Unburdened
Isaiah 40: 1-11 (NIV)
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” A voice says, “Cry out.” And I said, “What shall I cry?” “All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.” You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, “Here is your God!” See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.
Mark 1: 1-8 (NIV)
The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way” — “a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’ ” And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Are you ready to welcome the newborn Christ?
In this morning's Old Testament lesson from Isaiah, we hear some very important words. They're so important that John the Baptist repeats them. They're words that capture what this season of Advent is all about:
Prepare the way of The Lord, make straight paths for him.
During this season of Advent we take this time of waiting to reflect on where Jesus fits into our lives.
Where does he fit into yours? Is Jesus at work in your life and in your world?
We take this time every single year to recognize that no matter how long you've believed in Jesus--whether this is the first time you've ever darkened the doorway of a church, or whether you've come here every Sunday all your life--Jesus is always being born again within us. No matter how strong our faith, or how committed our discipleship, all of us reach a point on our spiritual journey from time to time where we realize we've lost touch with Jesus.
Sometimes it's because we get bored with our way of worshipping and connecting with Jesus, and he stops feeling relevant, and real, and present. Sometimes the stresses of our lives, and even all of our commitments in our church, start to burn us out, and we get too tired to really connect with Jesus. Sometimes we go through a rough patch, or a hard time, and we get so disillusioned and disappointed that our old ways of connecting with Jesus just don't meet our deep need for him anymore. Sometimes we just get so comfortable in our faith that we take him for granted.
The point is, we all reach a point where we need to get reacquainted with Jesus, where we need to feel like we're meeting him for the first time all over again. We need to welcome Jesus into our heart like he hasn't been there all along, but rather like he's a newborn baby that you're seeing and holding for the first time. We need to see Jesus like we've never seen him before.
John the Baptist was trying to get his followers ready to do just that. The townspeople around JTB knew who Jesus was; by the time of this morning's Gospel passage, Jesus was in his early 30s. These people saw Jesus grow up. They knew him. He was the son of that carpenter, Joseph. They knew him well enough to take him for granted.
What JTB tells his followers is, I know you know Jesus the carpenter's son, but you don't know Jesus the minister. You've never seen him like this before. You're about to meet a whole new man.
But we can't meet this whole new man, this whole new minister, this newborn Christ, until we prepare a straight path for him to come into our lives and introduce himself to us. We need to divest ourselves of all the stuff that would get in our way of letting Jesus in.
There's a lot of stuff that can get in our way of letting Jesus in, that can act as a stumbling block between us and Jesus. But when I read this morning's words from the prophet Isaiah, there's one very specific kind of obstacle that comes to mind.
God tells Isaiah: speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.
Other translations of Isaiah will use different wordings of that verse, and a few Christmases ago I personally was very struck by this verse when the translation I read from said, speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, that her debt is forgiven
That stopped me right in my tracks, because I'll never forget how huge that feeling was, that feeling of forgiveness.
Your debt is forgiven. Just think about that. Think about how you would feel if someone you owed a whole lot of money to said those words to you, right now during this holiday season, this fourth quarter when we're all particularly stretched for money--your debt is forgiven. Think about how huge that would be. If the bank called you this afternoon and said, don't worry about paying your mortgage anymore, your mortgage is forgiven. Your credit cards are forgiven. Your student loans are forgiven.
Can you imagine the burden that would be lifted from you?
God called upon Isaiah to say those words to his own people in Jerusalem during their darkest hour, when they most needed God's grace. Their Temple was destroyed. Their people were exiled to Babylon. And they had so badly broken their covenant with God by defying his commandments that they had no reason at all to expect his mercy or protection.
But that penalty has been paid. That debt is forgiven. They have a clean slate. They can start all over, and get reacquainted with their God.
We can't have that fresh start, that clean slate, that new relationship with the newborn Christ before we lay down that burden, that feeling of knowing that we've made mistakes, both with God and with each other, that we can't undo.
We're forgiven. We're born again with the newborn Christ. We've been washed clean.
That doesn't mean the bad choices we've made didn't happen now. We've been where we've been, we've done what we've done, and our actions have consequences. For the Israelites, those consequences had them ending up in exile in Babylon.
But we can reconcile. We can atone. We can find oneness, and wholeness, with God again. We can start anew, and build a new relationship with God.
Prepare the way for The Lord, and make his paths straight. If there's something that weighs so heavily on your conscience that it's a distraction to you here and now, let it go. If there's something in your past that makes you question if you've been good enough, let it go. And, perhaps most importantly, if there's someone or something that's hurt you, if there's a grudge you hold on to, let it go. All those things put kinks in your path to The Lord. They're a burden that makes your spiritual journey more difficult. Let them go.
And when you do, move a step closer to meeting a Jesus you've never met before.
Amen.
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