Jesus is calling or.... Is Jesus calling?

Scripture Readings:"Mark 1:1-4, Isaiah 9:6-7"

HOPE and Wait, WAIT and Hope

The first Advent reading each year is usually about hope. Have you ever stopped to think about HOPE, what it means, what is required?  Hebrews 6:19 calls hope an anchor saying “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”

Hope is an anchor for our soul. Hope is what keeps us going when things are tough. Hope is the engine that makes us want to persevere.

But hope requires waiting.  Hope is the anticipation of a future something. Without waiting there is no hope. We wait for visits from family or friends.  We wait for test results from the doctor. we wait for the birth of a new grandchild.  And we hope. For fun times, good outcomes, a beautiful baby. We have hope in our waiting. But waiting is required.

Wait a minute.

Wait a month.

Or even years or lifetimes.

We don’t like to wait, whether it’s in traffic or the waiting room, or in line at the store.  We don’t like to wait but sometimes waiting is the exact right thing. Wait for the cake to finish baking. Wait for it to be iced. Wait for the ice cream on top. Wait until everything is in place and the time is right.

Our scripture readings this morning begin with hope after a very long wait, until the time was right. The prophecies of the coming of the messiah had been given hundreds of years before. The second coming is part of the long-awaited prophesy also!

Mark was so excited that the prophecies were being fulfilled…..finally being fulfilled…… that he jumped right into the meat of the story. He didn’t do any buildup, didn’t provide his readers any background information. He just started the story with evidence that the long-awaited Messiah had finally arrived and the Messiah was ready to MOVE, ready for action!  He jumped straight to the very specific prophecy, that of the messenger.

Mark started by repeating the announcement that the prophet Isaiah had made about 700 years before Jesus appeared.  Mark didn’t mention the birth of Jesus, the visits by angels to Zechariah and Mary, or angels singing to the shepherds. He didn’t talk of the virgin who was expecting or her bridegroom who was in a predicament. Or of magi bringing extravagant gifts.  He didn’t give any background information. 

The Gospel of Mark starts like this: “the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the son of God” then directs the readers’ attention to the messenger who had been sent ahead to prepare the way, “a voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way of the Lord; make straight paths for him."

He starts “the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ” by talking about John the Baptist.

Mark was tired of the wait – he jumped over the details!

But in Mark’s haste to get to the meat of the story, he missed many of the details that make the rest of the story so endearing and something we are better able to identify with. I don’t know about you, but I can more identify with the early struggles of the new family than the locust eating messenger.

In Mark’s haste, he didn’t tell us of the struggles of a long-married couple who’d never been able to have children. We learn this bit of information from Luke – that an angel visited Zechariah to tell him that he’d have a son and to name him John.

Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth have been waiting – had given up waiting – we know they’d given up waiting because he asked the angel – can you imagine?  – HE ASKED THE ANGEL, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”  They’d run out of hope in their waiting.

Was this the first of the miracles surrounding the birth of Jesus?

Then just as the angel had said, Elizabeth became pregnant. Their waiting ended and their hope gave way to reality. 

The waiting was important. This waiting was used to encourage Mary, young Mary after an angel appeared to her too. Not just any angel, but Gabriel! Gabriel told Mary that her relative, Elizabeth, who the whole family knew was in her old age and  barren, was also having a baby.

This news encouraged Mary, perhaps because she wondered if she’d been crazy, to think that an angel had appeared to her and told her that she would have a baby – a baby from the Holy Spirit in the power of the Most High.

I’d think I was crazy if an angel appeared to me.

Telling me something of a relative that I could confirm with a visit would certainly help me and give me hope. So Mary did just that. She went to see Elizabeth. Both Elizabeth and her unborn baby who leapt in Elizabeth’s womb, confirmed what Gabriel had said. These babies were connected not only through family ties but also through the angel visits and the miracles they shared.

These families had hope.

Their hope lingered as waiting began. It is quite likely that Zechariah and Elizabeth had long passed away before John became the messenger of the messiah. It was decades before either John’s or Jesus’ ministries became public.

But hope requires waiting.  We hope and we wait and we wait and we hope. This season, we hope that if we wait long enough the current pandemic conditions will go away, that our loved ones and we, ourselves, will make it through this really rough patch.

Hope is such a strong anchor. Without hope, we are lost, floating adrift. 

We believers have a hope that is secure and firm.

We do not have our anchor on the science of a vaccine or cure or medicine.

We do not have our anchor in politics or government programs to make everything all right. 

We have hope in the one wrapped in swaddling cloths and placed in a manger. 

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. 

While this prophecy hasn’t happened – we do not have a government on the shoulders of Jesus yet, and there is not everlasting peace yet – we do have hope that this prophecy is true and is a coming event.

There are many signs that could be foreshadowing the second-coming – fulfillment of the rest of Isaiah’s prophesy  - - wars, rise of false prophets, loving the world instead of God, famines of food, water and famine of hearing God’s word (Amos 8:11 says “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “when I will send a famine through the land— not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.)  The second coming is still in the future. 

If Jesus doesn’t return during our lifetimes, we will meet Him during our eternal lifetimes. We have this hope… and in the meantime, we have to wait.

I look at the beginning of Mark’s gospel and see something that is likely true today for each one of us. We all probably have a John the Baptist in our personal history.

Someone who prepared the way of Jesus in our lives.

Someone who made the path straight for Jesus in the Holy Spirit to get to us and into us.

When you tell your story of knowing Jesus, you have to include people and situations that cleared the way for you to meet and eventually accept Jesus. Sunday school teachers, Friends, family, Pastors, Enemies, co-workers, acquaintances

You are probably a John the Baptist for someone else, children, friends, grandchildren, and others.

John the Baptist called for people to repent – to turn away from their sin. I submit that before I can turn from my sin, I have to be made aware of it. Sometimes that takes a lot of convincing and even direct evidence … in my face. When I am in conflict with someone it can be the evidence I need to recognize my sin.  – sin of pride, sin of haughtiness, sin of judgmentalism.

I think it takes a lot to clear the path for us to meet Jesus - to be willing to recognize and admit we need Jesus. And other people wait and hope in their waiting that we repent, that we turn away from sin and that we meet Jesus.  Some people who prayed for you for days, weeks even years.

Waiting is essential.  Hope even more so. 

Waiting provides time for the experiences that we need to make the path straight for Jesus.

The path isn’t made straight because we are sinless, - we don’t have to be “cleaned up” before we meet and accept Jesus, The path is made straight as we recognize that we need Jesus to help us.

Hope anchors us to Jesus. 

Hope anchors us to the firm and secure foundation of the savior of the world.

As we go through the next few weeks and beyond, how will you prepare the way for the Lord in yourself and in those around you?

Will you make more an effort to be patient in waiting? Maybe demonstrate more of the fruits of the spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control when waiting in line at the store, waiting on the traffic, waiting on the holiday visitors to arrive?

Yes, waiting is essential and happens whether we know Jesus or not.

Hope is what makes our waiting life-giving instead of life-tolerating. 

When we hope in the promises of life with Jesus we wait knowing that when the time is right, when the paths are straight, Jesus will fulfill the rest of the prophecy and come again.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come.