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‘B’ // Advent 2 // 12-7-08 // Celebration of Worship, Northside Presbyterian
Scriptures Isaiah 40:1-11 Mark 1:1-8
Good News: Our Uncomfortable Comfort
Exile. That place in life where we discover – or, more frustratingly yet, where we simply feel – we exist apart from, rather than a part of.
We’ve all been there. It can take the form of a loud cry out of the wilderness of our despair. It can take the form of a quiet sense of grief we guard midst the madding crowd of Yuletide frolic. However expressed, experiences of exile leave us apt to take a wintry leave of an advent of hope and promise.
Exile. Apart from, rather than a part of. We’ve all been there.
Our own narratives of exile may find a home in the gospel narrative today. Many of us, after all, know that sense of separation that can lead to a monotonous diet, if not locusts and wild honey and a camel’s hair coat, then perhaps peanut butter sandwiches and Honey Nut Cheerios and dark parkas. It’s the drone and doze of human hibernation: little light in … little light out.
Exile. Ranting inwardly with John the baptizer, out in the desert wilderness of our isolation.
A narrative curiously framed by Mark’s opening words: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
What a strange thing, this framework – until we discover what that good news can possibly mean for us.
Hear these words again: a simply proclamation echoing forth from a community worshiping in permanent exile from the prevailing powers-that-be: “The beginning of the euaggelion” – the good news, the gospel – “of Jesus, the Christ.”
Euaggelion: “Good news … glad tidings.” A Greek word normally associated not with the experience of the exiled, but with the experience of the elite. It’s a highly technical term, actually – one found often in Roman imperial propaganda. A word used to announce “a military victory on the far-flung frontiers of the Pax Romana, or the accession to power of a new emperor … trumpeted as ‘glad tidings’ throughout the empire. (Often related to the) Caesar … eulogized as a ‘divine man’ on coins and in emperor-cults.
“In contrast, Mark (today) offers (us) decidedly non-imperial ‘good news’ about … a Jewish ‘Christ’.”1
But, wait – hold the caroling! It’s Advent. Jesus is not here. Not yet.
So, for the time being, here we rest. “The beginning.” In exile, with John the Baptizer. A man who makes his stand on the wilderness margins of the world. Challenging all from inside and outside of the Jerusalem beltway, who flock to hear him – and flock they do! Abandoning their “prosperity theologians” to hear a man with remarkable integrity lay it plain to them in a time of great economic turmoil. And John lays it plain – laying aside all blame – challenging his charges, rural and urbane, to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.
Picture it: Not only those from the countryside, but “all the people of Jerusalem” – the learned, the cosmopolitan, the well-sandaled – flock into John’s place of exile to learn how to be led out of their lives of exile.
Don’t you just love it? They are drawn into exile – to be led out of their exile. The new, uncomfortable good news, the euaggelion, that would subvert the old, comfortable euaggelion the people have always known: the Roman war-and-debt machine. The new, uncomfortable good news that (a) Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God – and, because he is – and here is the uncomfortable part – (b) Caesar and his war-and-debt empire are not.
For it was not just the primary allegiance of the first Christians to the good news of Jesus that cost them their lives. It was that their primary allegiance was no longer to the “good news” promised by Rome.
And by Wall Street. By Washington. By bailouts. By Black Fridays.
But with the good news of Jesus at-hand, we nurture the hope of a new creation. The hope that we need not live in exile from the prophetic word, any more.
For the prophetic word is ultimately a pastoral word. Hear the words of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah today: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says (our) God.” Calling the leaders of Israel out of their exile in Babylon.
A comfort of good news to come that should make them all – and make us all – feel very uncomfortable. For why enjoy this good news – why glorify God and enjoy God forever, as our Reformed faith tradition teaches us – when all we’ve ever prayed for is to just live quietly in this war-and-debt world. To just get through this winter … this recession … this Christmas, in one piece?
For how can we enjoy the good news that John points the way to, and Jesus would have to offer us, when we just can’t imagine – better put: we don’t dare imagine – how good our God really is? And what tapping into that goodness could mean for our discipleship? For our lives?
This is the comfort of the opening gospel salvo today: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God.” This pastoral comfort that should make us all feel very prophetically uncomfortable.
On my best days, I remember the prayer mantra a spiritual guide has taught me: “God: Show me today how good you are!”
That simple prayer helps more than any other prayer I know to move me out of the exile of my unrepentant self and into the sunshine of a life of forgiveness. Forgiveness of others … forgiveness of self.
For that simple prayer moves me from defining goodness as I would define it to opening myself up to good news as God would offer it. A good news I would otherwise not imagine.
“God: Show me today how good you are!”
And that’s my prayer for this congregation, as well.
A prayer to move us beyond of our individual exiles – from one another, from the world, from the social schizophrenia of an economic recession and a Christmas consumer procession – (this prayer moves us beyond these individual exiles) to the good news comfort of ministering with and among uncomfortable prophets such as this baptizer named John.
Toward the end of 2006, our Session at that time set for us five three-year goals to fulfill. If you don’t know or recall a single one of them right now – don’t fret: They can be difficult to wrap our heads around, and some of them we've practically accomplished simply by living into God's hope for us. Besides, we’ll hear about them plenty as we draw closer to the end of those three years next fall.
And we’ll especially hear more about the one of those five our Session over the past two years has singled out for particular concern:
“Goal IV: Expand outreach efforts to create a greater presence for Northside within the broader community with a focus on efforts that connect the congregation to organizations and demographics not typically associated with the church.” In shorthand: “Expand outreach efforts … that connect (us) to (those) not typically associated with (us).”
Advance toward this goal is what our much-ballyhooed journey called a dedicated outreach partnership is all about: leading us to reach out, as the goal says, “to organizations and demographics not typically associated with the church.”
Advance toward this goal is what our More Light & Peacemaking Team – eight persons strong – has been working hard these last few months to lead us toward discerning.
Advance toward this goal is all about the hopeful, Advent experience of drawing comfort from a God who will show us how good God is if we just let him do it.
If we just allow her to draw us into that seemingly uncomfortable place that would comfort us out of our "safe" places.
Out of our exiles.
In this spiritual season of preparation vis a vis this sacrilegious season of proactivity, the cries of John the Baptizer whisper sweet Advent music into our ears: Let us let go … and let us let God. Let go, of where we think our comfort lies: a place of virtual exile where we would “safely” remain. Never asking that much from our God – a God whose goodness would just make us too uncomfortable. Remaining in Babylon … for fear of getting to Bethlehem.
So let us let go of our exiles … and let us let God lead us, to prepare the way for the uncomfortable comfort of God’s kingdom to come.
John the baptizer beckons us. We just don’t know where yet.
But let us trust that, when we do: Jesus awaits us there.
It may not happen this Advent season. And yet – if you’ll pardon the pun – it’s an advent-ure of good news that awaits us all.
Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.
* * *
Benediction …
This Advent season, John the baptizer beckons us. We just don’t know where yet.
But let us trust that, when we do: Jesus’ way awaits us there.
Go out into the world in peace, to love and serve our servant Lord.
1Ched Myers, et. al., Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), p. 6. | 
