The Second Sunday of Advent (Year B)
A voice cries out:
In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!
Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
-Isaiah 40:3
When we talk about Advent as a season of hope, many people will jump ahead to the sentimental warmth of Christmas. This makes sense, especially if we only see Advent as a “countdown to Christmas.” However, the danger in this is that, if Advent is simply about looking forward to beloved Christmas traditions and celebrations, then our “Advent hope” isn’t really hope… it’s actually little more than anticipation.
Hope—a true Advent and Christian hope—is something much more than optimism or anticipation, because this kind of hope-that-is-really-hope is both honest and vulnerable. It is honest because it requires that we acknowledge that the world, our lives, and our very selves are not what they could or should be. It is vulnerable because this kind of honesty opens us up to difficult questions about our wounds, deficiencies, and disappointments. And yet, in order for us to truly be the people of hope that we profess we are, we have to be willing to own our brokenness and that of the world around us.
When the words from the Prophet Isaiah that we hear in this Sunday’s First Reading were written, the People of Israel were in exile in Babylon. Jerusalem and the Temple had been destroyed by the Babylonian’s in 587 BC and most of the population had been deported. The world had been turned upside down and God’s Chosen People found themselves living in a land that was not their own and powerless to change their fate. It was into this broken reality God instructed Isaiah to speak a word of comfort to the People:
The glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together…Here is your God!
Here comes with power
the Lord GOD,
who rules by his strong arm;
here is his reward with him,
his recompense before him.
Like a shepherd he feeds his flock;
in his arms he gathers the lambs,
carrying them in his bosom,
and leading the ewes with care. —Isaiah 40:5, 10-11
Through the prophet, God promises that God will come to this scattered People and gather them together in safety and security. But, within this text, we also hear that God will do something new. Because, rather than look back to Jerusalem and its Temple as the center of power and piety, the People are told that God will be found within the wilderness. And so, Isaiah tells them prepare a royal road for the Lord in the desert. When the work of leveling the mountains and filling in the valleys is finished, then the Lord’s advent (coming) will be accomplished and all that has been promised will become a reality.
“We will have to listen to the voice of the one calling in the wilderness, even though he says: I am not the one. We will have to muster the patience of the true Advent person. The church is only the voice of one calling in the wilderness, a voice saying that the ultimate, the glorious kingdom of God is yet to come, but only when he wills it and not when we would like it… It is simply still Advent. Even the church is still an Advent church, for we are still waiting for the one to come in revealed splendor of absolute divinity along with the eternal kingdom.”
—Karl Rahner in The Mystical Way in Everyday Life
In a sense, John the Baptist—the Advent prophet par excellence—is simply continuing Isaiah’s mission of announcing the advent of the Promised One and his message is the same: Prepare the way of the Lord. To do this, John calls his desert-followers—and each of us—to Advent honesty and vulnerability. In his clarion call, Advent hope and the hard work of conversion come together.
First, we have to be honest in admitting how much and how often we offer up our time, attention, and treasures to gods that cannot save us and that the work of re-orienting our lives still needs to happen. And we have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to risk change by surrendering claims of power and our preferences about how the world should be, so that God can bring to birth something new within us and within all of creation. Like the People to whom Isaiah spoke God’s word of comfort, we have to recognize that life is not as it should be and that we are still in a time of waiting and want. Unless this happens, hope remains impossible because we aren’t able to see that there is even anything to hope for, which leaves us sentimental anticipation and an Advent season that is robbed of its power to call us to hope, conversion, and, ultimately, gratitude.
In the end, the liturgy for this Second Sunday of Advent reminds us that the unfolding story of salvation that is at the heart of Advent isn’t about us.
Are we part of the story? Absolutely.
But it isn’t our story.
Rather, as the Gospel of Mark makes clear, this is Christ’s story being written for us and within us because it is “the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God” (Mark 1:1) that we proclaim and celebrate. Our task—our contribution to this story—is our honesty and vulnerability by which we create the space where the newness of Reign of God can come to birth:
According to his promise
we await new heavens and a new earth
in which righteousness dwells.
Therefore, beloved, since you await these things,
be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace. —2 Peter 3:13-14
Almighty and merciful God,
may no earthly undertaking hinder those
who set out in haste to meet your Son,
but may our learning of heavenly wisdom
gain us admittance to his company.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Second Sunday of Advent
