Mark 1:1-8
One day in the old west a cowboy
galloped into a little town. “Big Jake is coming” he said. The
people all rushed into their homes, nailed boards over the windows
and doors, and the ones that had storm cellars hid in them. The
bartender was just finishing barricading a window when a huge man
with an evil expression on his face burst through the door and
demanded a whiskey. The bartender poured the drink, the man threw it
back and glared at the bartender. He timidly said, “Would you like
another?” The man replied, “I wish I could, but I'm getting out
of town. Big Jake is coming.”
I love the gospel of Mark. No story
of Jesus' infancy or geneology; nothing about how Jesus was the Word
of God from all eternity; Mark just dives in with these verses about
John the Baptist. But with Mark, you always have to be aware that he
says a lot in just a few words. Look at how he describes John:
Clothed in camel hair, with a diet of locusts and honey. It's a
wonder that anyone at all followed him, right? People in those days
were just as wary of wierdos as we are today. If we saw someone on
the street wearing nothing but a camel's hair tunic and eating bugs
dipped in honey, we would probably notify the authorities. But
whether or not John actually wore camel's hair and had a diet as
described, Mark's Jewish readers would get the point. They knew that
in the first book of Kings Elijah, the greatest of their prophets,
had been clothed in camel's hair. As for the locusts anytime you
meet a locust in the Old Testament, something bad is going to happen.
And the enemies of the Israelites are always being compared to
locusts. Some people say that the idea of John eating locusts points
to the fact that the new order he is bringing in to being will defeat
once and for all the enemies of Israel. And the honey, well, we know
that Israel was described as a land of milk and honey, and one of the
psalms promises that God will feed Israel honey from a rock. Honey
has to do with the promise of good things. John comes out of the
wilderness – where Adam and Eve had been exiled. God is finally
ready to set things right. And John baptizes people with water. If
you were a gentile and wanted to become a Jew, you went through a
ritual bath. John, whose father was a priest, had a hereditary right
to the priesthood, and his baptism was the beginning of a new
Jerusalem.
So this new Elijah comes to establish
a new Israel, and you can listen to him and be part of it, symbolized
by the honey, or you can reject his message and be on the side of the
locusts.
So it is important to listen to John's
message. The first thing he tells his followers is that Big Jake is
coming. If you think John is great, wait till you meet the one he
points to. We get that. But John is offering a baptism of
repentance. As you've heard many times, the Greek word does not mean
feeling sorry for your sins. It means “change your mind” or “turn
around”. Probably another phrase would be “look at yourselves!”
When we read about John in the gospels, that's kind of what he is
getting people to do. He tells tax collectors to collect only what
is due, because most of them collected as much as they could get away
with. He tells soldiers to be content with their pay, because most
of them took bribes and used their positions for extortion. He tells
Herod that his marriage to his half-brother's divorced wife is
unlawful. He calls the authorities a “brood of vipers” because
they think being descended from Abraham makes them special.
Now the thing about repentance is that
it is the easy part. Like John, who recognized his unworthiness,
most of us are quite capable of recognizing our own faults and sins
if we take a good look. We are even better, of course, in pointing
out the sins and faults of other people, as was John. But if you are
like me, and you are, the really hard thing is to break a bad habit,
to get rid of those sins we confess over and over. It's much easier
to just tell ourselves that these things aren't so bad, that other
people are worse, that I just don't have the willpower I need. And
we find that our lives don't change much from year to year, and we
don't see the change we would like.
And that is John's issue. He can tell
what's wrong, he can even get you to see what's wrong in yourself,
but he can't fix it. You can't fix it.
But Big Jake can fix it. The one who
is coming with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Because as any member
of Alcoholics Anonymous can tell you, breaking an addiction requires
something more than yourself, call it grace, a higher power,
something like that. And that's the longing in everyone's heart –
that someone lifts the burden of sin from our shoulders, because we
can't do it ourselves.
And that's what we should probably
take away from our encounter with John the Baptist. Because even
those of us who believe often seem to think that if only we had more
willpower, if only we prayed more, fasted more, gave more to charity,
disciplined ourselves, we could free ourselves from all that keeps us
from being truly happy. And that's wrong. It is only when we open
ourselves up to the fire of the Holy Spirit, it's only when we get
out of God's way and let him work on us that we will finally make
progress in our spiritual lives.
So how do we do that? We don't. We
wait, we pray, we let go so that God will do in us what he has
promised. It isn't easy because that's not how we who always want to
be in control are designed. But at the same time, it requires no
effort on our part.
So that is a purpose of Advent, to
remember that we are a people in need of saving, a people who cannot
save themselves. And we wait for the savior, but with the confidence
that he is coming as he promised.
