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.
The Holy Gospel According to St. Mark, the First Chapter
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.”
A Panda walks into a bar. He eats, shoots and leaves. Now, did the Panda walk into a bar and eat a meal consisting of bamboo shoots and leaves OR did the panda walk into a bar, eat his dinner and then pull out a gun and blast his way out of the place to avoid paying his bill? How about this one… is it, "A voice cries out! 'In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.'” Or is it, “A voice cries out in the wilderness: ‘prepare the way of the Lord’.” Are we being asked to go out into the wilderness and start a highway construction project OR are we supposed to listen to the voice of a guy who lives out there in the middle of the wilderness? How about this one... Let’s eat, Grandma! Now, is this someone telling Grandma it’s time to come to the table for dinner... OR, could it be that cousin Ralph has turned cannibal? Let’s eat Grandma!
The normal way we sort things like this out in our heads, is through our experiences. It happens mostly subconsciously. Inside our brains, we make the calculation that since cousin Ralph has not (in the past anyway) shown any cannibalistic tendencies we probably don’t need to fear for Grandma’s life. Add to that the fact that cousin Ralph never made better than a C- in English and we can probably safely join cousin Ralph and Grandma at the dinner table.
God created us so we could learn from our experiences. It’s natural and normal... and for the most part, really helpful to process the world around us based on our own, past experiences. Those experiences taught our ancestors, that even though they look cute, we shouldn’t pet the Saber Toothed Tigers. Those experiences taught us to remember where the best fishing spots were so we could go back there again. Those experiences taught us how ridiculous it looked when our friend had his tongue stuck to the flag pole that one winter and we learned from that... Don’t lick the flag pole!
This way of sorting out the world around us works out really, really well... right up to the point where it doesn’t. Sometimes our past experiences actually get in the way of understanding the world rather than making it easier. What happens, for example, when cousin Ralph shows up to dinner with a chain saw, his eyes glaring from behind a hockey goalie’s mask and screaming, “LET’S EAT GRANDMA!” while revving up the chainsaw? Going on your past experiences with cousin Ralph at that point would be a HUGE mistake!
God created us in a way that we could learn from our experiences, but sometimes our past experiences stop being helpful. Sometimes, like when cousin Ralph is revving up the chainsaw, we need to let go of what we THINK we know and instead really LISTEN. In today’s lesson, Isaiah tells us of a voice crying out. Isaiah’s voice was experienced as the voice of HOPE... it was the voice of promise, forgiveness and life! It was the voice that told the people living in exile that they would soon be going home! But, when John the Baptist from today’s Gospel lesson cried out with those same words, his voice had a VERY different message to proclaim. John didn’t have a message of hope, but a dire warning! The LORD is coming and the people’s rough ways needed some serious straightening out! BOTH were voices crying in the wilderness. BOTH had something important to tell the people from God. BOTH used the VERY SAME words, but unless the people REALLY LISTENED they could very easily miss what they needed to hear.
The same words with different meanings didn’t make Isaiah “right” and John the Baptist “wrong” or vice versa. But what this teaches us is that if we hope to hear God’s prophetic message for our lives in our time and in our place, we need to do our best to really, really LISTEN and not simply dismiss a voice that seems to be crying out with a message that doesn’t match with our life's experience. We often fall into the trap of believing that in order for me to be “right” you have to be “wrong”... If I experience life one way then THAT, and only that, is “real” life and anything else is untrue, twisted or a lie. When we become that sure that we are “right” and equally sure that others are “wrong,” we fail to really LISTEN and when we fail to LISTEN, we deny the one crying out their humanity AND if that wasn’t bad enough on it’s own, we are in danger of missing what God is trying to say to us, through them. In our world today, there are voices crying out of the wilderness places of their lives... voices that we are tempted to ignore because their experience of life is radically different and maybe even totally opposite to the way we have experienced life.
My experience of life does not include living with the injustices of this country and world that are leveled at a person whose skin is black. But when the voices of black men cry out in the wilderness with an experience that is different from mine, does that make their experience untrue or invalid? NO! If a black voice cries out in the wilderness, telling me of the rough places of his life, then it is my responsibility to LISTEN to my brother calling out. It is my calling to do what I can to make those rough places a plain. His experience is real... Black lives matter!
I hear voices crying in the wilderness and I am not sure what to do next, but if these lessons have any advice to give the world... I think that advice would be to LISTEN. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment