Mark 1:1 - 8
When I was growing up, Advent was like Lent, only shorter; and at the end of Advent instead of a chocolate Easter bunny, you got lots of presents. So I preferred Advent.
As you know, I”m a bible geek. So I was excited when I read the readings for this second Sunday of advent. If you were listening, you would have heard Isaiah saying: “A voice cries out: ‘in the desert prepare the way of the Lord!’” Now Mark quotes this passage slightly differently. “A voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘prepare the way of the Lord.’” So what gives here? Well, it turns out that I’m not the first one who noticed this difference. Reputable biblical scholars have two possible explanations. One is that Mark is quoting from a Greek version of the Old Testament, and the original Hebrew was closer to the passage from Isaiah. Another is that when Mark wrote his gospel, they didn’t use commas or periods or quotation marks; later scribes put in these things where they thought they should go. And the earliest texts available have been through several scribal modifications.
So maybe Mark is talking about John the Baptist as the voice in the desert; but Isaiah is saying “in the desert prepare the way of the Lord.” What does that mean? Because to the people of that time the desert was a place far from civilization, a place full of snakes and other dangerous beasts, a place where you were thrown back on your own resources -- there was no one to help you. And Isaiah is saying, that's where you have to go to prepare for the Lord.
So what does the desert mean to you and I? It’s a place we don’t want to be in, for one thing. It’s a place where we realize that our resources are inadequate, that we are helpless and all we can do is wait for someone to rescue us. We’ve probably all experienced this unwanted place -- the loss of a loved one, coming down with a serious illness, finding ourselves without a job -- even dealing with Covid. As I can tell you from personal experience, whenever I reflect on the very real fact that I have a lot less life to live than I’ve already lived, and it will be downhill to the end, I am in that desert.
Second, in the desert you aren’t distracted by trees and flowers and city lights and newspapers and light shining from screens large and small. In the desert it’s easier to be aware of your sins. When we think of sins, if you are like me, you generally think of acts which are forbidden -- immoral acts, breaking the ten commandments, those kinds of things. And if you have some of that old Catholic guilt, you imagine that God is offended by what you’ve done, or hurt, or angry, and unless you get right with God you will be punished. But you can't really offend God, or hurt him, or even make him angry. Sin is a problem because it harms us. Think about a lie. Once you lie to someone, you have to worry about that person learning the truth; you have changed your relationship with him for the worse; you have changed the way you see yourself -- You’ve made yourself a little less human with that lie -- and every sin is like that. And if we confront our sins and confess them and receive a share of our Savior's redeeming passion, we experience relief and reconciliation.
Lastly, in the desert we see what needs to be done. Isaiah talks about every valley being filled up and every mountain laid low. In the desert we can clearly see our own mountains and valleys, all the things that interfere with the relationship we want to have with God and with our neighbor. And in the desert we can make a new start with the help of God/’s grace to become better people.
The descendants of Abraham waited four hundred years, most of them as wanderers and even as slaves, for deliverance. When God sent Moses to deliver them, they first had to pass through the purifying years in the desert. When you read the story of their deliverance, you see that God was always there, shaping them, sometimes harshly, it seems. And they didn’t want to be there. They rebelled more than once. They longed for the food and drink that was theirs when they were slaves. They decided that the God who had promised to save them was untrustworthy, and they fashioned a god of their own out of gold. But in the desert under God’s guiding hand they became a people set apart; a people special to God, a people who would be given a land of their own in which to become a great nation.
During Advent let us allow the Holy Spirit to drive us into the desert. Let us ask Him to level the mountains that keep us from seeing what we need to see; let him fill the valleys in which we get lost; and then we can make straight the way of the Lord.
