Word & Worship for the Second Sunday of Advent

 

Oration for the First Sunday of Pentecost

Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son. By his coming strengthen us to serve you with purified lives, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.  Amen.

The Prayers of the Church:

·         For continued progress on vaccines and therapeutics for the virus…

·      For our bishops, Susan and Michael and the local deans, Let us pray…
·      For the congregation of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Aylmer and their pastor, Pr. John Goldsworthy, let us pray…

·         For all the needs and prayers we hold in our hearts…

     (a time of silent prayer)… let us pray…

First Reading: Isaiah 40:1-11

Comfort, O comfort my people,     says your God. 2 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. 3 A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,     make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 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. 5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,     and all people shall see it together,     for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” 6 A voice says, “Cry out!”     And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass,     their constancy is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower fades,     when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;     surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers, the flower fades;     but the word of our God will stand forever. 9 Get you up to a high mountain,     O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength,     O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,     lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah,     “Here is your God!” 10 See, the Lord God comes with might,     and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him,     and his recompense before him. 11 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.

Psalm 85:1-2, 6-13

Lord, you were favorable to your land;
    you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
² You forgave the iniquity of your people;
    you pardoned all their sin. Selah

⁸ Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,
    for he will speak peace to his people,
    to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
⁹ Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,
    that his glory may dwell in our land.

¹⁰ Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
    righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
¹¹ Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
    and righteousness will look down from the sky.
¹² The Lord will give what is good,
    and our land will yield its increase.
¹³ Righteousness will go before him,
    and will make a path for his steps.

Second Reading: 2 Peter 3:8-15

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. ⁹ The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. ¹⁰ But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.

¹¹ Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, ¹² waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? ¹³ But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

¹⁴ Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; ¹⁵ and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him,

Gospel Verse:

Alleluia.

   What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
    nor the human heart conceived,

    what God has prepared for those who love him” Alleluia..

Reading: Mark 1:1-8

1 The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

² As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way;
³ the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
    make his paths straight,’”

⁴ John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵ And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶ Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷ He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸ I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

·        I may have preached on this before, and maybe I need to preach on this again for myself and maybe for you too.

·        Mark “lets the cat out of the bag” right off with the first words of the written Gospel: The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. There is no guessing where his writing is heading. He calls the message “good news.” In his language, the word is Euangélion, literally “good news.” Gospel comes from an older version of English and means – no surprise – “good news.” He even identifies Jesus as the Christ (the “anointed one” or Messiah) and the Son of God.

·        For Mark, the Good News begins before Jesus appears, so the beginning starts before the story we’d come to hear. The word of Isaiah the prophet are quoted and are applied to John the Baptizer. We don’t even hear of Jesus for a while in Mark’s Gospel. It appears that his story is not one that “just appears”, but one that has built up, based solidly on what has gone before and bursting forth at the proper time.

·        So if this in the beginning, where does the Gospel end? Mark does have the Passion Narrative, telling of the crucifixion, but the Resurrection remains mysterious without any appearances by the resurrected Christ. Does it just end there? Even if we add in the other three Gospels, they end somewhere. What is next?

·        Some say the Acts of the Apostles – written by Luke – continues the story, but even that book ends without going too far.

·        Let’s look at this another way. Mark’s words are the beginning, the starting line in a way. The Good News takes off from there and it goes on… through all the Gospels, the book of Acts, the letters of Paul, Peter, John, James, and whoever wrote the letter to the Hebrews. It carries on though the wild and woolly Book of Revelation.

·        The Good News continued to be studied, proclaimed, and commented on by teachers, preachers, and saints of the Early Church. The message was carried on through what we wrongly call the Dark Ages, into the Renaissance and the Reformation, even with the cloudy confusion of those times.

·        The Good News that begins with Mark and before Mark remains “good news” even in our own day. It will continue beyond our days because it doesn’t end with us.

·        The written Gospels are the Beginning; our living out the life of grace we enter in Baptism is the Continuation in the present. The End is yet to be fully seen. Right now, the thing to hold on to is the reality that we are living in the Good News right now.

·        Did you ever think about that before? Even if you did, it’s time to think about it again. The Good News is not a club we might belong to or a concept we might come to agree with. It is not an elite organization that searches for only the best, the proper, the “right” people. The Good News is a proclamation that God’s grace is ours as a gift despite any failures and unworthiness. Isaiah told his people and tells us: 

·                   Comfort, O comfort my people,
                says your God.
                 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
                and cry to her
           that she has served her term,
                that her penalty is paid,

·        As this season of Advent continues, we will hear more of the Good News, even to the voices of angels proclaiming Good News of great joy for all the people.

·        Today there is no angelic proclamation, only the voice of a prophet from ages past and the voice of the fore-runner of Jesus in all his desert-y dress and weird diet. Both Isaiah and John received the Good News themselves and then told others. For them, if there was a price to be paid, they paid it.

·        Their proclamations prepared the way for the One who is to come and what they said prepares us for the One who is to come.

·        You can believe it, each of us is part of this Good News. It is proclaimed to us and it changes us. It is the story of grace and that story has not come to an end. It even seems new each morning and each morning can be a new beginning.

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.