A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

2nd Sunday of Advent, December 4, 2005

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., DeWitt, NY  13214

Phone:  315-446-0960     FAX:  446-0672

phillchu@twcny.rr.com     http://pebblehill.presbychurch.org

          “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  Those are the opening words of the Gospel According to Mark, generally accepted as the first of the four gospel accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus to be written.  After this opening line, Mark doesn’t begin his story where the other gospel writers begin (at least the most similar ones, Matthew and Luke), with the birth of Jesus – which, chronologically speaking, one might expect.  No, Mark begins by quoting old prophet Isaiah about the messenger sent by God, crying out in the wilderness about preparing a way for the Lord who is coming.  Then he talks about John the Baptist, who clearly is seen in this role as God’s messenger.  And what is his message?  Well, it seems that John had only one sermon, perhaps delivered in different ways, but one basic message.  Mark tells us he preached “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  Mark says also that “the whole country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem” came to be baptized by John in the Jordan River and to confess their sins.  A pretty powerful messenger.  A pretty powerful message! 

          So the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ has to do with something else before Jesus even shows up, which in Mark is not as a baby but as an adult.  It has to do with the preparations needed to receive the one whose sandals, John claims, he is “not worthy to stoop down and untie.”  Those preparations include repenting of your sins and being baptized.  This is how, even as the church has formalized it and ritualized it over the centuries, a person comes into relationship with God through Christ in the life of the church, the community of believers.

          Repentance and forgiveness seem to have more to do with Lent than with Advent, at least as we have come to observe these weeks leading up to Christmas in our society and in the church.  Preparations have more to do with purchases and parties and decorating.  Earlier generations of Christians observed Advent quite differently.  For 1,500 years or so, the weeks before Christmas were considered a solemn season, a holy time marked by prayer, penitence, and daily fasting.  (We start fasting after January 1!)  Weddings were discouraged during Advent; choir processions were silent.  Purple was the color of the season, to remind people of their sins.  Most of the Advent hymns were written in a mournful, minor key.  Advent was even called “The Winter Lent.”

          Sometime around 1500, one of the Stuart Kings of England, James the IV, established a tradition.  He, and his entourage, would leave London in time to arrive at the village of Linlithgow, north of Edinburgh, Scotland, where the Stuarts maintained a palace, by December 6.  The king and his court would enjoy themselves hunting, fishing, and partying every single day from December 6 to Christmas Eve.  After a brief break for worship on Christmas morning and again on Christmas afternoon, they would return to their partying and feasting without a break until Epiphany on January 6.  Only then would the king return to London and the business of state.  Commenting on this custom, George Bass writes, “(This has) been the popular nature of Advent ever since . . . Christians in America have been able, through opportunity and prosperity, to keep Advent as kings and queens once did, instead of keeping watch for the King of kings.”

          Well, I don’t think there are many of us who can afford the time or the expense to observe Advent quite as James the IV did – but the point is well taken.  The Advent scripture readings, if not our actual practices, do indeed point toward a different kind of “readiness” for Christ’s coming into the world than our customs of preparing for the holiday might indicate. 

          (As a parenthetical note, this is the point at which it would be difficult not to comment on the brewing controversy this year over how to designate the public celebrations and decorations of the season – whether, for example, it should be called a “Christmas tree” or a “holiday tree” so as not to offend those who are not Christian.  I am of two minds about it.  On the one hand it strikes me as patently ridiculous, even if politically correct, to call the Christmas season and its largely cultural customs anything but that – after all, it is the Christmas holiday that we are celebrating.  But on the other hand I have half a mind to say of the proponents of the more generic “holiday” celebration, let them have it!  Maybe then it would force the church to be more intentional and more purposeful in observing the true meaning of the season, for Christians, rather than the central focus on the commercial and consumer aspects.)

