How Will God Appear?

Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15; Mark 1:1-8

This is the second Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the Christian Year. We are awaiting the arrival of the Infant Jesus. Most of us have at least some Christmas decorations up, the radio is playing Christmas songs, and the weather has turned yucky!

Those of you that teach school or attend school also know that this is the time of year when children’s minds are NOT on the classroom. Every time a few snow flakes fly past the window, the heads turn and it takes a few more minutes to get back into the lesson. Football has been replaced by basketball, the trees are brown, and the drive home from work for most people is a drive in the dark on a cold, rainy highway. All we want to do is to get home to a warm supper, perhaps a fireplace, and fall asleep earlier than normal.

But that’s today. That is the Advent season today. It wasn’t always this way.

Imagine yourself as one of the early hearers of this Good News that Mark has written. Imagine that you are alive in the ancient Mediterranean world, and that a new scroll has arrived at your synagogue, which is the building where you worship every week. Because you are Jewish, you make a point of going to the synagogue on Saturday morning to listen to this new scroll read, a scroll that you’ve heard tells of God’s miracles near Jerusalem over the last few years.

“Holy Spirit, fill this hall today. Speak to us in our minds of what Christ would have each of us do.” Amen.

You are a faithful worshipper of God. All your life you have heard the Old Testament scriptures. You have heard the stories of Moses, of Joshua, you have read the scrolls of Isaiah, you have heard the Psalms, YES!

You have sung the Psalms, including that wonderful Psalm 2, and the 7th verse:

7 I will proclaim the decree of the LORD:

He said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have become your Father.
Who is this Son of God? Who is this Holy One? Who is this Jesus that Mark calls the Son of God?

To make doubly sure we know this, to understand this, to drive home the point, Mark pulls in a quote from memory and partially quotes Malachi:

3:1 “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty.

Oh, YES! We know, as students of Holy Scripture, We know, as good Jews, We know, as the Chosen People who the messenger is. He is the messenger who will clear the way before the Lord Himself comes to his Temple.

But Mark isn’t ready to let it go at that.

3 “a voice of one calling in the desert,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”

We know that this comes from halfway through the scroll of the great prophet Isaiah. Chapter 40 begins:

1 Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand
double for all her sins.

3 A voice of one calling:
“In the desert prepare
the way for the LORD;
make straight in the wilderness
a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
5 And the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
and all mankind together will see it.


The LORD is coming, The LORD is on His way. Someone will arrive who will tell us about the Lord. The excitement builds in our listener, in YOU as you sit there in the synagogue listening to the scroll being read. And the scroll continues:

4 And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

It is hot in the desert. Would you choose to live in the desert, without air conditioning, without electric fans, without the money to build a big cool house? I know I wouldn’t. I lived in Atlanta for ten years, in drought conditions and I can still remember what it’s like… So I can just imagine you and I standing in the desert valley near the Jordan River, east of Jerusalem just north of the Dead Salt Sea…



You stand in the hot sun and lower your eyes to avoid the heat on your face. You look at the ground and the hot ground reflects back heat right into your eyes. You sweat. You walk along, and it seems like even the rocks you touch are burning. There is heat everywhere. Even though you are wearing sandals, your feet are hot on the bottom as you walk over the dry rocks. You get a whiff of an unpleasant sweat smell from the other people around us as we walk down the hot, rocky path.

But you hear a noise. Does it sound like water running? That pleasant sound, that fssssss noise with a bit of a gurgle. It says water. In fact, you can even smell the water, you can feel the humidity increase noticeably as you walk down the rough path and around the bend and there is a river! Not a big river, not like the mighty Ohio or Mississippi, but rather like Elk Creek.

And standing there, in the creek, there is a bearded man. A strange looking man.

He has brown clothes on – everyone else wears white or white and blue robes. His clothes are made of camel hair – he probably gathered it himself and made the clothes himself.

He has a leather belt, it looks homemade. Good Jewish men don’t work with leather, it’s unclean. There’s something really odd about him.

He has a strange smile, though. “Why are you here?” he asks you.

“We’ve come down from the city to hear you.” You had come from the city because you heard this man was here. John is his name, son of a priest named Zachariah and a woman named Elizabeth. Elizabeth was older when she had him – and there was something odd about his father…THAT was it. His father could not speak during the pregnancy and later claimed an angel had visited him about his son. It was a strange family – John had suddenly shown up here a few months ago.

His eyes are focused upon you with a steady look. “It’s a long walk”, he says. “Let me tell you some good news.”

Honestly, the guy is beginning to creep you out. His looks, his demeanor – rumor had it that all he ate was wild honey and locust tree pods – he surely looks like he could use more food. But he was speaking again…

“There is One who is coming who is much more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.” Now THAT would be a trick. This guy – he didn’t have two copper coins to rub together, with a nutcase for a father…He looked like the worst sort of slave, but said that he wasn’t even worthy to untie a man’s sandals.

You look down at your own sandals, new – or they were new when you bought them last week. The walk through the desert has torn them up a bit and the sandals and your feet are covered with animal droppings you stepped in on the road. It’s getting hotter and the smell of sweating people around us is getting stronger, but the odor from your sandals is stronger.

A slave that was unworthy to do the lowest form of work? A slave that said he was too low to put his hands on those dirty sandals and untie them? Or was he saying that the sandals of the One to come were so pure that only a pure and holy person could untie them? But who that was pure and holy would stoop to such a job, such a task, such a lowly occupation?

