Isaiah 40.10-11; 2 Peter 3.8-15a; Mark 1.1-8
O Lord, raise up, we pray, your power and come among us, and
with great might succour us; that whereas, through our sins and
wickedness we are grievously hindered in running the race that is
set before us, your bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and
deliver us; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, to whom with
you and the Holy Spirit, be honour and glory, now and for
ever.
THE prologue to Mark's Gospel is made to be proclaimed, and I
wonder whether a few of Sunday's Gospel readers will be bold enough
to dispense with the usual "Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ" and get straight down to business. That would be completely
true to Mark's project of delivering a message urgently and without
superfluous content: Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and his story
is good news. But the story does not begin with Jesus. The opening
announcement is the climax of a history of expectation, confirming
that what the prophets have promised is all true (Exodus 23.20;
Isaiah 40.3; Malachi 3.1), and true in detail as well as in general
terms.
Enter John the Baptist. John is not a warm-up act, but a
character essential to the authentication of Jesus's identity as
Son of God. He doesn't only step into the role of the lone figure
Isaiah describes, crying out in the wilderness: he looks the part.
The audience is meant to recognise, in his rough clothing and
self-sufficient lifestyle, an Elijah figure - not only someone who
knows the sayings of the prophets, but who is himself a real
prophet.
The choreography of the passage commands admiration. John speaks
from centre stage for long enough to announce the coming of one
"more powerful" than himself, someone he feels hardly fit to serve
as a slave (Mark 1.7), before moving aside for Jesus. In one sense,
listeners have been given all the essential information: what they
have longed for has happened. In another sense, this gives them
very little to go on. What does it mean to be baptised in the Holy
Spirit, and what happens after that? The Gospel ends still asking
what happens next, with some frightened women at an empty tomb.
Jesus will have fulfilled his own promise to rise again, but there
are none of the reassuring post-resurrection appearances or
consoling farewell blessings and injunctions supplied by the other
Gospel-writers.
That unresolved question returns us to the business of waiting,
which Advent Sunday foregrounded so emphatically. Waiting for God,
as the Second Letter of Peter reminds its readers, happens in God's
time. This promise-keeping God will come again, but not before
there has been time for repentance; and then not with any great
fanfares, but with the stealth of a thief (2 Peter 3.10). The first
signs will be the last: cosmic destruction - the necessary
preparation for the new heavens and new earth of a restored and
reconciled creation. Until then, we are confronted once more with
the need to discern the sort of people we are called to be. The
answer is holy and godly people -- but is such holiness and
godliness achieved most effectively by fear?
The apocalyptic imagery of the letter is a serious engagement
with a serious context (as Mark 13.24-37 showed last week). It is
not, however, the only picture; and the collect offers a different
modulation of power, in praying for the help of a mighty God who
hastens to help us with "grace and mercy" as we run the race that
is set before us (Hebrews 12.1). Liturgical revisers have wisely
preserved the old-fashioned word "succour", whose punning etymology
(running to offer assistance) suggests that God also runs towards
us. Ambrose of Milan, whose feast day will slip past under cover of
Sunday this year, writes of this running, self-limiting God in
"Come thou, redeemer of the earth". This paradoxical hymn imagines
the longed-for Saviour emerging like a giant from Mary's womb, to
lie as a baby in a starlit cradle.
Power comes most impressively, perhaps, in utter gentleness. The
returning Lord, Isaiah promises, 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" (Isaiah 40.11). It is
impossible not to hear these words in Handel's setting, nor to
forget that Messiah describes not only safely gathered
sheep, but also straying sheep, whose redemption will be through
one who suffers for them (Isaiah 53). Once more, we are hearing the
end of the story before it unfolds, living the strange chronology
of salvation which is both already and not yet.