The Second Sunday of Advent 2008



Another candle is lit today. It is the second week of the Advent season. The Gospel lesson is from Mark 1, the beginning of Mark's telling of the Jesus Story. But Mark doesn't have any birth narrative. He jumps into the deep water without a second thought. He tells of John the Baptizer. In so doing he is challenging the accepted ways of thinking about the Messiah that Jesus himself faced. After all, John, as we learn later in the story, had his uncertainties, too.

Fortunately we modern Christians don't have that problem. Yeah, right! Just listen to the hundred and one different ways we try to shoehorn Jesus into our preconceived notions. So when I came across this quote by Brian Stoffregen at CrossMarks Christian Resources it pushed my thoughts a little, too.

Perhaps we need to look at the Advent/Christmas season as a time to begin to hear the good news again for the first time.

Not an easy task. But an essential one! Yet I don't often have any inkling where to begin. I can't empty my head of all that has been put in over the decades of being a Christian.

Yet, and yet, I must work at that emptying because the world where I learned those things, even though they are but decades past, is not the world I live in today. Yes, God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, but I'm not. The world isn't. The Word speaks with different emphases and accents in different places. If you don't believe that,, take another language and read the Gospel in that language. New hints of God will jump out at you. New insights about who Jesus was, and is, will creep into your life.

That is why I look forward to each Advent. It means there is a new year to dig into the Gospel and a new year to find out where God and Jesus will be taking me as I live that life that is ahead of me.