Prepare the Way

(Scriptures: Isaiah 61:1-11, 2 Peter 3:8-15a, Mark 1:1-8)

Since early October, we’ve been reading and watching on TV the “Occupy” movement – first “Occupy Wall Street” and then Occupy Oakland, Portland, and, more locally, Occupy Philadelphia, which until Tuesday last week was situated at City Hall. A nucleus of Occupiers – somewhere upwards of 100 tents at any given time – were camped out 24/7 in tents on Dilworth Plaza, outside City Hall. Around this nucleus, a larger and incredibly eclectic assortment of activists – students, environmental activists, anarchists, Quaker and interfaith peace activists, clergy, labor union leaders, assorted other groups such as the “Granny Peace Brigade” – came and went as family schedules and day jobs permitted. There were also many homeless persons, who slept on Dilworth Plaza outside City Hall most nights. While these homeless were perplexed to see so many new neighbors on their doorstep, they were also grateful for the meals that the Occupy group served, over 1000 meals a day. The news media covering the Occupy movement were frustrated, first, that the Occupiers didn’t have a single leader – with their very participatory form of organization, all however many hundred people at Dilworth Plaza, everyone there, were potential leaders – nor did they have a tidy list of demands, beyond an overall message that the wealthiest 1% of Americans are causing financial hardship, political disenfranchisement, and environmental devastation for the remaining 99% of Americans, and indeed, for the rest of the world. Put simply, those at Dilworth Plaza were and are sick and tired of being sick and tired. On Tuesday last week, the police cleared Dilworth Plaza, but while the tents are gone, the feeling of being sick and tired of being sick and tired remains. As one of the signs at the Occupy camp said, “You can’t evict an idea.”

Today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel beings with the words, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Mark’s is thought by Bible scholars to have been the first of the four Gospels to be written, to which Matthew and Luke added additional material and of which the writer of John’s Gospel was at least aware. To Mark’s material, Matthew and Luke added, among other information, the birth narratives – the announcement of the angel to Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the manger, the wise men. John’s Gospel begins with a cosmic portrait of Christ as the pre-existing Word who was with God and who was God from the beginning, now become flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. But Mark’s Gospel has none of that. Mark begins with a quotation from Isaiah – with some additional material from Micah included – about a messenger preparing the way, and the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!’ And with that very brief introduction, we meet John the Baptist out in the wilderness. We’re told that people from the whole Judean countryside and even from Jerusalem were going out to John, to be baptized in the river Jordan as a sign of repentance. It almost sounds a little like John the Baptist had his own “Occupy the Jordan River” movement going on. Certainly with the description of his being clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey, he’d have fit in just fine with the scruffy crowd in Dilworth Plaza – though the description is intended to remind us of Elijah, whom the prophet Micah said would announce the coming of the Messiah.

We may wonder why so many went out to the wilderness to be baptized by John. After all, it isn’t like everyone could just hop in their SUV or even carpool out to the Jordan. SEPTA and Amtrak didn’t go there. It was a long, uncomfortable walk or donkey ride from Jerusalem and the countryside to the wilderness, a major investment of time, a major investment of effort, to go out into the wilderness, where there were no creature comforts, no turnpike service plazas or vending machines, not even a porta-potty, nothing at the end of their long walk but John and the Jordan River.

Why did they go? We’re told they came to be baptized as a sign of repentance. Over 2000 years, we’ve layered a lot of religious glop on the word repentance, but at its core, repentance means a change of mind, a change of consciousness, a change of direction. It’s a recognition that the status quo isn’t working, that change is needed, and a resolve to stop doing what isn’t working in order to do something that will work, or at least that might work. For John’s followers, similar to the current Occupy folk, the status quo that needed to change was both personal and societal. After all, if going to the Temple and performing the prescribed sacrifices and rituals – or going to the local synagogue to hear the reading and exposition of Torah – had been sufficient, they wouldn’t have slogged out to the desert. If they had been living comfortably under Rome’s occupation of Judea, they wouldn’t have slogged out to the desert. But, in fact, none of these things were working. The Roman occupation was messed up, the religious establishment was messed up, and they themselves were messed up. The crowds had no grand social vision, and really neither did John. They just knew that both they and their society were broken, that they were sick and tired of being sick and tired, that they needed God to intervene in a deep way in their lives and in society. And John was very clear that he was the messenger, not the Messiah. It was not for John to save the people or their society; he could only point the way to the One who would.

Today’s reading from Mark reminds us that the Good News of Jesus may begin with the bad news that the status quo isn’t working, that change is needed, specifically, that we – you, me, each of us, all of us - need to change direction. As Jesus said elsewhere in the Gospels, it is those who are sick who need a doctor, not those who are well. Our reading from Isaiah brings a message that would resonate powerfully with the Occupy folks at Dilworth Plaza, and no doubt resonated with John’s followers: “Bring good news to the oppressed, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” It’s a message of radical change, radical personal change and radical social change. It was not for John to bring all this about himself, but to point to Jesus, the One anointed by God to do all these things – remember that in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus chose this very Isaiah text for his very first sermon. Like the 1% who hold great power in our day, the powerful of Jesus day were offended at this text, and in fact tried to throw him off a cliff. But for those who were oppressed, brokenhearted, and captive to the powers and principalities, in Jesus’ day and in ours, Jesus’ words were life-changing, like rivers of water in the desert.

The Occupy folks at Dilworth Plaza were there to point to the need for change. John was out in the desert, to point to the need for change. And we as followers of Jesus are likewise called to point to the need for change, and to point to Jesus as the one who makes change possible, to point to Jesus as the one whose birth and life, death and resurrection have brought in God’s reign. We can point to Jesus by telling our neighbors about Jesus, by inviting them to church. We can also point to Jesus in our lives, by modeling a way of life that’s different, by living in a way that says that Jesus, not the almighty dollar, reigns. We do that by raising money for the food cupboard and for the ministries of the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference. We do that by providing safe space for parents to raise their children. We do that by providing a place where hurting people can come for prayer, and coffee and cake, and a kind word.

“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,” said John the Baptist. In these remaining weeks of Advent, may we at Emanuel Church prepare ourselves and help to prepare our world for the coming of the Christ child. Let every heart prepare him room. Amen.