Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Mark 1:1-8 December 7, 2008

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."

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Back in my Coast Guard days, "Long, long time ago, I can still remember…" (Sorry.) It was during my stint at Radioman school - I was all of nineteen - for reasons I can no longer recall, I became convinced that, one way or another, the world we all know and love was very likely going to end in my lifetime. Now there's a cheery thought. I must have come across some kind of survivalist nonsense, because I found myself seriously thinking about what I needed to do to prepare for the worst. I never got very far in my preparations. Actually, I never made it past the thinking stage. But, what I thought was that I would need to learn to hunt my own food, and I would probably have to learn to do it with a Bow, because running out of ammo seemed like an obvious flaw for any kind of gun. I've never hunted in my life mind you, but you do what you have to do. I thought I already had some pretty decent camping skills from my years in the Boy Scouts. I was recently through Boot Camp and probably in the best shape of my life. All in all, I thought I had a pretty good shot at becoming the next - Rambo.

At some point the midst of all this doom and gloom thinking, I suddenly realized a couple of things that I've carried with me ever since. To begin with, I wasn't at all sure the world I imagined I ought to be getting ready for was one I really wanted to live in anyway. More importantly though, in a moment of blinding clarity, I realized that in order to get ready for Armageddon, I was going to have to start acting like it was just over the horizon and could happen at any moment. If I was really serious about all this, I would have to turn my whole life over to it, so as not to be caught unawares. I finally came to my senses when it hit me that, come what may, I didn't want to live my life that way: fearful, on alert, always expecting the worst. For better or worse, I'm just not the kind of guy who can keep that up for very long. And even if I could, it turns out I'm much more interested in being loving, trusting and peaceful. So, come what may, those are the things I try to practice instead.

Every year about this time, we talk about getting ready for Christmas; preparing the way for the birth of Christ. But what actually does that mean? Getting ready for Christmas is pretty easy to get a handle on. We hunt down and decorate a Christmas tree. We send off cards and letters. We hang our stockings by the chimney with care. We work our way through shopping, wrapping and shipping packages, and plan out meals and accommodations for whatever company we expect to have. We mark our calendars with all our favorite holiday season events and look forward to getting into the spirit of it all. There's a lot to do, no doubt about it. But there's nothing particularly mysterious about getting ready for Christmas. What does it mean though, to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ?

All four gospels have some version of the story Gail read to you this morning. Before Jesus arrived on the scene, John the Baptist had an active ministry underway, encouraging people to get themselves ready for the coming of the Lord. He proclaimed, "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins," and people from all over were flocking down to the Jordan river for a full emersion baptismal experience. John, prophetically speaking, was up to his knees in muddy water working on what we would call the "first" coming. And when Jesus came to be baptized himself, it was the beginning of the end, as far as John was concerned.

But Jesus had a slightly different take on things than John did. For Jesus, it was more the beginning of the beginning. It was the beginning of a whole new way of understanding the relationship between God and the people of God; a relationship once characterized by sin, judgment and exclusivity, was soon to be seen as one of forgiveness and grace, justice and peace, self-sacrifice and resurrection. Jesus, beginning with his baptism, lived out the ministry God had given into his hands. And when it was over, he left his disciples with a message that in time he would come again. So, while our story of John has him trying to get people ready for the first arrival of Jesus, ever since Jesus, the Christian Church has always tried to prepare us for the second coming.

Now clearly, there are some Christians that take the second coming far more seriously that we do. Every once in awhile I see a car go by with a bumper sticker reading, "In case of the rapture, this car will be empty." Honestly, I've always thought that was a little presumptuous. There's a "we're saved and you're not" sort of smugness behind that message. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I've never been able to take the rapture very seriously. The whole apocalyptic vision behind books like Tim LeHaye's Left Behind series depends on such a tortured understanding of the Bible that I have trouble making sense of why his books are so popular. On the other hand, based on my own survivalist experience, you'd think I'd remember how easy it is to get caught up in "end of the world" thinking.

Around here, we don't tend to focus too much on the second coming. As far as I know, the mainline church never has, at least in my lifetime. And that makes sense to me. If we begin with an understanding that what we are trying to do is follow Jesus, it seems obvious that our main concern should be to do the things he did, to practice what he told us to practice, to love and forgive and heal without worrying too much about the future because, "of that day and hour no one knows," as he himself said. It seems to me that when Jesus does get around to his "second coming," what he would hope to find is all the people calling themselves by his name engaged the ministries he himself both practiced and commended to us. Don't worry about the future. The future is in God's hands. God will take care of you just like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. And if you believe that and carry it in your heart, it will free you to be the loving and compassionate person, right here in the present, that I have been trying to show you how to be. Can't you just hear Jesus saying something like that? Boy, I can.

And if that's the case - if that's the kind of life orientation we're supposed to be shooting for - then the question of what it means to prepare the way for the coming of Christ takes on a whole new dimension. And interestingly, going back to my survivalist days (which, by the way, only lasted about a week) I learned something then that I still find useful now. If I intend to prepare for some kind of imagined future, I only way to do that is by practicing, right now in the present, those things I want to be good at when the time arrives. How do we prepare for something? By doing it. By practicing the skills we want to be good at when the time comes. And if what we want to be good at, when Jesus finally does come, is loving, forgiving and being compassionate, those are the things we need to be practicing right now.

I shared a story with you back in September that comes to mind again in this context. A man named John Holt once observed. "Not many years ago I began to play the cello. Most people would say that what I was doing was 'learning to play' the cello. But these words carry into our minds the strange idea that there exist two very different processes: (1) learning to play the cello; and (2) playing the cello. They imply that I will do the first until I have completed it, at which point I will stop the first process and begin the second. In short, I will go on 'learning to play' until I have 'learned to play' and then I will 'begin to play.' Of course, this is nonsense. There are not two processes, but one. We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way."

I dare say, that any careful reading of the stories of Jesus will make it clear that he is not much interested in his followers sitting around waiting for him to return. What he wants, I am convinced, is for us to learn compassion by being compassionate; to learn love by loving; to learn forgiveness by forgiving; to forget about when he might be coming back, and get on with the ministries he cared about when he came the first time. If we do these things, then whenever he does get around to returning, what he will find is a world that is more loving, compassionate and forgiving than the one he left.

In closing, there is one other little piece I came across that I'd like to share. Mary Lou Retton, the famous Olympic gymnast who made such a splash in the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, was once asked what it took to do what she did. What she said was this: "Here's what it takes to be a complete gymnast. Someone should be able to sneak up and drag you out at midnight, push you out on some strange floor - and you should be able to do your entire routine sound asleep in your pajamas. Without one mistake. That's the secret. It's got to be a natural reaction."

Now, I hasten to say I have no aspiration to be an Olympic gymnast, or any other kind of Olympian for that matter. But Mary Lou Retton had it exactly right. If we want to be truly good at something, if we want to prepare the way for something (or someone) we need to practice until it becomes automatic, until we can do it in our sleep, until it becomes a knee-jerk reaction. And that being the case, there are two questions I want to leave you with this morning: At this point in your life, what is it that you are preparing yourself for? and what is it that makes your knees jerk?

Amen