Scripture: Mark 1:1-8
A blessed Advent to everyone!
Let me begin by telling you what I am planning on doing for the sermons during the Sundays in Advent. It’s something I’ve never done before, haven’t even thought of doing before, though it’s a pretty simple idea and I’m not exactly sure why this has not occurred to me before. There are four Sundays in Advent. There are four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I decided to take one gospel each Sunday and reflect on the Christmas story as it appears in that gospel, giving a separate voice to each gospel rather than smushing the different versions all together into one story, which it seems to me is what we typically do.
Advent is a time of preparation and anticipation, so I was taught, and we don’t read the birth stories until the very end, and so we end up either focusing on just one of the stories or more often trying to fit them all together, reading the different stories side by side so we can get the stars and shepherds and angels and magi, everything we think of as part of the story, get it all in there together. But there are four stories, and each one deserves some attention of its own. Anyway, this morning I’m basing what I have to say just on what Mark has to say about the birth of Jesus. Next week I’ll focus on the nativity story as it appears in Matthew, then Luke, and finally on the fourth Sunday the gospel of John.
There is just one tiny problem with this plan. The gospel of Mark doesn’t have a Christmas story. Mark doesn’t say one word about Jesus being born. No shepherds, no kings or magi, no visiting angels, no guiding stars, no manger, no Mary and Joseph, and no baby Jesus. That means that reflecting on the story of the birth of Jesus as it appears in the gospel of Mark…has its challenges…there being no story to reflect on. I considered doing something gimmicky for the scripture reading this morning: having someone come forward and say, “This morning I will be reading the Christmas story as it appears in the gospel of Mark,” and then say nothing for two or three minutes and go sit down. In the end I guess I wasn’t in a very gimmicky mood; I decided not to do that, but I also decided not to skip Mark just because of this little detail that he doesn’t give me a Christmas story to reflect on. I decided that it may be worth reflecting on, well on two things: on the absence of a Christmas story in Mark and on how Mark does begin his gospel, which is what you did hear as our scripture reading.
So far as reflecting on the absence of a Christmas story in Mark, it reminded me of a sermon that was published in the mid-1960’s—some of us were talking not too long ago about coming of age in the sixties—anyway, there was this sermon that actually achieved a certain amount of fame or notoriety at the time, about as much fame as published sermons are capable of getting. Seminaries and divinity schools did not escape the spirit of the ‘60’s, and so there was a kind of rebellious spirit among ministry students at the time, as there was in many other places, and you can probably see how a sermon with the title that this one had might appeal to a lot of people.
It was called “Away With the Manger”. It was not quite as confrontational or as “Grinchy” as the title may make it sound, although I think the fact that it sounded that way is what probably appealed to a lot of us children of the sixties. But this sermon called “Away With the Manger” didn’t really call for an end to nativity scenes, or children’s Christmas pageants, or singing Christmas carols, or reading the second chapter of Luke’s gospel. It did however suggest that there is a danger of letting the Christmas story become too sentimental and treating it as just a part of the season which we want to be there, pretty much like we might want the sight of lights or the smell of gingerbread or whatever it might be that would make the season feel warm and comfy. If Christmas is going to be a faith event, not just a holiday event, he was saying—his name was David Woodyard, chaplain at Denison University—we may need if not to do away with the manger, to get away from the manger or get past the manger and engage instead the newness that may be needed by each of us, whatever newness our souls may need, as well as the newness needed by a troubled world.
It was a message that, as I say, resonated well with lots of ministry students at the time. We were a pretty earnest group of people, the people I hung around with, who believed that faith ought to be aimed at changing the world. I’m not so sure it isn’t still a needed message, what Woodyard had to say. I would understand now a different attitude which might say to all that earnestness: lighten up. Let the manger be. Let the pageants and the crèches and certainly the Christmas carols, let it all be, and just read the story without feeling like you have to bring in the evening news. We have enough of that.
I would understand that attitude. But I also do hear Mark’s silence. I hear that Mark doesn’t think the story of Jesus of Nazareth requires any stories about his birth. I hear that Mark doesn’t think the nativity stories have much to do with Jesus. I hear Mark’s silence reminding me not to get carried away with the season. I hear it reminding me that the earliest Christians (Mark’s gospel is the earliest) didn’t seem to know or care much about birth stories. I hear it reminding me that Christianity is not about the baby Jesus but is about an adult Christ calling people to discipleship, reminding us that the gospel is about love that is a lot more difficult than admiring a new born baby.
