Sermons & Meditations

Isaiah 2:1-5; Luke 1:26-38
Presented December 21, 2008, by J.D. Kline
The Fourth Sunday of Advent 

Each spring, when our Jewish sisters and brothers sit down at the Passover table, they begin their worship by asking, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” And then the story is retold—the story of God delivering the ancient Hebrew people from Egyptian slavery. In the Advent and Christmas seasons we who seek to follow in the footsteps of Jesus may well take a cue from the Passover question and ask ourselves, as we consider Christ’s birth, “Why is this birth—the birth of the infant Jesus—different from all other births?”

The playwright Christopher Fry once said of his writing, ” In my plays, I want to look at life as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time.” Perhaps we need to ponder the narrative of Christ’s birth in just such a way, as if we had just turned a corner and encountered this remarkable saga for the first time. Could it be that we have become so familiar with the account—sung in carols, portrayed in drama and nativity scenes, read in scripture, depicted in art—that we little ponder just how astonishing is its proclamation? Do we consider that this birth above all births represents, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “no idyllic family affair, but the beginning of a complete turnaround, a reordering of everything on this earth”?

Will you join me this morning in imagining that we are turning a corner and running into this astounding message for the first time—this story that, when embraced through the eyes of faith, points us to the beginning of a complete turnaround in life, to a reshaping, a reordering of everything on earth?

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Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8
Presented December 7, 2008, by Joel D. Kline
The Second Sunday of Advent

Perhaps the first feature of note about the Gospel of Mark is its abrupt beginning. There is no story of the birth of Jesus, as is found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke—no narrative, as in Luke, of Mary and Joseph journeying to Bethlehem because of an emperor’s decree, no account of a host of angels appearing to a lowly group of shepherds to celebrate the remarkable gift of peace on earth, good will toward all creation; nor, as appears in Matthew, is there any narrative about Joseph’s dream urging him to take Mary as his wife, though she is pregnant, and no tale is told of the mysterious magi journeying from the east. Nor does the Gospel of Mark include a magnificent prologue as is found in John’s Gospel, poetically celebrating the Word made flesh and dwelling among us. Instead, Mark’s Gospel moves right to the thick of the story, to the heart of the gospel message. The initial verse of chapter one reads this way: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).

Mark immediately zeroes in on the fundamental invitation of the gospel—the invitation to embrace good news, and to make this good news the foundation piece of our living. The New Testament writers assert that we do so through repentance—repentance including not simply a sense of sorrow or guilt for past failures and sins, but much more, a turning towards something radically new, the taking on of a markedly new perspective towards life. In Mark’s Gospel the call to repentance is initially sounded by John the Baptist, who serves as a forerunner of Jesus, as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Mark 1:3). For ancient Israel, the wilderness served as a place of stark alternatives, a place for choosing between rebellion against God and faithfulness to God. The Baptist continues that tradition, with Luke’s Gospel portraying John as crying out, “Bear fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8). In other words, live ethically, share out of your abundance, walk humbly with your God.

John’s call to repentance and transformed living is echoed only verses later when, immediately following his baptism, Jesus begins his public ministry by proclaiming, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15). Some years ago Clarence Jordan wrote his Cotton Patch Version of the New Testament, in which Jordan paraphrases this call to thoroughgoing repentance this way: Reshape your lives, for God’s new order of the Spirit is confronting you (Matthew 4:17). Eugene Peterson’s The Message offers this rendition: Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message (Mark 1:15). And Brian McLaren, writing in his book Everything Must Change, offers this paraphrase of Jesus’ challenging invitation:

The time has come! Rethink everything! A radically new kind of empire is available—the empire of God has arrived! Believe this good news . . . Open your minds and hearts like children to see things freshly in this new way, follow me and my words, and enter this new way of living.

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