A Good Beginning

 Sermon 12-6-20

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

You gotta love the Gospel of Mark. Straight and to the point. The “No fuss, no muss” gospel. The OTHER gospels of Matthew and Luke begin with versions of Jesus’s birth story. John starts with a Big Cosmic Poem, Genesis style. Mark? BOOM - We’re off and running from the get-go at a breakneck speed, and we never really get a chance to catch our breath through the rest of this Mark year.

You might even say …. If Mark were a song from a Disney movie, it would be that song from the animated version of Mulan, the one that goes - “Let’s get down to business!”

Now, if you are a child of the 80s and 90s like me, I apologize for getting that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day. If you did NOT absolutely LOVE this movie as a kid – even seeing it the theatres, as I did - let me refresh your memory. 

Mulan is the only child of a wounded war hero living in retirement in rural China, when an enemy threatens to bring the country to war, thus one man from each family is conscripted into the army. Mulan disguises herself as a boy to take her father’s place and shows up for her first day of Boot Camp, tiny magic dragon sidekick in tow. As she interacts with other characters and begins to train… things are not going well. Out of frustration, the general of the army breaks into song, Disney-style, to start the epic training montage.

“Let’s get down to business!” the general shouts as Mulan and her friends continue to fail miserably, and it seems Mulan’s military career is going to end as quickly as it began. Just as she is about to give up, Mulan solves an apparently impossible task in surprising way… which foreshadows how she uses her determination and creativity to later save China at the end of the movie. But, no spoilers!

It doesn’t matter if we’re watching a movie, listening to a catchy song, or reading the Gospel of Mark – we know that beginnings are important. They set the tone, and give us clues for what is to come. Beginnings give us a heads up for what to expect. And for Mark – it is to expect the unexpected.

In THIS telling of Jesus’ beginning, there are no sheep or shepherds, no angels or manger, no Joseph and Mary… not even a baby Jesus in sight. Mark gets right down to business, to usher in adult Jesus…… but first…  we get John the Baptist! Our first unexpected nativity hero, that big hairy bug-eating character that mysteriously appears to prelude the already grown up Jesus… who won’t even show up … until NEXT week.

In a way, this is John the Baptist’s training montage. He’s out there in the wilderness, shouting at the crowds, hearing confessions, absolving sins, and baptizing people in the river. If Mark were a Disney musical, John’s song might go something like – “Let’s get down the business…. To prepare the way! Did they send me sinners, when I asked for saints? You're the crookedest bunch I ever met, but you can bet before we're through: People, I’ll … certainly… baptize you!” …Something like that.

And people came. They came in large crowds – imagine that! – not to the city square or palaces of power, but out to the desert, in the middle of a barren land, isolated from everything. They come out, to see a preacher in strange garments, who packed a bug lunch, and tell them all the bad things they ever did, and to be dunked in the churning, sandy water of the Jordan river. Not exactly where we would expect to find the beginning of the Jesus story.

In a way, it feels very 2020 to listen to Mark this year. Maybe not the crowd part, but the isolated, “in the wilderness part.” Much of 2020 has felt like wandering in a wilderness, lost and not knowing our way around, scraping up resources to survive, lonely and uncomfortable. Not at all what we are used to. Perhaps at times in our own lives, we have felt as though we were in our own personal wildernesses, but this year – we’re all here, and there is a crowd of us wandering and lost, wondering where God is.

There are plenty of wilderness experiences that show up in the Bible too, beside this one populated by John the Baptist. Hagar fled and nearly despaired here in the wilderness. The Israelites wander for 40 years here before entering the promised land. Elijah rested under a broom tree here. Jesus will later be tempted here. Every time, Wilderness is a place of testing and of struggle…

But it is also a place where God is sure to show up. It’s where stories begin, and lives are changed. It’s where hope is planted, and where it – eventually – blooms. It’s where crooked and difficult paths are made clear and put to rights.

And sure enough, Mark alerts us in his beginning, of what is to come – Get ready, because ready or not, God is going to show up right here in the wilderness. In the isolation and the suffering. Not in the well-worth paths, but in the uncharted, difficult terrain of life, where the only way to go is forward.

We can’t go back to the way things used to be, and yet, we’re still unsure of the way through the wilderness we find ourselves in, even now, all these months later. Right now, we’re still not quite sure exactly what God is getting us ready for. We’re probably not “ready” in the sense that we’re not what others’ might consider “successful” or “thriving” … especially in this hot mess that we have called the year of our Lord 2020.  Forget writing that novel or picking up a new hobby. Forget getting a live tree or even decorating at all. For some of us merely surviving this holiday season will be a huge accomplishment.

Reay or not, Jesus arrives anyway, without decorations or live Christmas trees. Jesus did not wait until the world was “ready” in order to arrive. Jesus worked with what he had – and began his ministry at just the right time, and used just the right people to make it happen – in this case, a loud hairy preacher man in the desert, and later on, men and women who were beautifully flawed and beloved.

Jesus will arrive, not when we’re ready, but when Jesus is needed, right here and now in our wilderness. He begins his work in us, not waiting to use us when we are finally “ready” - he’s going to use as we are, beautifully flawed and beloved.

A good beginning can happen any time…. in December, in the middle of Advent, in the middle of the pandemic. Things often get started in the wilderness. We are ready as we are, where we are, and any time is a good time to begin. Likewise, we, like John, are called and drawn into “getting down to business.” … the Advent business.

We CAN’T sit on our hands and wait until WE think we are “ready” to “Get down to business…. The Advent business begins with us now, where sin, death, and suffering are defeated…. We are about the business of defeating the inequality and injustice that oppress us. The business of leveling out the uneven paths, the business of confessing and repenting of sins, where forgiveness flows, where peace rules nations and families. And there is no time like the present to begin, even if we don’t know where exactly this journey will take us. It may even take us to places like Vienna, Virginia.

I began my time with you as one of your pastors earlier this week. Perhaps this is not the beginning we expected when God began this work with all of us many months ago, not getting to meet all of you in the way we all thought. In a way, not unlike in Mark, I’m appearing in the wilderness with you, midstream, with my midwestern accent and my Philly habits, 9 months into a pandemic, weeks before a Christmas like we’ve never had before, and all ways this season has made us feel lost and afraid.

But, as the Holy Spirit is at work in Mark - ready or not, here we are. Together, we can continue to figure out what it means to forging a new path through this wilderness, side by side. Together, we can, and we WILL, get down do business, the business of pointing to where Jesus is showing up… and now is a GREAT time to begin. Thanks be to God. Amen.