Read Mark 1:1-11
You have to love Mark’s gospel. He
gets right down to business.
There is no Christmas story. There are
no angelic visits to Mary and Joseph.
There is no heavenly host singing
glory to God in the highest and on earth peace and God’s favor on men.
We don’t see Jesus teaching in the temple
when he was 12 or going to Egypt as a kid.
Had we only had access to Mark’s
gospel, no one would have thought to write pa rum pa pum pum. Mark jumps right to the heart of the matter:
Messiah is coming. In fact, he is here.
It is right to the mission given the
Messiah.
The beginning of the good news about
Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:
“I will send my messenger ahead of
you,
who will prepare your way”—
“a voice of one calling in the
wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”
Mark
begins with a man whom we call John the Baptist or the Baptizer. He had a unique wardrobe and diet.
And
women today pick on men for our clothing and diet choices. John was my kind of guy. He didn’t have to
decide what to wear each day. He knew what he was going to eat. What can I say,
he was my kind of guy.
And
we get picked on for eating over the sink and wearing the same shirt for 8 days
in a row. Hey! We didn’t mess up any dishes and we kept our shirt clean. Might
get a dozen days out of it this time.
Einstein
did it so he didn’t have to spend any energy thinking about what to wear. So
ladies, the next time your husband is eating over the sink in the same thing he
has been wearing for the last 19 days, don’t be disgusted with him.
Just
say these words…
He’s my Einstein!
Or,
he’s my John the Batist, at least when it comes to diet and wardrobe.
I
like John’s style.
So,
at the beginning of this gospel, we find John—a cousin to Jesus—in a camel hair
outfit with a leather belt. You have to go to the book of Second Opinions to
find this, but it reveals to us that John might have practiced pyrography.
What?
Yes, he had burned the letters JTB on
the back of his leather belt. OK, that’s a little tongue in cheek. It happens.
He ate locusts and wild honey. Mark
takes care to note that this was wild honey, not something from one of those
mega honey farms.
We don’t know if those were free-range
locusts or not. Yes, I am having a little fun at John’s expense, but he really
was something of an icon of that age and people were coming from all over to
see him.
Maybe, they wanted to see this
character in his camel hair outfit. Maybe they wanted to hear his message.
Maybe they were just curious or just following the crowd. Realize that the
distance between Jerusalem and the Jordan is just over 20 miles.
It was a day’s walk to get there and
another to get home. People came from other places, but many were making the
trip from Jerusalem.
Why is any of this important?
God, through the prophet Isaiah, told his people that this day would come.
The Messiah was coming, but first God sent a messenger to prepare the way.
How do you prepare the way?
You fill in the pot holes in the
roads. You pick up the trash dumped along the way. You run up your flag and
polish all the brass plating on the truck on top of the pole.
You get everything that you have been
neglecting fixed.
That’s what you would do in those days
for an earthly king. But what about one from Heaven. What about the King of
Kings? What about the Lord of Lords?
We do the same thing except that we
are fixing things in our hearts instead of along the road. We are still
addressing things that need some fixing, they just happen to belong to our
souls, our spirits, our hearts, and our countenance.
We are in a season that today’s church
calls Lent. Lent wasn’t around in its present form back when Noah or Moses or
Jesus or Paul walked the earth.
Fasting was given so that those
seeking God might find him when neglecting the incessant call of our bodies for
food. Today, fasting also helps the Christian grow closer to God but what we
call Lent didn’t come into being until almost 4 centuries after the death and
resurrection of the Christ.
Fasting can still be a big part of
Lent. Limiting our food intake by type or duration is still common. Preparing
our hearts to be in concert with the Lord is our true objective.
Jesus didn’t do Lent because there
wasn’t such a thing. Jesus fasted for 40 days so we understand 40 days of fasting or lifting the burdens of others or sacrificial giving. Whatever it is that we do should draw us
closer to God.
We are about to celebrate resurrection
but we had better take notice that the man who died to take away our sins was
God, man, the King of kings, the Lamb of God, and the Lord of Lords.
Lent—our preparations for celebrating
resurrection—found its name in Germanic roots. Lent comes from lengthening, or
more specifically, the days growing longer. After the twenty-first day of
December, the days grow a little longer each day.
We begin to notice as spring
approaches, so Lent in its secular roots, means springtime. The days grow
longer.
But as the days grow longer and
sometimes more pleasant, we need to think about the pain, agony, sacrifice, and
love Jesus and his Father in heaven poured out on us. We need to prepare the
way for the King as we celebrate his resurrection from the dead.
And not only his resurrection but the
one promised to you as well.
In our belief—in our profession of
faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior—we are saved from sin and death.
In our practice of doing what Jesus
told us to do, we are saved from an ordinary life. We are not going to hell,
but are we waiting for the age to come
to truly live?
My grace is enough for you can carry
us through many tough situations, but we are meant to fully live not just wait
for the age to come.
Now is the time to consider:
God loves you.
God is with you.
God is for you.
God has good plans for you.
God will never leave or forsake you.
God made a way for us to live, live
this life to the full, and live in right standing with God forever.
What should we do?
For the one who has already professed
Jesus is Lord, make room for him in your heart. Prepare the way for the Lord to
live in your heart, every moment going forward.
John proclaimed repentance and
culminated the penitent one’s trip with baptism.
We have repented of our sins. We have
professed Jesus is Lord.
Now it’s time for God to live
completely within us. His Spirit is already there. We just need to prepare
ourselves to hear him.
And we need to prepare the way for his
return. We should be reaching out to as many people as we can with the good
news of life in Christ Jesus.
We are to prepare the way for him to
live fully in our own hearts.
We are to prepare the way for others
to rejoice at his return.
Let us prepare the way.
Amen.
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