The Promise Fulfilled

Isaiah 40: 1-11

Comfort, O comfort my people,

says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

and cry to her

that she has served her term,

that her penalty is paid,

that she has received from the LORD’S hand

double for all her sins.

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.”

A voice says, “Cry out!”

And I said, “What shall I cry?”

All people are grass,

their constancy is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades,

when the breath of the LORD blows upon it;

surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades;

but the word of our God will stand forever.

Get you up to a high mountain,

O Zion, herald of good tidings;

lift up your voice with strength,

O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,

lift it up, do not fear;

say to the cities of Judah,

“Here is your God!”

See, the Lord GOD comes with might,

and his arm rules for him;

his reward is with him,

and his recompense before him.

He will feed his flock like a shepherd;

he will gather the lambs in his arms,

and carry them in his bosom,

and gently lead the mother sheep.

Mark 1: 1-8

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.”

SERMON                  “The Promise Fulfilled”

Today’s gospel reading is considered to be Mark’s prologue. The first verse is actually the title of the whole story. “This is the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” And then he goes right into directly connecting John the baptizer with the prophecy of Isaiah that we also heard this morning. “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”  John calls the people of Israel to come out of the capital city of Jerusalem and out of the villages, to come into the wilderness, to be baptized with water. As he does, he proclaims the one who will come after him, the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.

 This is proclaimed and heard by the people as truly Good News. The promise is being fulfilled. You might say the promise was being fulfilled again, since Isaiah’s words were first heard by the Israelites in exile about 600 years before.

So who was this promise for? Who really needed it to be fulfilled? It was and is for the people who walk in darkness. It was and is for the people who are in exile, like the Israelites were when Isaiah first proclaimed these words. They had been forced from their homes and were living in Babylon, longing for home. It was and is for the people living under various forms of oppression, such as the Roman occupation at the time of Jesus’ birth. It was and it is for the people who long for words of comfort, hope, and encouragement – words that promise that God is with them, that God will redeem them, free them, bring them home. “Comfort, comfort my people.” “Every valley shall be lifted up. Every mountain will be made low. The rough places made plain.” “God comes with might. The LORD will feed his flock like a shepherd, will gather the lambs in his arms, will carry them, will gently lead the vulnerable ones.”

These are promises that were so badly needed by people at those times. But who really needs these words today, here and now, in Macomb County, in New Life Presbyterian Church, in the United States of America?

Here we are not under any oppression. We live in the land of the free, the home of the brave.

We’ve basically got it made, right? We have pretty much all managed to achieve the American dream – nice house, functioning car, decent wage, decent retirement, kids can go to college. We have made lots of straight highways in our deserts, and we can go pretty much anywhere we want..

So we don’t really need the kind of comfort these words are offering, do we? Or, do we? When do we? Who needs them?

What about those who are not living the American dream, but for whom life is more like a nightmare?

·      When the layoff slip comes, and finding new work is almost impossible.

·      When a health crisis disrupts everything we had built for our planned comfort – and leaves us weakened in physical, emotional, functional and financial ways.

·      When we cannot see the American dream as meant for us, because our skin color or our lack of transportation or our homelessness or our sexual preference makes us something less than a full citizen in the eyes of our neighbors and society?

And when that is happening to us how will we hear these words of comfort?

Who will share them with us? Who will show us the love that we hear God has for us, when life is so different for us, seeming to be so unfair, so unjust?

The news about racial injustice in our country these days is hard to read, hard to accept. It’s hard to know what to think, what to do. We are tempted to set it aside, to focus on our Christmas decorations and shopping lists, to hope that it will get better somehow and that we don’t have to get directly involved in it.

But if we are not all living out our baptism, our discipleship, if we are not willing to be involved by loving our neighbors, the truth is, it will not change.

