Radically Counter Cultural

The Second Sunday of Advent, Year B

Isaiah 40: 1-11; Psalm 85:1-2,8-13; 2 Peter 3: 8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

To choose to live as a follower of Jesus is to choose a radically counter-cultural way of life. While our culture honors independence and self-reliance, the one we follow teaches inter-dependence and reliance on God and community. While our culture rewards ambition and competition, the one we follow teaches humility and cooperation.  And while our culture promotes the accumulation of status, power and riches, the one we follow teaches self-sacrifice, service to others, and the perils, rather than the rewards, of accumulating wealth. Pretty much everything our culture holds in high esteem can be anathema to the life of a Jesus follower, while the things we so value and hold dear are often sneered at or ridiculed in our secular world.

So, while I know some of you may think you’re conservatives, I’m here to tell you that as long as you’re out there trying to live the kind of life Jesus teaches us to live—I’ve got news for you:  You are radically counter-cultural!

Never is this more painfully clear than during the season of Advent. Even in the midst of this ongoing pandemic, the word we hear all around us is heralding holiday sales and seducing us to shop online for useless items we never needed in the first place—much less now.  Yet at the very same time the word in our scripture is heralding the end of the world and warning us to repent for many of the very same things our culture urges us to do.  “Shop now and shop often!” beckon the advertisers. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” counters John the Baptizer.  Talk about cognitive dissonance!

Advent is meant to be a time of faithful waiting—and perhaps never more so, at least in our lifetimes, than now.  But it’s a time of waiting not only for a cure for covid or even for Christmas, but of waiting for God to somehow enter into human history as dramatically and decisively as She did in Jesus, for what we are told will be the final time. 

Now, most of us Episcopalians don’t think much about a so-called Second Coming, much less whether or not we believe in such a thing.  But I dare say that if, like me, you’re waiting for violence to end, for poverty to be eradicated, for hunger to be eliminated, disease to be obliterated, justice to be done, and love to conquer all—then you are waiting for the Second Coming.  Because what you’re waiting for is the promised day that we all pray for, that day when very much unlike now, God’s will will finally be done on earth as it is in heaven. You’re waiting for the day when God will set all things right, restoring and reconciling all of creation to His original intent. You’re waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promise.

So. Advent is indeed a time of waiting. But as John the Baptizer reminds us, Advent is also time of preparing. And while we may prepare for Christmas by decorating, baking, and yes, shopping; we prepare for the birth of the baby Jesus by lighting one candle at a time on our advent wreath, by saying Advent prayers, and by singing Advent (not Christmas!) carols.  But our scriptures are insistent that we also prepare for the fateful day when we meet our Lord face to face, that we prepare by repenting: by examining our lives, our relationships, our hearts and our souls…by confronting our shortcomings, feeling remorse, accepting God’s loving forgiveness and turning back with newfound passion to living as Jesus teaches us to live. 

Please understand me: I get that this talk of repentance can feel like the last thing we need right now. I get that we’re already feeling deprived, longing for the kind of pre-covid Christmas when everyone could still go to parties, have a wee bit of eggnog, and steal a little kiss under the mistletoe. So who wants to bare their soul before God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth now?

But what if that’s just exactly what we need? What if in a very real sense, whether it happens when our lives are totally transformed by another extraordinary appearance of God on this planet or by our own individual and inevitable deaths---what if we are, in fact, going to be held accountable for how we’ve lived our lives?  Whether God comes to us or we go to God, what if God’s judgment is not about punishment but about purifying us, about melting away all of our brokenness, our sinfulness, and all that separates us from being able to fully accept God’s Divine Love?

German pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that, “we have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love, and of God's coming at Christmas, that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us.”

“The coming of God,” he said “is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience...” 

And yet…

What if judgment isn’t something God does to us, but something that happens when our reality meets God’s reality, when our sinfulness stands before God’s loving gaze?  What if judgment is what we experience simply as a consequence of standing in the full presence of God’s all-powerful Divine Love, and painfully realize for the first time just how much we’ve hurt the One who created us, the One who loves us so much he became one of us, the One who was even willing to die for us? 

What if we suddenly see in a sort of involuntary self-examination, just how much we’ve disappointed this God of Divine Love, how much we’ve fallen short of Her dream for us… how we’ve failed to love Him with our whole heart, mind, and strength, not loved our neighbors as ourselves, or forgiven others as we’ve been forgiven?  What if standing there in the burning Light of God’s Love we can’t help but see the truth about ourselves and our lives with absolute clarity? And what if that truth includes the truth of just how loveable we are in all our humanness, despite it all?

See, Isaiah tells us that, “He 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 speaks a powerful prophetic word of hope and promise:  This God is as tender as a shepherd. This God will hold us, protect us, and guide us.  Could it be that God’s Divine Love not only exposes our sin, but also heals us of the dreadful sorrow we feel when we acknowledge it? Wouldn’t that be divine? Wouldn’t it be divine to stand before God cleansed of all sin, healed and made whole, free from all that binds us…free to bath in the Light of God’s divinely loving gaze and soak it in with total self-acceptance?  Wouldn’t that be, well…wouldn’t that be heaven? 

So why do we wait? “Prepare the way of the Lord,” implores John the Baptizer.  “Repent!” Prepare now, in this season of Advent, for the fateful day none of us can predict when we will meet our God face to face and stand in the light of God’s Love. We can choose now to fearlessly examine our lives, our relationships, our hearts and our souls; we can choose now to confront our sinfulness, our brokenness, and the remorse we feel because of it; we can choose now to accept forgiveness and turn back with new-found passion to living as Jesus teaches us to live. 

Because Advent is meant to be a time not just of waiting, but of preparing. We don’t have to wait for the Second Coming to be cleansed, to be forgiven, and to be set free by God’s healing Love. 

“Prepare the way of the Lord!” beckons John the Baptist. “Shop now and shop often!” counter the advertisers. 

Who will you choose to listen to this Advent?  

Amen.