December 7, 2008 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK
Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11 + Psalm 85 + 2 Peter 3: 8-14 + Mark 1:1-8
Beginnings and endings are sometimes difficult to tell apart. Which one is which often depends on which way you are looking: backwards or forwards. Graduation is a perfect example. I’ve received several announcements this week from young people who are graduating. It may be the end of formal education or the beginning of a career. It seems as though we have fairly well caught that idea when we call the ceremony involved: “Commencement.” While something is ending, something is also beginning. For us who believe, death is no more an ending than birth. A pregnancy may end, but it means something begins.
The opening of the Gospel of Mark is unique and significant. In the first verse, he announces a beginning; and to those rooted in the First Testament, there is a sudden parallel, a kind of connection that makes sense in terms of what follows. The first book of the Bible is called the Book of Beginnings, and the first word of Mark’s Gospel is beginning. The connection between the two is no accident – this message of Mark is about creation beginning again, but there is no ending: no ending to the Hebrew Scriptures, and Mark’s Gospel is notorious for having no ending. It simply seems to stop, or perhaps to “pause.” All of which makes some sense in this season when endings and beginnings seem to blur a bit because with Creator God it’s always going to be about beginnings.
There is a saying among those who work with groups and process that it “begins before it begins.” Practically speaking, it means that if a group is getting together at 9:00, at 8:45 when they arrive, things are already happening. It’s like that with Mass. It does not really begin when I invoke the Trinity in blessing. Today’s Mass began when you focused on getting here, and what happened along the way has a great deal to do with how this liturgy is going to go for all of us. On another level, we bring our history to this assembly, and what we remember, and what we experienced in the past has everything to do with what happens today. It’s true: “things begin before they begin.” All this speaks to something important for this season and something deeply involved in the message of John: readiness.
Years after I left the seminary, I went back for a reunion or some meeting, I can’t remember which; and I sat down at dinner with one of my professors. As we sat and talked, I was stunned at the man’s wisdom, his humor, the breadth of his knowledge, and I found myself clinging to every word and idea. Later that evening, I was wondering: “When did he get so smart and so charming?” The more I wondered about it, I began to realize that he had not changed a bit. It was me. When I was twenty, I thought he was boring, aloof, and out of it; and here I was fifteen years later completely enchanted by the same man. I began to wish I could do some of that time I had spent there over again; but of course we rarely get that chance. The issue was simply a matter of readiness. I wasn’t ready at age twenty.
The question of readiness is part of the reason why some of the people at the time of Jesus did not listen. It is because they were not exposed to Christ, not that they failed to see the miracles or hear is voice; it was simply a matter of not being ready. It is a matter of what we can and will let in, hear, and integrate. There are a lot of factors that make for readiness, but the chief among them is desire, and desire is what I ask you to reflect upon in this second week of advent.
Desire in Mark’s Gospel is a big issue. He tells again and again of huge crowds frantic with a desire to see Jesus, to hear Jesus, to meet Jesus. This image ought to give us reason to wonder about what it is we desire in this life. The people who flocked to hear John the Baptist heard him say something about beginnings, and they thought it was about endings, so in a desire to be ready for the end of time which they thought the Messiah would bring, they rushed to his baptism playing the odds that it would protect them from eternal destruction. Their desire to shed their sins was a last ditch effort to save themselves.
But instead of an end, what they got was a beginning; a chance for a future which they could enjoy if they had the desire and were ready. John’s work and John’s message are still with us because it begins before it begins. Before Jesus begins, John has already started, and if there is no end to Mark’s Gospel, it is because the beginning has already begun and endings are always beginnings. Before Jesus begins, His Spirit is already at work, and the evidence of readiness is desire. Our readiness for the coming of Christ is measured by our desire. Our readiness for a life in Christ is measured by our openness the desire for conversion and repentance that shows itself in our willingness to change and be changed. The weariness and dullness of life lived for puny pleasures has little hope for a beginning. A past that is intolerable because of its desperate shallowness, loneliness, and emptiness drives people to the desert where a voice still cries out: “Be Ready”! Not for Christmas on December 25, but for a beginning that will satisfy our deepest desires and longings, and find us ready to begin again new and whole, and clean and pure, holy, and faithful. This kind of readiness needs an uncommon openness, a freedom, a willingness to be surprised to discover that just when we thought everything was over it was just beginning, just when we thought we might be finished, we had really just begun. That would be really good news.