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S. Margaret's Church, Budapest 

Readings: Isaiah 40: 1-11; 2 Peter 3: 8-15a; Mark 1: 1 -8.

Last week the OT passage was from Third Isaiah and reflected the situation of those who had been considered worthless by the Babylonians and had thus been left behind in Jerusalem when the rest had been taken into exile in 587/586 BC. The reading today is from Second Isaiah and this reflects the situation of the exiles themselves at roughly the same date. They were losing heart: it was beginning to appear as if the gods of Babylon were more powerful than Yahweh. Was this Exile going to become a permanent fact of life? Was there any realistic hope of ever being able to return home to Jerusalem?

The prophet's message is one of reassurance: Yahweh is in control of events, there will be a return to Jerusalem. See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; The time of exile will end: ..she has served her term. God has spoken and will fulfil his word. ..O comfort my people,...prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. .....the glory of the LORD shall be revealed .... for the mouth of the LORD has spoken. What God says is as good as done! His word guarantees it. This is the prophet's utter conviction. One of the major contributions of the experience of exile for Israel, due to the separation of the people from the religious life of the Jerusalem temple, was that they were thrown back on the word of God. In this was planted the seed which led to synagogue worship based on prayer and the word of God. The later destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD by the Romans completed the process. It was a little like the Reformation for Anglicans ? one of the good things it did for us was to restore the word of God to God's people, and restore a balance in worship between word and sacrament. 

Here is your God! See the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; The power of God will bring about the deliverance of his people. However, power does not mean violence. God's intervention is more like that of a shepherd finding the easiest path and the best grazing for his flock and caring for each one as an individual. We have seen before this type of imagery being taken up by NT writers, and indeed by Jesus himself. The might and power of God is best shown in tender care and saving guidance. 

There are many ways in which God has come with saving grace to his people in the past. The Exodus from Egypt was one; the return from Babylon was another. In each instance his coming was a saving act; and in each instance his coming involved judgment. Isaiah refers to the fact of Israel's sin as having contributed to their present situation ? there was an element of punishment, and the possibility of learning from past errors, in the Exile. The coming of Jesus was another coming of God with saving grace. There is a sense in which every grace we receive is a coming of God with salvation; and there is a final coming, and a final judgment,, and the final establishment of God's kingdom, the fulness of the kingly rule of God under which as Christians we already live, albeit incompletely. 

There was an impatience, an eagerness, for the return of the Lord among early Christians. In 1989 I remember the eagerness, the sense of hope and expectancy, with which people were imbued as the inevitable change of regime in Hungary came closer. The air was full of it ? there was excitement about it and its possibilities. At the time of Jesus there was much the same excitement and sense of hope in Palestine about the coming of Messiah. Following the resurrection and ascension of Jesus there was the same sort of expectation and excitement about the Parousia, the Second (and final) Coming, in the Early Church community. They expected it any day, certainly in their lifetime. It seems as if those to whom the Second Epistle of Peter was written were becoming disillusioned over the delay. So he begins by quoting Psalm 89 to the effect that God's timing is not the same as ours. He has eternity to work in. he is not being slow ? but he is giving us time in which to repent. It is only human impatience which makes it seem slow. But come it will, with rushing fire, destruction of the physical elements, the laying bare of the secrets of nature. This is figurative language ? we have no way of knowing what the Day of the Lord will be like in its details. 

Our response must be to make the best use of the present time, waiting for the end with a sense of expectancy and watchfulness. Thus we hasten the Day. If the Parousia means the coming of the kingly rule of God, the more we conform to that rule the more quickly God can establish it. God's intentions are clear: new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. As we seek righteousness, as we enter into a right relationship with God, as we seek justice for all, we are bringing forward the Parousia. This makes the Parousia sound like a process rather than a single event ? perhaps it is not such a bad idea to think of it terms of both event and process. Doctrine does not stand on its own ? doctrine evolves from the moral imperative and the experience of the Christian community. Belief in the Parousia is surrounded by uncertainty as to its timing and nature, but the moral precepts are those given by this Epistle ? while you are watching for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish. 

The introduction to the Gospel of S. Mark is quite abrupt. The Good News begins with the ministry of John the Baptizer, which has been foreshadowed in OT prophetic writing. We heard some of this in the OT passage from Isaiah. John is the messenger ... who will prepare your way, he is the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. These quotes foreshadow and substantiate John's witness to the Lord. John is one who goes before; he offers a form of baptism as a sign of repentance and renewal; he calls people back to their spiritual and moral responsibilities. He provides a stepping off point for the ministry of Jesus. Some of his disciples become disciples of Jesus. What we know of John, including his renowned asceticism, suggest that he could have been a member of the sect called Essenes. Certainly he was absolutely loyal and could not be swayed from proclaiming the message he carried ? truly in the succession of the prophets of the living God. 

So, S. Mark writes, The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Gospel is only the beginning; the response, the living of the 'good news', is ours to do. God has come to us, and spoken to us, once and for all. His present silence is a permanent delegation of his Word to his Church. We live the good news, and in that living we proclaim his return as judge. The Word has been delegated to us. The Lord lives! Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus! This has been the cry of the disciples in the liturgy of Holy Church for over 2,000 years. The living of the good news is what I called earlier the process of Parousia which will help bring it about. Christ needs prophets in the world of today as much as he needed them at the time of John and in the ages before him. For us there are roads to be made straight and valleys to be filled in, there are mountains to be laid low. They are in the world around us, and they are within us. We know what they are ? or we would if we listened to the voice of God in our hearts, the still, small voice of the Spirit. That needs some time to be given to stillness and quietness and listening. It means that we must put aside the various drugs and mechanisms we use for shutting out what could be painful. It means taking seriously the time the Church gives us at Lent and Advent to do just that. It means facing up to ourselves,seeing ourselves as the Lord sees us. It means realizing that he wants to make our path straight through the desert, that he wants to bring ushome to our Jerusalem. Finally, as we point others to Jesus, as did John, we must decrease as he did, so that Jesus can increase ? he who is himself the 'good news', the Word of salvation for our time and for all time.

 

Copyright Rev'd CanonDenis Moss and @SimonHarding - S. Margaret's Church, Budapest