Pure and holy people were too good to do those things. Yet the crowds back in the city talked of this man being the most holy man they’d ever met and he talked about being lowly. Was it possible that true holiness meant bending down and doing what proud men and women would never do? Surely not! But yet?

John looks again at you and speaks:

“ I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

“Who will baptize me?” you ask.

“The One who is to come”, Is the reply. “I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Water baptism. John took people and got them wet. It was a washing, they said, a removal of sins from you. If John, who was so holy, washed you, you would be clean of all your sins before God. Of course, until the next time you sinned.

The word baptize, a Greek word not an Aramaic word, it meant the change in state that happened when a cucumber became a pickle. John’s baptism would change you. John’s baptism would change your heart, it was said.

But what was this about the Holy Spirit? You remember that the Holy Spirit came upon King Saul and he prophesized. You remember that the Holy Spirit came upon Samson and he slew hundreds of Philistines with just the jawbone of an ass. But what would it mean to be baptized with the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit would be the Holy Breath, the Holy Breeze of God. The same word meant Spirit, breath, and breeze.

John is impatient.

“Are you ready to be baptized?” He asks.

“Why should I be baptized?”, You say.

“If you are ready for the coming of the Lord, you should stop doing what you want, and start doing the things that God has asked you. If you want to stop and be cleansed of your sinful past, and forgiven, I will baptize you.” He looks at you, awaiting your decision.


The hot sun is still beating down. The cool water is there, just behind John. A small crowd has gathered. A fly starts to buzz around your head. Others are buzzing around your feet. Your thoughts are buzzing around in your skull with the heat and the sun and the sweat and the smells. Are you willing to change? Are you willing to stop pretending that you are a good person and really become a good person?

Thoughts go through your mind. You think about the time you shouted at your children. You think about the time you walked right past that poor woman at the market, who didn’t have enough money for her groceries. You think about what you and your friends did last Saturday night. You think about how you shouted at your mother this week. You think about the really nasty things you said about your neighbor. You think about your other neighbor, and her poverty that you haven’t done a thing to help.

Are you really a good person? Or do you just think that you are, just because you go to the temple once a week and study scripture. Do you pray for others? Or just for yourself? Do you stay away from outsiders – or do you make friends with those strangers?

It’s getting hotter. The water looks cool.

What will you do, standing there in the heat, with the flies buzzing around, with the stink of your sweat around you and everyone staring at you?

Is God important enough in your life that you will admit you’ve done wrong? Do you care what He thinks – or only what His creatures think?

Perhaps it’s time to go down to the river, to step out into the water, to kneel at the foot of the one who tells of the God who is, who was, and who is to come. Or perhaps you can wait.

The crowd murmurs. Someone is walking down to the river. A tall man is walking down the path behind you. Someone say, “It’s Jesus of Nazareth!” John’s face lights up. And suddenly, you realize that the time for your decision is about to run out. Somehow, you understand that you are about to lose your chance. A slight breeze begins moving around.

And you know that God is about to appear. In that moment, you realize that if you don’t take advantage of this time, today, this hour, this moment, you may never have another chance. God has appeared at the riverbank in the person of that tall man Jesus walking down the path. You don’t know how you know, but you know. You know that you have very little time and the decision is between completely following – or not following, because He is God and God doesn’t go halfway. In your mind, Jesus speaks to you as He walks down toward the river – what does He say?

And here today, back in this room, you have that same decision to make. Will you follow God completely? Or will you continue to stand on the riverbank in the hot sun, going to God’s temple every week but coming up with excuse upon excuse why you can’t commit totally to following Him?

You see, eventually Christ appears and walks past you into the water. Eventually Christ appears in the clouds and destroys this planet. Eventually Christ walks up to you and says to you: “Follow me”. He is very definite about this and He means it.

You have a choice. Do you believe that Christ is the Son of God and worthy to be followed? Completely. Or do you believe that Christ is myth, a metaphor, a creation of human beings who are simply telling you a story? Is Jesus Christ the Son of God or not?

You see, If you truly accept that Jesus Christ is the real Son of God, then following His every command, hanging on His every word, becoming a full-blown capital D Disciple is the only way to live your life. Face the facts – God has appeared in flesh upon this earth and given clear instructions to us all – and those instructions do not give us the option of living a “normal” life. We must choose to belong to the world or to change the world, to belong to the ordinary life around us or to live extra-ordinary lives following Christ, to become whole-hearted Disciples of Jesus with all the sacrifice that means…or to live on the fence, watching the Disciples of Jesus fight to change the world as the world fights to destroy itself.

Do you want to make the commitment?

Come to the altar today. After you take the bread and drink the juice of Holy Communion, come kneel at the altar and make your commitment to God to truly follow God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

For God has appeared to you today, speaking to you in your mind, as you looked in the imagination of your mind, God has appeared to you today. Jesus has spoken something to you through the Holy Spirit. Listen to Him.

For God is not limited to the paltry flesh-and-blood of a human being. God does not speak only by sound waves in a single place, only in Jerusalem of 33 AD, by the unamplified voice of a man. God, in the person of the Holy Spirit can and does appear to many people each and every day, in a soft, still voice speaking directly into your mind, through the gentle voices of godly friends, through the reading of holy scripture – God appears to us.

And today, God is here. Within and around the bread and the juice, God is here. God is listening to you, God is speaking to you, God is present with you, and is ready to guide your life to new heights.