Honestly, I have given up trying to figure out what the “true meaning of Christmas” is, or trying to say what the right way to celebrate might be. But I do believe that whatever shape and texture and meaning the season may take on for us, Mark’s silence on the whole affair needs to be part of it. It warns us about getting sucked in. It points us in a different direction from what might be referred to as a Christmas card approach to the celebration of Christ’s birth. It doesn’t fill in all the blanks. It inserts some blanks into our various approaches to Christmas—and that’s a good thing.
Which brings me to what Mark does say. Here is how he begins his gospel. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness…” Here is what I hear Mark saying in this beginning. I admit that this is my very loose, very free adaptation of what Mark says, but here is what I hear him saying:
The story I am about to tell you (this is Mark speaking) is not a story about a person out there named Jesus of Nazareth, who you might be interested in and so I’m going to tell you some things about him. I’m not doing that. I’m not doing a biography here, and so if you’re looking for information about Jesus, look somewhere else. I want to tell the story of Jesus of Nazareth, but not as someone who is out there that we can learn about but as someone who is important to me, who has become part of my story. I want to tell a spiritual story, not a factual one, and I want it to be a story not of that Jesus out there but the Jesus who interacts with me. That’s the message I get from Mark’s beginning. This is a story that is not about Jesus, but is about Jesus and Mark, Jesus and the reader. If I’m not interested in that story, there’s no need to spend any time with the gospel of Mark.
In a way there is a birth story here after all. Mark says at the beginning: “John the Baptizer appeared in the wilderness…” When the Bible says wilderness, it doesn’t mean rain forest. It typically means desert. And if I were filming this, I would begin with a shot of a sandstorm where you couldn’t really see anything but a screen full of swirling dust, and then gradually you would see the outline of a figure taking shape, and then some features, a person coming more and more into focus. That’s the way I would picture it. “John the Baptizer appeared in the wilderness”. Like an apparition at first and then a flesh a blood human being. And that is how I see Mark dealing with Jesus as well, trying to make him take shape before our eyes, bringing him into focus for us, bringing him to life, in that sense a birth story. In that sense the whole gospel of Mark is a birth story, telling a story not of something that happened to Jesus but of something that happened to Mark, how Jesus became a compelling presence in his life, presenting that in the hope that he will be a compelling presence to the reader. I see the whole gospel of Mark as a birth story, an attempt to bring Jesus to life, not to answer every question or make him a clear and understandable figure but to make him a compelling figure as he is for Mark and as Mark hopes he will be for others.
It is a story that begins in the wilderness. Again, it is not a wilderness that is out there only, but a wilderness also that is inside us. I want to take a moment to say just a word about the Advent banner that is before us this morning—there will be three more coming in the remaining weeks of Advent. I hesitate to say anything, because one of the things I liked about the banners when Peg first showed me the design was that they had no words on them. They avoided the standard Advent labels of love, joy, peace, and hope and left us to attach our own words to the images. My words would have to do with wilderness. This image and the ones to come all have to do in my way of seeing with reaching out, with longing or yearning, with thirsting and hungering, with journeying, with the incomplete and unfulfilled nature of our lives. Wilderness notions, desert notions, because they put us in touch with what is missing in our lives, what we hunger and thirst for, what we long for or search for.
Or maybe all those words are too melodramatic. Maybe the wilderness that lies at the beginning of the story of Jesus of Nazareth, the wilderness that Advent directs our attention to, the wilderness that lies within us, maybe this wilderness is made out of something as simple, as ordinary, and as profound as the prayers we carry in our bodies wherever we go, the prayers we bring to this space in times of worship and that we sometimes share with each other. So maybe words like searching, hungering, reaching out, longing—maybe those words are too abstract somehow, but they are not negative words. They are signs of life. People who have given up searching, who have given up journeying, have given up living. And so too our prayers which make those words like hungering and longing more specific, so too our prayers are signs of life. And if Christ has a story within us, if God has a story within us, that story begins in our wilderness, in our places of longing, in our prayers. May our prayer life be especially alive this Advent season. Amen.
Jim Bundy
December 2, 2007