Good News

Sunday, December 29, 2019
Pastoral Intern Teleen Saunders

Mark 1:1-20 

One of the true joys of my years teaching elementary school was being a part of the writing process.  Writing is such an important skill.  After all, it is identified as one of the three “R”s – Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic.  Now I loved all of my students and each had unique gifts to share.  So, for some children, this gift was writing.  Some children could write pages and pages where the characters are highly developed, and the plot took interesting twists and turns.  Other children…not so much.  Some of the kids really struggled in writing for one reason or another.  And then there were the students who could write but who simply didn’t have the attention span to sit in a desk long enough to fill a page with words.  These kids had the amazing gift of brevity.  These stories would read something like this:

One day there was a dinosaur stomping people.  Everyone died.  The End.

A perfectly fine story, albeit, violent and lacking in detail – really lacking in detail.  But the student was done and off to the next thing.  Maybe even recess.

I can’t help but feel that our gospel writer today was such a kid.  There’s a story to tell, and some pretty high drama, but… recess!  So Mark writes his gospel and off he goes.

Mark is the shortest of our four gospels and is believed to be the oldest.  In fact, many scholars believe that Matthew and Luke used Mark when writing their own accounts.  Matthew and Luke, however, added many more details, like a birth narrative and genealogy.  So, it’s ironic that on this, the first Sunday of Christmas, we read from Mark where there is absolutely no Christmas story at all.  Not only is there no room at the inn, there is no inn!  No virgin birth, no star, no shepherds, and no wise men.  In Mark’s short gospel, Jesus first appears as a man about to embark upon his ministry.  And so, the “birth” for Mark is baptism, where our Lord and Savior meets John the Baptist in the wilderness.

Now, the wilderness is an interesting, and I argue, a very appropriate place for Mark to start his gospel.  Words translated as “wilderness” occur nearly 300 times in the Bible.[1]  The wilderness is a place for intense experiences—of stark need for food and water (manna and quails), of isolation (Elijah), of danger (Hagar and Ishmael), of temptation, and of encounters with angels.  There is a psychology as well as a geography of wilderness.  The wilderness is a thin place, a vulnerable place where God comes to our rescue.

The book of Mark is thought to have been written in the last half of the first century.  It was written in a highly tumultuous time in which the Roman army lays siege to the city of Jerusalem and eventually destroys both the city and its temple.  The people were not only in a figurative wilderness, they were shoved back into the literal wilderness having no place to worship, having no place to call home.  And when your belief system is based on the idea that God dwells within the holiest of holies, within the temple itself, then you need to ask yourself, “Where is God?  Where is the Good News?”

We have all been in the wilderness.  When the future seems unsure.  When we are faced with questions surrounding our career, or our relationships, financial security, our health, or even our faith.  We have concerns about the future of our country, the future of our environment, and status of this whole crazy world with never-ending war and desperate refugees in search of hope.  The wilderness is a lonely place.  A scary place — even, or perhaps especially at Christmastime.

Theologian and civil rights leader, Howard Thurman wrote a beautiful poem, that depicts these days following Christmas.  He writes,

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among others,

To make music in the heart.

The work of Christmas is where Mark begins as he announces, The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  In fact, the word “gospel” means “good news!”  It comes from the Greek “euggelion” and is connected with words of proclamation such as “evangelical”, and “angel”.

This isn’t the quiet birth of Luke’s narrative.  There is no silent night!  Here, when the Son of God emerges from baptism, the heavens are torn apart and God speaks!  Christ, the Messiah, has come to earth!  There is no going back.  Something has changed.  This is good news because the people of God have been waiting for a savior.  They have been waiting to reclaim their identity as God’s people.  They have been waiting for a way out of the wilderness!

We have had twenty-five days in Advent to yearn for the coming of Christ.  We have had twenty-five days to contemplate hope, peace, joy, and love.  I hope you are ready, because Mark’s Gospel gives us no time rest.  In fourteen verses he’s off to Galilee.  Mark is a gospel of action.  The time is fulfilled.  Jesus calls.

Perhaps the terseness of Mark’s gospel is also its strength.  He hits all the major points: the life, death, teaching, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  So perhaps Mark purposely leaves out the details.  Maybe Mark is relying on us to write the rest of the story, to have the courage to venture back into the wilderness as followers of Christ.

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among others,

To make music in the heart.

Now to be clear, our church is more than a social service agency.  Baptism in Christ gives us a new identity and grounds us in the truth so that we can bring justice and mercy into the world.  Because of Jesus, this is who we are and what we do.  God meets us in the wilderness and leads us into the world with hope and healing.  This is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now if you want to see the good news, I would suggest that you look around.  (No, literally, look around.)  Look at the people who are sitting in the pews next to you.  Do you see the good news?  Do you see where the Holy Spirit has claimed your brothers and sisters in Christ?  Often, I am amazed at how the ministries of this church fulfill the promises of God’s kingdom.  How we are not afraid to venture like Christ, into the wilderness to house those who need shelter, to advocate for those whose mental health is hurting, to walk with those who grieve, and pray for those who are ill…. And all this just this morning!  And let’s not forget that we also make music!

The gospel is a living word where WE are part of the writing process.   The heavens have been torn and the Messiah has come.  We have been called from out of the wilderness to serve the living Christ with hope and healing.  This is good news indeed.  Amen.

[1] http://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/wilderness/midbar-arabah-and-eremos-biblical-wilderness