The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the 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 out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Mark 1:1-8
My email address has been added to a distribution list of a local “prophet” who sweeps into either my spam folder or inbox, depending upon Google’s mood that day, to breathlessly report on whatever latest political or cultural headline indicates the end of the world, the end of times and the coming of Jesus. “Get ready!” the emails scream.
“Repent!” entreats the writer. Jesus is coming, and boy, is he mad.
It is tempting to go down this line of thinking this Advent, in the middle of a global pandemic, a bonkers election season, and a rising tide of social and systemic change in the air. We are looking for prophets who tell us how this is all going to end. Whether you seek a prophet who is crying out for doom and destruction, like my email friend, or a prophet who can offer a word of comfort and hope, well, that might say something about what you believe about the kingdom of God.
“Comfort, oh comfort my people,” begins Chapter 40 of the prophet Isaiah. Ahh, that is more like it. Send us some comforting words, oh prophet. The next few verses are not so comforting. It is an image of creation being, well, wrecked.
A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
What a violent image of creation in these verses. I imagine mountains being cut down to be made low, borders tumbling to the ground, mowing down everyone and everything in their path. I picture valleys rising up, like a typhoon wave made of dirt rather than water. How will these rough places be smoothed out to a plain and uneven ground made level? Wouldn’t that require some kind of an earthmover Zamboni? Does such a thing even exist? The earth is rearranging itself to make a path for the glory of the Lord. More than that, the fundamental character of all these things is being transformed by this movement. Mountains made low are no longer mountains. This is a transformation.
The thing is, over time, mountains do shrink. The Appalachian mountains are ancient, and over time, peaks become shorter and rounder than they once were. Barrier islands like the Outer Banks were created to move for a reason. The movement of the sand through the waves and wind means the islands will move closer to the interior shoreline over time as they provide protection. The earth does move in the ways Isaiah describes, without any help from us humans or from apocalyptic, cosmic causes.
So perhaps it is that these mountains and valleys are moving already, and God’s time is different from our notion of time. Perhaps it is that creation has been and is being transformed just as much as human hearts are, not by a series of cataclysmic, violent events but by a revolution that is much smaller, much quieter. The heralding of God’s coming kingdom comes not by a shock and awe series of events but by a single birth of a tiny, helpless baby to an unimportant couple in the middle of nowhere. Maybe, too, our repentance is a series of long and slow, but also steady, moves towards transformation of the heart. A transformation born of the grace-filled loving kindness of the Lord.
“This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” insists the writer of the Gospel of Mark. The beginning is creation transformed and restored, the beginning is a messenger who finds hope in the wilderness of loss, and the beginning is repentance, turning away from sin and death and into new life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
As we wait this Advent for the return of Christ, as we long for God’s kingdom, may we keep turning our hearts, and may we pray for the turning of hearts everywhere toward the grace and love of God. May we lean into the longing and hopeful expectation of the season to see with new eyes the small, slow ways that God is changing hearts, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.
The Rev. Stephanie Allen is the rector of Church of the Nativity, Raleigh.
