The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
Today's reading from the prophet Isaiah could easily be written about the
people of our time and our culture. Like the people to whom Isaiah preached, we
have lived among folks who have no god, or a mixture of pagan gods, such as
political and entertainment personalities, groups like political parties and
various interest groups, and idols, including such things as pride, money,
power, fame, and our own desires. Since we have invested so much of our time and
energy in these things, we have largely lost sight of God and what he has taught
us, and what he requires of us: justice and mercy toward others, and committed
worship, obedience and loyalty to himself. Isaiah's prophecy calls on the angels
and other beings of heaven to comfort the people who have lost hope and faith in
God's promises. We, also, need that kind of comfort, which gives us strength. We
need to be reminded that God's promises are rock-solid and true, unlike our own
promises which tend to be overlooked or forgotten in the hurly-burly of our
daily life (when was the last time, for example, that you examined yourself on
the keeping of your Baptismal and Confirmation promises?) The comfort Isaiah
speaks of is basically the encouragement and support that we need to be able to
obey God and serve him in others.
Isaiah points out that much of the problems and troubles of our lives are in
fact punishment for our straying away from God's commands. The Israelites of
Isaiah's day strayed from God's ways and were punished by the destruction of
their Temple (because they did not truly worship, and their religion was only
nominal) and the defeat of their country. Many were carried away as captives to
be slaves in Babylon. Most of us can look back at our own lives and see that we
have strayed from the ways we were brought up to observe, and we can trace some
of the punishments that we received as a result: broken marriages, economic
hardships and the like. But, Isaiah says, God has forgiven us, because we have
been punished enough. It's time to come back home, back to Jerusalem for them,
back to living a Christian life for us. And so we are told to build a new,
straight highway in our hearts, a highway to lead us back not to Jerusalem, but
to God himself. Perhaps to the people of that day, the idea of building a
straight, new highway might remind them of the Babylonian and Roman custom of
building a straight, wide, smooth highway for triumphal processions. Our return
to God's ways would truly be a triumphal procession back to the arms of God,
back to a life of holiness and obedience. The early Church bishop, Origen, says:
The way of the Lord must be prepared within the heart; but great and
spacious is the heart of man, as if it were the whole world. But its greatness
lies not in bodily measurements, but in the power of the mind which enables it
to take in such great a knowledge as the truth. Prepare, therefore, the way of
the Lord in your hearts by a worthy manner of life. Keep straight the way of
your life, so that the words of the Lord may enter in without any hindrance.
And that, of course, is what Advent is all about.
The epistle for today is taken from the second letter of Peter to the church.
He wrote several decades after Jesus had been crucified and resurrected, and had
returned to heaven. Jesus had promised to come again, soon. But he still had not
returned, and some of the early Christians had given up believing or hoping that
he would come back to earth in majesty, as judge and Lord. So, they felt, it was
not necessary to pay so much attention to keeping God's laws. If Jesus had not
come back yet, he probably wasn't going to come back at all....and so they might
as well get on with life, doing their own thing, living according to their own
preferences, and not worry so much about being holy and obeying the Law. Doesn't
that sound like us, today? Peter called them back to a holy and careful
observance of God's commands, to a life lived according to Jesus' principles.
God's promise, Peter said, is reliable and dependable. Jesus IS coming back, and
we had better make a point of being ready for his coming, because we will have
no warning at all of when it might occur.
The Gospel for today is the beginning paragraphs of Mark's Gospel.
Gospel means good news, and Mark feels strongly that the
fact that Jesus has come among us is indeed good news. Most people did not know
or recognize Jesus as the Messiah or as God during his time on earth. They saw
him simply as a good man, a rabbi who could teach clearly what God's law means.
It was not until many miracles had occurred that some began to wonder if he was
the Messiah that Isaiah and Malachi had prophesied would come. And it was not
until after Jesus' death and resurrection that it became clear to some---still
not all---of his followers that he is indeed God. Sadly, it is still not clear
to all people, even today. Perhaps it would be helpful to us, this new Church
year, to listen to our weekly Gospel readings from Mark, and try to understand
how the people who came to hear Jesus preach, and to ask for a miracle, saw
Jesus. We are so used to thinking of him as God the Son that we tend to overlook
the fact that he is BOTH 100% God and 100% human. Perhaps giving some attention
to this fact during the coming Church year will help us to understand better
what Jesus said and did, and why he said and did those things.
We also need to remember that the two parts of our Bible, the Old and New
Testaments, are not separate. They are one continuous story, written by many
different people at different places and different times. This, scholars think,
may be one reason Mark began his Gospel as he did: The beginning of the
good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Mark was not writing about
the beginning of Jesus, but about the beginning of the good news that came with
Jesus, the promises of redemption, forgiveness, unconditional love and
acceptance. Jesus, of course, was with God before the creation of the world, as
St. John tells us. Jesus assisted the Father in creating all things. We cannot
pinpoint any time at which God and Jesus began. But there was a time when the
good news about Jesus began to be known. When did YOU first learn the Good News
about Jesus? Who told it to you? And to whom have you told it? What difference
has it made in your life, or the lives of those with whom you have shared it?
What difference will you be able to say it has made in your life, when Jesus
comes again?
Amen.
