Silent No More

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
December 7, 2008: Second Sunday of Advent

Silent No More
Isaiah 40:1-11
Mark 1:1-8

Silence.
Not a sound.
Not a word.
Nothing. Emptiness.
A void.

I am speaking of the Bible.
There is a void,
a curious void where silence reigns.
It is as though there had been a writers’s strike.
For some two hundred years,
no one willing to pick up a stylus
and scratch some letters across a tablet,
words inspired by God that would fill the pages
of the book we call the Bible.

The newest book in the Old Testament is the Book of Daniel,
written more than 160 years before the first Christmas.
The first writings of the New Testament date from around 50 years
after Christ’s birth.
There are no writings at all in the Bible
from 150 years before the birth of Christ,
125 years before,
80 years before,
30 years before, 10;
5 years after, 10, 20…
Why this gap?
Why this void?
Why this silence?
It was not for lack of things happening.
This was a a ferociously active time
in the life of the children of God.

The history of the children of Israel for the 700 years
leading up to Christ’s birth was tumultuous;
instability was the common thread,
as one nation after another invaded Judah,
plundering the nation and subduing the people.

First came the yoke of the Assyrians,
then the yoke of the Babylonians,
then came the Medians,
who were followed by the Persians,
who were followed by the Greeks,
who were followed by the Romans.

Which god or gods to worship:
Baal? Marduk?
Zeus? Jupiter?
Did the children of Israel have a choice?
Was the Lord God still present in the land, in their lives?
Still with them?
or had he been pushed out by other gods?

Perhaps he had turned away on his own,
tired of his children’s faithlessness.

In the two centuries preceding Christ’s birth,
the people felt that God had gone silent,
that God might have abandoned them.
God’s Holy Spirit was nowhere to be found
no prophets speaking the word of the Lord,
no Isaiah, Jeremiah or Amos,
not even a Joel or an Obadiah.

Still, a small but faithful few held firmly to their belief.
In the decades leading up to Christ’s birth
they believed things were about to change,
about to change radically
That God was going to come back into their lives,
back to his people, in a dramatic, powerful way.

Onto this stage stepped John the Baptizer
in all his wild wooliness:
his eyes ablaze,
not really speaking to people
as much as hurling words at them.
He stood there in the water, the mud really,
on the banks of the Jordan,
ranting fiercely,
and yet people flocked to him,
so desperate were they
for the word of the Lord,
for a word of hope.

But John gave them no gentle “comfort, o comfort my people”.
No speaking tenderly to them.
He shouted out angry words:
“Repent! Repent!
Prepare yourself for the one who is coming!”

John proclaimed the coming of the Lord,
the coming of the Messiah,
the one the children of Israel
were looking for with an “aching intensity”.

But John knew that the children of Israel
were not ready for the Messiah’s coming;
they would not know him or recognize him,
even if he stood directly in front of them.
They needed to prepare themselves.
More than a thousand years earlier,
when the children of Israel were to meet the Lord God for the first time
at the base of Mount Sinai,
Moses told them they too needed first to prepare themselves,
to wash themselves clean of their sinfulness.

And so John did the same thing:
“Repent”
“Wash yourself clean of your sins,
Turn from your selfish life, your self-centered ways
and turn back to God.
Wake up and get ready;
get ready by acknowledging your sinfulness.
Stop living in denial,
stop justifying your behavior,
stop rationalizing your every act.
God doesn’t care if you’re not as bad
as the person standing next to you.
All God cares about is,
are you as good and as faithful
as God created you to be?
Are you as good and as faithful
as God expects you to be?”

“You are too busy blaming others,
Everyone pointing fingers at everyone else,
No one remembering that when you point your finger
at someone else,
three fingers are pointing back at you.”
(P. Wright)

“Repent!
Repent and get ready.
Because if you’re not ready,
you won’t know,
you’ll miss God when he comes.
The Messiah will come
and will pass you by and you won’t even know it!

“Straighten out your highway to God;
get rid of your own detours,
the things that clog the way of the Lord.
Make the way straight for the Lord
to enter your heart, to enter your life.”

John the Baptizer is Advent,
calling us even now to prepare ourselves,
to ready ourselves not to celebrate Christ’s birth,
as much as we want to,
but to ready ourselves for that day
when Christ will come again,
come again in glory.

John’s message is Advent;
It sounds harsh and judgmental,
but it is good news,
for John herald the coming of the Messiah,
the one through whom we are born anew,
born to new life,
the old ways, our old lives, gone,
so we can live new lives in the presence of God
a straight road linking us and God.

John’s voice cries out, proclaims;
it is a voice that makes us uncomfortable,
for he shows us for what we really are,
and yet in acknowledging our sin
acknowledging our need for repentance,
we can stand reborn and renewed.
in Christ, and through Christ, and with Christ.

John’s is a voice we need to hear,
a voice we need to heed,
to pay attention to,
to learn from even in the midst
our busyness as we get ready for the birthday.
for he comes even now,
“before the Lord
to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
for the forgiveness of sins.”
(Luke 1:76)

As you come this table this morning,
this table our Lord has set for us,
this table our Lord invites us to,
come in repentance, your own repentance,
acknowledging all those things you know God knows
that has drawn you from righteousness and goodness.

Come in repentance
so that you can fully embrace the new life offered you
offered each of us, all of us in Jesus Christ.
Come to this table in repentance,
for it is here,
rather than under a Christmas tree,
that our greatest gift lies,
just waiting for us to open it.
AMEN