For Sunday
Advent 2B
Collect
Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
The evangelist who wrote the gospel we call Mark begins with the ultimate faith statement. They start, right out of the gate, by declaring precisely what is to follow.
We are at the beginning. This is the Good News of Jesus, Messiah, Son of God.
This language is all so familiar to us. But it is loaded. Political. Powerful. The evangelist isn’t mincing words. He isn’t waiting for us to see. Nor are they making us discover for ourselves. This is the journey we’re starting out on, together. To experience the good news of the Messiah. A man and Son of God.
Of course we know this already. It isn’t shocking to followers of Jesus two thousand years later. How could it? But it is an electric opening for a story that will immediately thrust us into the action. We’ll meet John the Baptizer shortly before he will be baptizing Jesus.
The potency of this language is countered by, not just our familiarity, but our expectation that it would be. That evangelists would pump up the juice to convince us to care. And because we already know these things about Jesus, well, it comes off as obvious and conviction, rather than poignant and defiant.
As we continue in this new, familiar season of Advent, we’re invited into a different kind of approach. Not one of forgetting what we know. Or merely re-experiencing it, but to ponder the message of a Messiah that has come into the world. One that continues to participate in the world. And through him, we all might be saved.