          Our gospel reading this morning, which quotes from our Old Testament reading in Isaiah, places the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ not in a stable or in a manger, but in the wilderness, which, in addition to where John preached, has always served as a powerful metaphor for a place or a time of testing, when or where it is just you, facing the powers or forces that challenge or threaten you, as Jesus was tempted and tested by Satan in the wilderness.  It is a place where we find ourselves sometimes, when life puts us there.  It would seem to be a place we’d want to avoid, and mostly do if we can, for who would willingly take themselves to a place where they are so exposed and so vulnerable?  And yet, as Mark tells us, “all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem” went out into the wilderness to hear John’s harsh message, confess their sins and be baptized.  Now it might be a slight exaggeration to say that everyone in Judea and the whole population of Jerusalem went out there, but we might allow Mark a little leeway here, because we do know that John had a hugely popular following.

          What is it about being confronted with our sinfulness that has such appeal, not to everyone, to be sure, but to those who bring themselves to that place?  It has to be because we can sense in it the possibility of a new beginning – the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, in us.  It’s a message that draws us, even in its harshness, because sinfulness is harsh, and if we are honest, which is what the wilderness demands, its power is extensive in our world, and pervasive in our own lives – and if we deny it is so, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “we deceive ourselves and are strangers to the truth.”  The wilderness is where we are invited to become familiar with the truth about ourselves, and we realize that we have a choice: we realize we can live oriented toward the sinfulness that “clings so closely,” or we can live oriented toward God.  If you don’t like the word “sin,” then substitute the word “self” – to live oriented toward the self or toward God.  Whichever part of ourselves we feed more, with our time and attention and energy, will grow.

          Another “English” illustration.  There is a rather common bird in England called the English cuckoo, which never builds a nest of its own.  When it comes time to produce an egg, the cuckoo finds another nest with eggs in it and no parent bird watching over it, and hurriedly flies into the nest and lays its egg among the other bird’s eggs, and then flies off.  That is the extent of the cuckoo’s parenting.

          Say it’s a thrush nest.  The mother thrush returns, and not being very good at arithmetic, doesn’t notice that there’s an additional egg in her nest, even though the cuckoo’s egg is much bigger than her own eggs.  She sits on all the eggs until they hatch.  Say four tiny thrushes and one huge cuckoo bird are hatched.  The baby cuckoo will be three or four times the size of a baby thrush, but for the mother thrush it doesn’t matter.  It’s in her nest, she considers it hers.

          And so, being a good mother, she flies off every morning early to get a worm.  She flies back and sees four tiny thrush mouths opened up and peeping – and one huge cuckoo mouth.  Guess who gets the worm?  The cuckoo gets bigger and bigger, and the baby thrushes get smaller and smaller.  They say its fairly easy in England to find a baby cuckoo in a nest.  Simply walk along the hedge row and look for little dead baby thrushes on the ground.  The cuckoo, as it grows bigger, throws them out, one by one.  Mother Thrush will end up feeding a cuckoo that’s three times as big as herself.

          Sin has a way of taking over, growing larger, sometimes even consuming us.  What we “feed” is what will grow – whether it be our anger, bitterness, revenge-seeking pride, greed for power or possessions, self-destructive habits or behaviors, belittling or using others, lust, self-pity, these things we know can consume us and work to destroy what is best within us.  Advent is a time for preparation, for examining ourselves - changing patterns, confronting old habits, turning or turning back to God, which is the definition of repentance - to turn, change direction, start anew.  For one is coming who stoops down to serve us and to save us, and all he asks is for us to receive him and what he has go give.  In order to do so we simply have to turn in his direction, with honest and contrite hearts, and with great thanksgiving.

          That on which we “feed” is what will grow in us.  With open hands and open hearts let us receive what the Lord has to give, and being fed by his love and mercy, turn again toward our world, renewed by the healing power of the Holy Spirit to love and serve in the peace of Immanuel, who is God with us.

* The story of James the IV and the English cuckoo story are from “Don’t Forget the Child” by Alex Gondola.

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