Journey's Weekly Homilies

December 8, 2002
2nd Sunday of Advent, Year B
Is.40:1-5,9-11,  2Pt.3:8-14,  Mk 1:1-8
Homily by Jim S.

I begin with a line from Walt Whitman:

"Unscrew the locks from the doors!  Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!"

Jesus has arrived!

This is the first time we've seen in him in the scriptures of the church.  Isn't this something amazing to be reading the actual words of the gospel writer Mark just as he set them down in 70 AD-only 35 years after Jesus left this earthly domain.

This coming of Jesus--we call it Advent, some would call it Incarnation-- In either case it is full of mystery, yet the appearance of Jesus and John in the wilderness is full of meaning.

This whole scene fascinates me. Jesus coming out of nowhere, that's Mystery #1. He comes to John to be baptized, yet he is the holiest man around--that's Mystery #2.  He says not a word; what is he about? Why is he here? --Mystery #3.

Mark does not give us a story of how Jesus was born, as do Matthew and Luke, but he shows us Jesus at the very moment he enters history and thus enters our life too by walking into that wilderness of the Jordan River.  And at this time he is an adult, somewhere near 30 years of age, so we learn from other gospels, but not Mark.

Let me try in these few minutes to see what Mark says of Jesus so that we can begin to fathom these mysteries and understand what these say about our personal lives.

First the wilderness.  It is a paradox. The wilderness is full because it is empty.

The true desert is the place where you cannot hide. There are no luxuriant trees or undergrowth; no inns or houses to shield you. Your job is not there, and you are apart from your family. You are alone. If you are alone there is no one else to talk to except God, and God will speak to you if you listen with humility.

Speaking of myself for a moment, I discovered in the early 80s the Mt. Hood Wilderness area south of Estacada, Oregon, and since I live in southeast Portland, I could drive there in 30 minutes. During one year I went there several times a week, spending the whole day exploring that wilderness. I had trouble walking very far, but I learned every road and back road in a 40 mile square area, and I loved it -- the quiet, the awe, the wonder gave me a sense of belonging, of being cared for, loved. The wilderness and I were part and parcel of one another.  It was to be a transition time for me, so the very word  'wilderness' attracts me still.  Marcus Borg says, "We move away from second hand religion, having HEARD about the spirit, to First Hand Religion, to having a relationship to God personally."

But I cannot always go to a trail on Mt. Hood or a beach on the Coast, so it has become necessary to carry my own wilderness with me!

So there is a need to find our own inner wilderness where time slows down and we become reflective, not letting powerful memories distract us from our relation to a spirit of holiness.

Now to look at what occurred in the wilderness: Repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

That word repentance doesn't mean that we try to feel sorry and then even more sorry about what we've done.  It means to change one's mind and put the past behind us, for if we allow a troubled past to smother the spirit we are often left as mourners; we can't see the fresh and new if we live our life in bandages, so to speak.  Overcoming that tendency to screw everything to the floor is the constant work of people who wish to be in tune with this divine spirit that pervades the universe.  Doing this work will be hard actually, and so we must spend some long time working on letting go of the past and learning to feel and see anew, even if we must ask another person to help us.

In some way we can do something like Jesus did, like those penitents from all of Judea and Jerusalem did. They struggled to get to that spot on the Jordan. If you look a map of what we now call the Holy Land you'll see that on foot it would be necessary to travel several days from certain spots. In Jesus' own case, it might have taken four or five days. Such a journey to a wilderness both literally and figuratively gives these women and men time to begin to change their minds and let go of the past.

You need to get out your own roadmap to find this wilderness, whether it is a wilderness of stars, trees, wind and weather, or the personal one we have developed.

That can happen in the wilderness--whether it is a real wilderness of sun, moon, stars, trees, rocks or the personal one we have developed.

Now to consider a final item:  The relationship of Jesus and John.

John is probably one of the most colorful figures in the New Testament.   We can see him standing there near the Jordan River; he's wearing a coat of camel's hair and around his waist he wears a belt made of dried animal skins. He lives on raw honey and locusts. (You might find those items in a health food store in modern society, but not back then. Eating that diet probably became emaciated.

A lady friend of mine says of John: "That crazy man has always fascinated me. I have thought that if I had lived in that time I would have fallen in love with him and followed him around."

Nevertheless John preaches a fiery message of repentance that no one could miss. And the truth is that John held high the standard about "changing our lives" and demanded of himself and everyone else that they put the past behind them and go forward in this NEW life...

The message that John preached that "After me comes one who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie" is a profound salutation; I know of none so great.

Did John greet only Jesus in this way, or did he greet all of socially superior rank by this generic act of showing respect? I asked Dr. Richard Rohrbach who spoke here a few weeks ago that question by email, and he replied, "Whether John would have knelt before any other person is hard to say. One gets the impression that he would not, but to what degree he followed custom we do not know." In the short story of Jesus and John's adult relationship, what truly matters is that John KNEW the truth, and John preached that truth and proclaimed Jesus' powerful presence with no hesitation.  He fulfilled the prophecy; he prepared the way of the Lord.

If we kneel ... literally or symbolically... before the Holy One as John did, we express our own humility and love in the face of The Greatest Holiness most of us know.  We don't actually have to get on our knees to make this act of faith, but I believe that we have to find that place inside ourselves that knows (and is extremely grateful) that there is something far greater than ourselves in the creation of the world. 

 It may be hard to make any spiritual progress if we are city proud and city acquisitive. However, when we enter our own wilderness, the place where we are truly ourselves, then we can experience, we can get in touch with and reach into the depths of the holiness that surrounded John and Jesus in the wilderness of the Jordan. As we sang together our Advent antiphon, "O Come, O Come, Emanuel," we can begin to take within ourselves the possibility of  "changing our lives, and putting the past behind us."  We can walk toward the water of the Jordan with Jesus, and pray for the courage to take the next step.