The prophets cry out to us today on the
2nd Sunday of Advent. Yet, we
have to make space for the voices of John the Baptist and Isaiah in our lives,
space in the midst of all the cell phone calls, through all the text messages
and emails we get each day, in the midst of the noise of the televisions and
radios that are blaring everywhere. Our
modern world is full of many voices, many messages, a lot of noise. There are many prophets out there, there are
many messages, but what are we to believe, & how is God going to get his
message through in the midst of all of this?
When I was up in Canada a couple of
weeks ago, I read an article in the Toronto newspaper, The Globe and Mail,
bemoaning the fact that so many Canadian college students have so little
knowledge of the Bible. College
professors up in Canada used to take for granted that their students had a
general knowledge about the Bible, that it united them together as a society,
that the Bible was a natural part of the general conversation of society. But that is no longer true. The professors can make a comment about the
Bible, or there can be symbolism or a storyline in a work of literature that
directly connects it to a biblical reference, but nowadays, most students would
not pick up on that. I guess this goes to show how often the message that
Christianity is trying to get across to our world can get lost in everything
else that is going on.
We as Christians hear the voice of John
the Baptist each year crying out to us on our Advent journey. Today, his cry comes from the very first
verses from the Gospel of Mark. John is
the messenger that foreshadows the coming of Jesus into the world. He is in the middle of the desert wilderness,
a strange figure wearing clothing made out of camels hair, eating locusts and
wild honey. He is telling people to
repent, to be baptized in the river Jordan in acknowledgement of their sinful
ways. If we met John the Baptist coming
down Main Street here in Yazoo City, we would probably label him a crazy
person, and we probably wouldn’t listen to his message at all.
Advent is a time of the year that is
very different for us, isn’t it? The
purple color that characterizes this season tells us that it is a time of
repentance, penance, and renewal. And
while we hear Christmas carols on the radio already this time of the year, and
we see garland and tinsel, Christmas trees and lights all over the place, we
don’t see a lot of decorations up yet in our church. You see, as John the Baptist tells us, the
journey through Advent is a journey through the desert. It is a stark journey that recalls the very
real encounter that the Israelites had with God as they journeyed through the
desert to the promised land. The desert
is a difficult, forbidding place that recalls the brokenness and the lack of
faith that the Israelites had a long their journey. But John the Baptist is not trying to lead us
into a place that will cause fear to grow in our hearts, that will break us or
destroy us. It’s the opposite. We are being led into the desert as a place
of renewal and hope, as a cleansing place where reflection and conversion can
take place. As Isaiah tells us, the
message that God sends out to us is a message of comfort. We are to be comforted in the midst of our
struggles and brokenness.
As I mentioned there are a lot of
hollow words and false prophets crying out in our world today. However, God is still here in our land as
well, Christ is still alive, the true prophets of God are still trying to get
God’s message across. As I mentioned
earlier, so much in our society is about self-gratification, enjoyment, and
pleasure, of having it right now the way we want it, which is so different from
our Advent message of waiting and preparing and expecting. If there are so many in our world who are not
getting the message of the prophets, the message of Advent, we need to try to
bring the message to them. We need to
show the world that we are preparing our hearts, that we are preparing a path
to the Lord in the midst of the all the commercialism and buying presents.
And
as we listen to the voices of the prophets John the Baptist and Isaiah this
morning, we need to listen to the voices of the prophets that God sends to our
modern world. I recently stumbled upon
an article telling the story of a nun in the country of India named Sister
Valsa John. She had been working with a
small community in India, where a coal mining company forced the poor off their
land, giving them very little compensation in return. The government is so eager to have jobs and
income that it gives little heed to rights of the people who are trampled in
this process. This sister in fact helped fight for compensation for the poor
who were fighting for the rights, but the company failed to adhere to the
agreement that was reached. She removed herself from this community for several
years due to death threats that were made against her, and when she finally did
go to visit this village again, she was beaten and hacked to death by a group
of men who invaded the place where she was staying. For me, Sister Valsa John is a true prophet
for times, she is someone who proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ with her
life and her work, making a path for the Lord in our secular world. We need to listen to the prophets that God
sends to the world, to heed their call for justice and peace, to practice the values
that they teach us in our own lives.
Just how are we making a path for the
Lord in our own lives, in the midst of this busy season of preparation? How and we listening to the prophets? And how are we being prophetic ourselves?