A year and a half ago, when a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, was shot to death by a resident of the neighborhood where he was walking, a pastor friend told me this story about his family, and I have since seen and heard numerous confirmations that this is a normal thing in families which include a young black-skinned boy – whether the parents are black, or mixed race, or even white parents who have adopted black sons.

My friend told me that when his black-skinned son became around 11 or 12 years old, he sat him down to have “The Talk.” The talk went something like this.

“You are now getting to be old enough that you might walk home from school by yourself or with some friends; you might go grocery shopping with me and end up in a separate aisle, or you might go to the corner store by yourself to get a candy bar or a Coke. When you do, you must remember that people will look at you differently. You will be a target of suspicion because you are black and male.

So dress properly – don’t put your hood up on your sweatshirt or jacket and don’t ever walk with your hands in your pockets. If you buy a candy bar, don’t put it in your pocket – get a bag and carry it out in the bag with your receipt. Don’t eat it until you get in the car or get home. When you are stopped by the police or by store security, whether you are alone or with friends, walking or driving, you must be exceptionally polite, you must keep both your hands in view at all times, make no sudden moves.

You must do whatever they say, even if it means being brought into the police station. Don’t resist anything.” And the talk would go on in this way.

As I listened to my friend, I found myself becoming filled with both anger and shame. Anger, to think that in this country, he would have to teach his son to always see himself as an object of fear, that as a father my friend would always feel this extra fear about his son, from adolescence through adulthood and for the rest of his life.

And I felt shame, because I realized that I had never once even remotely thought about needing to warn or to teach my son in a similar way, about such things.

This was my first real conscious understanding of something that is now commonly called white privilege. And I am telling you about this because it is directly connected to our lesson today.

If we are so comfortable ourselves that we cannot see the oppression in which others live, whether it’s in developing countries, as we call them, or in our own communities, our own nation, can we really understand what Christ came for?

Can we really hear the words of the prophet as words of hope and encouragement that the promise is for all people, that it is about living in this world in a new way, in a way that reflects the kingdom of God? Can we recognize our own role in bringing that about? Can we fully show God’s love to our neighbors; to strangers we meet outside the doors of this church on a daily basis? 

These words of hope and encouragement came to me by email from theologian David Lose this week: “Might we in the church recognize that relationship comes before and is more important than information, and offer ourselves as places where people who hold different points of view might listen to each other to try to understand each other? Might we ask what it’s like to grow up as an African American kid and get nervous when a police cruiser comes by? Might we ask what it’s like to be a police officer and know that each and every stop you make could be potentially violent?

Might we further wonder how we have come to be so suspicious of those who differ from us, whether that’s a difference in ethnicity or religion? And might we also ask what the implications are of our own theology, and the confession that in Jesus Christ God was reconciling the whole world and commissioning us to be ambassadors of reconciliation?

[And by the way, we have an excellent opportunity to do just this, in our new and growing friendship and partnership with the people of Life Eternal Ministries, who are worshipping in our Clinton Township campus.]

He goes on to say, “I thought of this all last night as I was meeting with a group of African American pastors, and one lamented the tense relationship members of his congregation and community have with the police force. ‘The irony,’ he said, ‘is that we live in communities that most need the police and want to support the police.

And yet it’s hard.’” Yes, it’s hard. Really hard. Which is why we in the church can’t simply sit back and say nothing, hoping it will all go away.

It won’t. Moreover, if we keep saying nothing about things that shape the world our kids are growing up in, they will eventually believe the faith has nothing to say to them.”

By first listening to one another, and then acting as brothers and sisters to one another, we can work for reconciliation, we can become heralds of hope, bearing witness to the God who is revealed in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, in the here and now of our world. Even as the systems may need to be fixed, we have the power today of relationship and reconciliation that comes from humbly and gently loving one another, actively caring about and advocating for one another, one person at a time, one day at a time.

Let us go out from this place, strengthened at the Table, and change the world by showing everyone we meet the love of Christ who came down that we all may have hope, have peace, have joy, have love.