The Second Sunday in Advent, December 7, 2014

Prayer for the Lighting of the Second Advent Candle:  

Holy are you, God of righteousness and peace; you promised to wait with patience for all to come to repentance, and to send your prophet to cry in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. As we light these candles, open our ears to hear you speak tenderly to your people; open our hearts to welcome you as a shepherd who gently leads the flock. Comfort us, O God, and forgive the sin of your people. Reveal you glory to us and speak to us your word of peace. Amen.

Collect for the Day

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.

 Isaiah 40:1-11

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

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.

A voice cries out:

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.

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.

The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it;

surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.

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!

See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him;

his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.

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 those that are with young.

 

Reflections: This achingly tender passage assures a wounded people that they have not been forgotten or abandoned; rather, they are deeply loved. When we, too, find ourselves victims of forces we cannot combat, witnesses of abuse we cannot prevent, tortured by wounds we cannot heal, oppressed by guilt we cannot assuage, we yearn for the prophetic assurance of God’s forgiveness and love.

The gift of our most vulnerable moments is that they are the times we are most open to God. At those times, the barrier thins between the temporal and the eternal, the mortal and the divine. In those times we are more receptive to the grace, not merely to endure, but to live.

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13  Benedixisti, Domine

You have been gracious to your land, O LORD, *

you have restored the good fortune of Jacob.

You have forgiven the iniquity of your people * and blotted out all their sins.

I will listen to what the LORD God is saying, *

for he is speaking peace to his faithful people

and to those who turn their hearts to him.

Truly, his salvation is very near to those who fear him, *

that his glory may dwell in our land.

Mercy and truth have met together; * righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Truth shall spring up from the earth, * and righteousness shall look down from heaven.

The LORD will indeed grant prosperity, * and our land will yield its increase.

Righteousness shall go before him, * and peace shall be a pathway for his feet.

Epistle: 2 Peter 3:8-15a

Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.

Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.

Reflections: We pray, and wait. As creatures of time and space, we cannot fully understand why prayers are not answered, or perhaps we cannot recognize God’s response. Peter tells us that God does respond, and that God’s response is compassion.

He also redirects our attention from the goal of our prayer to our waiting, and urges us to be at peace. Our here and now is in fact the context in which God answers our prayer. “The present moment,” according to Jean-Pierre de Caussade’s Abandonment to Divine Providence, is sacrament.

Gospel: Mark 1:1-8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way;

the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 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.

Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 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. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

Reflections: The Gospel of Mark opens with John the Baptist in the desert, a direct reference to Isaiah’s prophetic utterance in the first reading. That is not to say that Isaiah was predicting events that would occur in the time of Jesus. Despite the widespread notion that prophecy means prediction, the role of the prophet in Judaism wasn’t to foretell the future, but to discern the truth.

In alluding to Isaiah at the beginning of the gospel, the evangelist is placing his own message in the context of Isaiah’s. Part of what sets the two prophets apart is that Isaiah (centuries before) delivered the message in figures; but John in concrete, historical terms. John calls for the only appropriate, perhaps the only possible response in the face of the Divine: repentance. God comes now, here, in flesh. And for us too, God comes now, here, in flesh.