Isaiah 40:1-11

{1} 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.

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.”

Prayer of Confession

The Sermon

Outside the house, it's a cold but sunny and clear morning, with heavy snow on the ground. Inside, the room is filled with carefully opened boxes, stuffed with layers of cotton cloth to protect the delicate pieces now coming out of storage.

Mom and I would be there in the family room, surrounded by the most fabulous objects in the world. Softly from another room would be playing the sound of Johnny Mathis or the Kingston Trio or Julie Andrews—why on earth did anyone else ever record a Christmas album?

As my older brothers—fully-grown men of around 10 years old—were off in school, Mom and I would go through the annual ritual of setting up the Christmas decorations in the house.

One of my favorite objects that only came out at this one time of year was also one of the most delicate: a blue “egg,” about the size of my four-year-old fist, made of sugar and frosting—held together I have no idea how. You would hold it up, and peer into a small hole in one end of it, and inside you would see a magical, three-dimensional Christmas scene.

It could have been the manger scene, or it might have been elves in the workshop; but I think it was a snowy little medieval village at Christmastime. Honestly, I have no idea now what the scene was. But getting to look into that magical egg every year meant one thing: Christmas was coming.

For a long time after I became an adult, I didn’t call it magic. I was influenced by the idea that the word “magic” refers to something dark and strange and not perhaps rooted in God. I avoided sending Christmas cards that wished for you that good old “Christmas magic.” Christmas is a miracle, not a magic trick. Miracle is God at work; magic is something else.

But eventually, I decided to let that word back into my Christmas vocabulary. There is a fairly specific feeling that surrounds both the story of the miracle and our annual celebrations of it—even the small, private celebrations—and maybe it’s a flawed word, but there is something like a kind of magic that goes on at Christmastime.

Something special happens, maybe even something holy, even for us old fuddy-duddies, who still insist—correctly—that Christmas carols aren’t really, technically, supposed to start until December 25. That’s the start of the Christmas season. Advent is supposed to be Advent, an opportunity for Christians to think about how they might better prepare their hearts and their minds and their lives for the coming of Christ.

If we did it the right way, Johnny Mathis and all the rest of them would be filling up the airwaves from December 25 until we get to Epiphany, on January 6th—that’s the Christmas season. The twelve days of Christmas is when we’d have our Christmas parties and exchange presents and all that fun stuff.

No more December Twenty-ninths feeling an uneasy emptiness. No more depressing January Seconds, with nothing more to look forward to for months. We’d have a Christmas season full of Christmas—not just one big day, followed by a mild recovery, and a vaguely amoral New Year’s, and then a long, cold January of “back down to earth.”

But even those of us who vainly holler against the wind in favor of that technically correct approach to Advent and Christmas can still feel something happening in these dark December late-afternoons. It affects all our senses, and if we can choose, ever so carefully, those elements of grace, from the cacophony of falsely sentimental garbage, we can still find within them traces of holiness.

I will always remember the hush of a late afternoon in December, walking in Cambridge to visit a friend, a young friar I had met at a church retreat a few weeks earlier. I had taken the 45-minute bus ride from the town in England where I was living, and had gotten off way too early, so I’d walked an extra hour or so into the heart of the Cambridge University area, and a light snow had started to fall.

I walked the street in front of King’s College, the centuries-old, honey-colored buildings where so much immortal choral music has been produced over the years. It had just gone completely dark outside—it was around 6:00—and the lights of the shop windows, and the silence of the footsteps as students walked on the fresh snow of the sidewalks, and the directions I had for St. Bene’t’s Abbey, and the anticipation of seeing my friend again, all combined for a stirring Christmastime memory.

Some people remember, as children, getting to put the whole nativity scene together and then, for the crowning touch, putting the baby into the manger. I remember what they smelled like, those old pieces; what they felt like in my hand.

Peppermint, or anything else that reminds you of a candy cane, always makes it Christmas time for some people.

Some people remember snowflakes falling on the ground, so big they seemed to land with a thud, every one bringing a blessing from heaven that says, “Something indescribably exciting and heartwarming and beautiful is coming—plus, you’re about to get a bunch of cool presents and a sock full of candy.”

The pine and holly, apple cider, hot chocolate, turkey in the oven—the aromas of the family Christmas table are still implanted somewhere in many of our memories.

Fresh wood cracking in the fireplace. Church choirs caroling, Salvation Army bands playing… If there’s a snowfall, or a light mist in the air, even the stoplights in the city glowing red, green and gold become Christmas ornaments.

And some of us are old enough to be sentimental, and some of us are young enough to be enchanted. And somewhere in there is the feeling, maybe not strictly the meaning, but the feeling, of Christmastime.

[Vivian plays “Christmastime Is Here” by V. Guaraldi]

“In the wilderness, prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 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. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

To the people of God: Our suffering in lonely exile is over.

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

If we could all make up a Christmas wish list of our own, and really list the things that we really want, I imagine we could show them to each other, and we’d probably see a lot of the same things on each other’s wish lists.

I might look at yours and it would say, I want to stop being afraid so much.

We look at somebody else’s and it says, I want the lying to stop—the lies about people that we pick up from who knows where; the lies about our industries and our leaders, and the lies that come from our industries and our leaders.

Another person’s wish list says, “This”—life, home, work, relationships—this used to be fun; I remember when it was fun. It was hard sometimes, hard enough that I didn’t know how I was going to make it through; but it seems like it used to be more fun. I want it to be fun again.

I want to look into that sugar egg with the Christmas scene in it again, and find it as real and “magical,” and full of hope and excitement as I did when I was too young to know any better.

I want to tell the girl who gets made fun of at school because she doesn’t look the way she thinks she is supposed to look.

I want to tell the kid who is convinced that he is the only one on the outside, and everybody else knows where the party is, and they’re all invited—all but him.

I want to tell the widow, whose tiny, fixed income in this economy feels like a five-foot canoe out in the middle of the ocean.

I want to tell the employee who’s getting ready to go in to the office on Monday just long enough to embezzle somebody else’s money and make a run for it.

I want to tell the thug, who feels like the only way to survive is to turn your heart cold and treat the people around you like trash, because inside, he’s so pitiably scared of what can happen to a person who appears to be vulnerable.

I want to tell the woman who’s about to tell the exasperated police officer that it was her fault, not her husband’s; that the burns and bruises and broken bones will heal, again, and she’s going to go back home tonight, again, just like all the other times.

I want to tell them all, Advent pilgrims that they are, that John the Baptist spoke to people who were not at all unlike them, or you, or me.

All we need to know is that, whatever it looks like, and whatever this means in the eyes of God, Christmas is coming.

“The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me,” said John; “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Christmastime is here—or it’s almost here. Prepare the way of the Lord, so that when that day dawns, when the one who is to come is finally here, we will all say: joy to the world, our savior reigns.