Sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Advent: ‘A Voice Cries in the Wilderness; Prepare the Way of the Lord.’; preached at the Eucharist, Sherborne Abbey on Sunday, 10 December 2023 by the Reverend Rebecca McDonnell (2 Peter Ch 3: v 8 – 15a; Mark Ch 1: v 1 – 8)
I remember doing a service on John the Baptist years ago, when we had a pet bearded dragon. His favourite food was locusts, which we had to buy live from the pet shop in tubs. I brought a box of these locusts into church to show the children what it was John the Baptist was eating out in the desert. You’ll be glad to know I haven’t brought any locusts with me today, but it is an interesting character note the Gospel writers add about John the Baptist. Out in the wild lands, eating locusts and honey, and wearing camel hair. He was obviously something of an eccentric character, however I won’t go on about him too much as his ‘official’ Sunday is next week. Our four advent candles here each represent something that help us prepare for and focus on the Christmas story. Today’s candle represents the prophets, and what is most interesting about the details of John the Baptist wearing camel hair and eating locusts, is this was to associate him with the prophet Elijah, echoing a dependence on God.
We have another prophet mentioned in our reading today, Isaiah, and a direct quote from the book of Isaiah. This is the Old Testament reading in the lectionary for today, but here in the very opening words of Mark it is repeated. In Isaiah it says ‘A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’ And this is who John the Baptist is, the last in the line of the prophets, the voice crying out in the wilderness. There is a reason why we have readings from Isaiah during our advent preparations. What the prophets foretold about the Messiah, comes to pass in the person of Jesus, and in the nativity narratives.
The start of Mark’s gospel has such an urgency about it, it is saying, ‘the time is now!’ Today our readings, and our advent candle, remind us to focus on this preparation, on this coming, as John points us to the person of Jesus, his is the voice in the wilderness, telling us to prepare. Not just preparing our homes, our dinner tables, our presents under the tree. But preparing our lives, and our hearts.
Advent is a season that is all about preparation, and all also, about waiting. There are different kinds of waiting- excitedly waiting (for Santa) nervous or anxious waiting for test results, for surgery, for exam results; bored waiting, for a bus or in the queue at the post office; frustrated waiting when plane or train has been delayed; we can’t put into words the waiting for news of a loved one taken hostage or waiting to hear if they’re still alive. So, what are we waiting for? We are patiently, and expectantly waiting, for the birth of Christ. But what does it mean to wait for a birth that took place in history 2,000 years ago.
I’m going to get quite nerdy with you now, as I’m secretly a bit of a geek. It’s all to do with how we experience time, as advent, all this preparation and waiting is about time, and time is not as solid and straightforward as you might think. As it said in our reading from 2 Peter, ‘with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.’ I don’t know if you’ve been watching the latest episodes of Dr Who on the TV? David Tennant is back as the 14th doctor. He’s a timelord, and travels through time and space, not travelling in a linear, forward fashion. He does this in the TARDIS, which stands for ‘time and relative dimensions in space.’
For us here, it is the liturgy that acts as our time machine. We experience our normal lives as chronos time, one thing happening after another, moving ever forward. Liturgical time is what we experience in worship, a sort of ‘timey-wimey ball’ as the doctor would say. Or more accurately, time folds, like a piece of paper, so when we celebrate the Eucharist, we aren’t just recounting what happened at the Last Supper, it’s a dynamic remembering, that point in history becomes alive to us again in God’s presence.
I’m sorry if I’ve lost you here, but I’m trying to say that as we wait, and prepare, time for us changes, and the birth of Christ is made alive and new for us each year, each remembering. There is another type of time, Kairos time, where God breaks through into our lives; when John said ‘I baptise you with water but there is one coming who will baptise with the Holy Spirit’ he knew he was preparing for the ultimate time of God breaking through into our lives, and that will be something we experience at Christmas.
Advent also reminds us that we are not just waiting for the birth of Christ, again, but also waiting for Christ’s second coming. As it says in 2 Peter ‘in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. While you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace.’ We must have our metaphorical shoes, hat, and coat on at all times, we can’t get complacent in our waiting. We do not know what time the heavenly bus will pull into the earthly bus stop!!
And we can use the time we have to prepare. We must be found by him to be at peace; the second candle of advent is also used to represent ‘peace,’ and that is something much needed in our world today. We may be overwhelmed by our newspaper headlines but must never cease to be fervent in our prayers for peace in our world.
John was seen as a bit of a crazy person in his day, and it is probably true to say that we, as followers of Christ, are perceived that way by many people of our day. We may not eat locusts and wear camel hair (I hope not.) But maybe we seem a bit weird to people who haven’t encountered God’s transformational and transcendent love. This season is the perfect time where we welcome people into our churches who wouldn’t normally come, where we can give the simple, yet life changing message of Jesus born for us, of God’s love for all, of peace on earth.
A message of hope that near gets tired no matter how many times we go through this cycle. And we, being brave, taking inspiration from the prophets before us, can share our own personal stories of faith, of what the preparation and the waiting really means to us. So now it is time for us to be the prophets of our generation, whether by the things we say but also by the things we do and the way we live our lives and treat others; to be the voice crying in the wilderness ‘prepare the way of the Lord!’