busy with other things. So, we along with our ancient Jewish friends need something to grab our attention. Along comes John the Baptizer, a cousin to Jesus, and, as the story has it, was first to recognize Jesus as the Lord while both babies were still in the womb.
However, at the start of today’s story, John is grown and in the desert. A mysterious and odd sort of person, he is waiting for a word from God. And, then, with little warning, he not only receives a message from God, he immediately begins preaching of all that is to come. So we have John, a rather uncivilized fellow, having spent years in the desert preparing for this day, beginning his rather short ministry in a powerful, straightforward way, calling people to prepare, to repent, and to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.
His ministry echoes a very important prophesy from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah:
Thunder in the desert! "Prepare God's arrival!
Make the road smooth and straight!
Every ditch will be filled in, every bump smoothed out,
The detours straightened out, all the ruts paved over.
Everyone will be there to see the parade of God's salvation."
The crowd goes wild. Here is what they believe they have been waiting for. Not quite a king, at least not in the way they envisioned, but what he says makes sense and, most importantly, he gives them hope. John, the Baptizer doesn’t take up much space in the New Testament—a fact he would find fitting—so thoroughly did he understand his place in the scheme of things. John had the opportunity to take credit for all that was happening, as he was drawing crowds of people—hundreds of them—all wanting to hear him and be baptized. They tried to worship him but, scripture says that he put a stop to it. He says, all I am doing is preparing you for an encounter with God, an encounter like you have never experienced before.
He wants, even demands that everyone understand that His baptism is secondary to the acts and salvation of Jesus, the one who is coming. Now we’ve all seen school children in a play or, perhaps, a Christmas drama at church. Invariably, one child wants to be the center of attraction, pushing another aside, sometimes subtlety, sometimes not so much. And, unless you are unlucky enough to be the parent or grandparent of the “it’s all about me kid”, it is quite humorous to watch one shepherd try to push the other shepherd out of the cattle stall and off to the side. However, it is to this secondary role that all of us, as believers, are called to anew at Advent. As ministers for and of Christ, we learn, and here is great hope, that the true encounter of Christ comes after our preparation work—not by our willing it to be so, but by God’s word. When telling the story anew, we have the role of John, speaking and acting, and most of all living, in such ways that others will want what we have in Christ. John’s promise is our promise as well—the gift that brings us a new kind of hope this year. He tells us that Jesus will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. Whether as John, standing knee deep in the river or the hundreds waiting on the bank, we watch and wait and keep the focus of the world on he who is to come. As we prepare our own hearts, we invite others to come along to join us on this dusty road to Bethlehem.
And, herein, lies our hope. We do not have to manufacture this encounter with God, through Jesus Christ. No, we need only be ready. We don’t have to drum up some sort of magnificent festival. We merely listen for the thunder in the desert, telling us to be ready—can you hear it? The proclamation sounds—Jesus is coming again this year, not only as a baby, but as the one who changes our hearts and lives from the inside out. And hope arrives in simple words, “O, come Lord Jesus, come”! Amen and amen.