Isaiah 40: 1–11; Psalm 85: 1–2, 8–13; II Peter 3: 8–15a;
Mark 1: 1–8
This is the homily
by Fr. Gene Tucker that was given at St. John’s; Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on
Sunday, December 10, 2017.
“PREPARING
THE WAY”
(Homily texts: Isaiah 40: 1–11 & Mark 1: 1–8)
In
each year of our three-year cycle of readings, our Gospel reading places before
us the account of John the Baptist’s ministry.
The
theme of this Sunday’s readings is “Preparing the way.” Preparing the way of
the Lord, making straight in the desert a highway for our God, as our Isaiah
reading proclaims. (Can’t you hear the wonderful music of Handel’s “Messiah”
running through your mind as you read Isaiah’s words?)
This
theme, one of the preparing of the way of the Lord, is one in which the Lord
prepares a way for His people to come home, and of God’s servants (in this case
the figure of John the Baptist) preparing a way for the coming of Jesus Christ,
who is the One who opened the way to God.
Let’s
explore these ideas just a bit.
We
should begin with Isaiah’s words….
This
portion of the Book of Isaiah was written, most biblical scholars believe, by
someone who may have been a member of a school of prophets, or by someone who
was writing with the themes of Isaiah in mind, during the time of the return of
God’s people from exile in Babylon. (To refresh our memories, God’s people –
many of them anyway – had been deported to Babylon when Jerusalem was conquered
in the year 586 BC. Then, when the Babylonian Empire fell to the Persians, it
was the Persian king Cyrus who allowed the exiles to return home to the Holy
Land.) So this portion of the Book of Isaiah carries the title “Second Isaiah”,
and it encompasses chapters 40 through 54 of the book.[1]
Isaiah
chapter 40 tells us that God is going to prepare a way for His people to return
home. God will “make straight in the desert a highway” for His people. That
highway will be created as the rough places are made plain, and the crooked places
are made straight.
And
so it came to be. In the year 538 BC, the first of the exiles left Babylon and
made their way to the Promised Land, where they would rebuild Jerusalem and
would restore the Temple.
Now
we must fast-forward 500 and more years, to the time of the ministry of John
the Baptist.
It is
this powerful figure that we encounter, ministering in the wilderness, calling
God’s people to repent of their sins, and to be washed clean of those sins by
entering the waters of the Jordan River. Mark, along with Matthew and Luke,
tell us that the Baptist’s ministry is one of preparation, for John – they all
tell us – was preparing the way of the Lord.
Moreover,
the description of the Baptist’s clothing and his diet are reminiscent of the
ministry of the ancient prophet Elijah. (See II Kings 1: 8) In Elijah’s
ministry, we encounter a prophet who prepared the way of the Lord by denouncing
the false worship of the pagan god Ba’al. In the Baptist’s ministry, we
encounter a figure who labors in the same fashion as those Old Testament
prophets, calling God’s people to a true and faithful worship of God which
involves not only the outward actions of worship that the Law of Moses
prescribed, but to an inner purity of heart which integrated the outward actions
of worship with the intent and condition of the heart.
Perhaps
it’s not too much of a stretch of our imaginations to say that you and I are
called to engage in a ministry like John the Baptist’s.
That
is, we are called to prepare the way of the Lord by pointing beyond ourselves
to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is, after all, what we are all
about in this season of Advent: We are getting ready for the coming of Jesus.
And,
in a nutshell, that’s what God is doing in sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to
take on our humanity, for God is opening a way, a highway, for us to follow to
find our way back to God. That is the Christmas message in its most basic form.
(We will have more to say about this in our Christmas homily.)
As
part of our preparation for the coming of the Lord, perhaps we might reflect a
bit on the ways in which we are pointing beyond ourselves to the ways in which
the Lord comes into people’s lives. We might do that as we look back over our
shoulders at the pathways of life that we have walked thus far, to see the
wonderful work that God has done in our lives. For there, I suspect, we will
find evidence of God’s doings, and we can share those great and good deeds with
others, so they will be able to see similar workings of God in their own lives.
May
we point the way to God by sharing the ways in which God has opened the way for
us to find the pathway to a full and lasting relationship with Him.
[1] Biblical scholars differ in their
convictions about the authorship of the remainder of the Book of Isaiah. Some
maintain that the entire remainder of the book should be known as Second
Isaiah, while others say that chapters 55 through the end of the book was
written by a third individual, and so should be known as Third Isaiah.
