Grace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen
The text for this meditation is written in the 1st
Chapter of the Gospel according to St Mark: Verses 1–8:
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
“Behold, I send my messenger before your
face,
who
will prepare your way,
3 the voice of one crying in the
wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make
his paths straight,’ ”
4 John appeared, baptizing in the
wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the
forgiveness of sins. 5 And all
the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being
baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6 Now John was clothed with camel’s
hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts
and wild honey. 7 And he
preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of
whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I have baptized you with water,
but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
In our
modern daily lives we are continually being exposed to an age old technique of
delivering a message, it is called ‘Repetition for effect’. Television
advertising and political speeches are two prime examples. ‘Repetition for Effect’ is a subtle technique
that repeats the same message over and over again using different words with
the purpose of implanting that message in our sub conscious thinking. It is not
all about cunning manipulation; the very same method has been used positively
by famous orators and authors; even the authors of the Holy Bible.
Isaiah
used this repetition effect in today’s Old Testament reading: “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.” “Make straight,” “Lift up the valley,” “lower
the mountains and hills,” “Level the uneven ground,” “make the rough places
plain,” – how many ways are there to prepare a way? Isaiah really wants us to know that preparing
the way for the Lord is vitally important.
He used the repetition effect to make his point.
As
powerful as ‘Repetition for effect’ is, in our Gospel reading we see Mark
taking it one step further. He builds up
one idea using the repetition effect method and then simply goes on to say that
there is a second idea that is even greater than the first. Today’s Gospel tells us that John is really
great, but Jesus is even better.
Mark
begins his account of the Gospel by talking about John. He begins to build up John by showing us that
here is a prophet who fulfils prophecy. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the
voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his
paths straight,’ ” This already makes John important, but Mark isn’t
finished describing John yet.
Mark
intensified John’s greatness by saying, “All
the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being
baptised by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” So John is not only the fulfilment of
prophecy, but he is also the instrument of the Holy Spirit to bring repentance
and baptism to the Jordan River. Mark
makes it very clear that John was a key player in God’s plan for salvation.
Then, as
we are pretty much convinced that Mark’s account in the Gospel is really about
John, we hear John himself say, “After me
comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to
stoop down and untie. I have baptised you
with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.” Mark has told us that John is important –
that he is great, but even that is not enough to make John worthy to untie the
sandal strap of the one who follows him.
As great as John is, he is still a sinner. Even as John baptised in the wilderness and proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, he himself
needed that forgiveness.
Every
time I read this passage from Mark I get a total reality check on the state of
my humanity: “If someone as great as
John can’t even reach Jesus’ sandal straps, what chance do I have?” Think about it. John is the last of the Old Testament
prophets. He is also the greatest of the
Old Testament prophets. There are even
prophecies written about him. If he is too
sinful to even untie the sandals of Jesus, then my guilt is even worse. If John is nothing compared to Jesus, then I
haven’t got a chance.
This
whole human logic thinking totally emphasises the reason that the Gospel of
Jesus Christ is such good news. It tells
us that God knows we can’t reach up to Him and therefore, He reaches down to
us. We can’t come to Him, so He comes to
us.
Yet it is
not feasible for God to simply come to us.
If He did that, His holiness would destroy our sin and us along with it. God must come to us in a way that takes our
sin away from us so that His justice can punish the sin without destroying
us. Mark’s Gospel account tells us that
Jesus, the Son of God comes in that special way. He comes as the Christ.
Jesus
Himself tells us what it means to come as the Christ. He said, [Luke
24:46] “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the
third day rise from the dead.” When
Mark tells us that his writing is “The
beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” he is already
telling us that Jesus is the one who will suffer and rise on the third
day. In fact, as you hear the Christmas
story, you will constantly hear of the Christ who is born of Mary. This is the same as saying that the one who
will suffer and rise from the dead who is born of Mary.
God comes
to us in a totally unexpected way. Even
though we are not worthy to touch His sandal straps, He comes to us in ordinary
human flesh. Even though we are not
worthy to touch His sandal straps, He
walked a lifetime in our sandals and He did it without sin. He comes in this way so that He could take
our sin up from us into Himself. He
comes in this way so that He could take the punishment for our sin into
Himself.
Even
though we are not worthy to touch His sandals straps, He allowed mere men to
nail Him to a cross. It was from the
apparent weakness of that cross that Jesus demonstrated His greatest
might. In the apparent defeat of death,
Christ conquered death. He became the
solution for sin by taking our sin onto Himself and paying the price for
it. As He walked in our sandals on the
way of death He took away our sin and covered us in His holy
righteousness. Now God can come to us
without condemnation. Now God can come
to us in joy.
John, the
greatest of the Old Testament prophets baptised with water. Jesus baptises with the Holy Spirit. By that Holy Spirit we receive the gift of
faith in Jesus. It is by that faith that
we receive all the gifts that Christ comes to give us. It is through that gift of faith in Jesus
that we receive forgiveness, life, and salvation. Through that gift of faith God comes to us in
joy.
During
Advent we contemplate the ways that God prepares us for His coming and no one
was more into that preparation than John the Baptist. John was the last and greatest of the Old
Testament prophets. He is the hinge
between the Old Testament and the New Testament. He is so important that God inspired prophets
such as Isaiah, Malachi, and others to foretell his coming. The Holy Spirit inspired Mark to quote from
Isaiah. John the Baptist is “The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
Prepare the way of the Lord and so forth.
Even Jesus had words of praise for John.
He said, [Matthew 11:11]
“Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater
than John the Baptist.”
Never the
less, John had to confess that he was not worthy to enter God’s presence. He fully understood that he was a sinner who
deserved nothing but punishment from God.
In light
of that, we too must confess that we are sinful and unclean, that we have
sinned against God in thought, word, and deed.
We, like John, deserve nothing but punishment from God.
As a key
player in God’s plan for our salvation, John pointed to the one who followed
him, Jesus. The Holy Spirit inspired
Mark to begin his account of the Gospel with a clear confession that Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of God. As we learn
what it means to be the Christ, we learn that Jesus is the one who lives for
us, who suffers for us, who dies for us, and who returns to life for us. We learn that Jesus is the way that God comes
so that we can have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10).
In this
season of Advent, this season of coming and preparing, God reminds us that it
is He who comes and He who prepares. He
came once to prepare the way of salvation for all mankind. He still comes to prepare that way in
us. He will come to take those whom He
has prepared to live with Him forever. Let us all earnestly pray this Advent
Season that all would hear God as He comes so that He would prepare them for
His Last Coming. Amen
The love
and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep
your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
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