Mark 1:1-8

Mark comes out of the gate with news – get ready for something new. Get ready for change. The very first verse of Mark is, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” He introduces us to John the Baptist, who shows up every Advent out on the fringes of society in the wilderness, looking and sounding like the last of the Old Testament prophets. His words echo Chapter 40 of Isaiah, but rather than comfort, he says God is on the way and so you’d better shape up. Repent. Quit doing what you’ve been doing and do what you know God is calling you to do.

John’s warning doesn’t sound so much like good news, but this is a specific kind of good news. The Greek word for “good news,” euangelion, the word we translate as “gospel,” was the word used to describe the report brought by a runner to a Greek city that a distant battle has been won, preserving their freedom; or perhaps that a son has been born to the king, assuring a generation of political stability. “Gospel” is good news having seriously to do with people’s welfare, not merely an event that makes some of us happy, but one that shapes our common lives for the better. “Gospel” in this sense means, “It is a new day; everything has now changed, and everything is better.” One writer says that the word “gospel” has become so ordinary that we need to rescue it, and the way to do that is to say that the root meaning of the term euangelion would today best be translated as “revolution.”

But this is not a revolution like other revolutions. God is our model, and especially God in Jesus. God’s revolution is a revolution of compassion and hope. It is a revolution that starts with coming home to God; with changing the human heart. That’s what repentance means: to turn around; quit going the direction you’ve been going. Quit moving away from God and God’s shalom; turn around and come home, just like the old song: “Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling … Come home.”

A few years ago, a church member gave me a real gift by introducing me to the work of Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese American philosopher, writer, and activist in Detroit who died at age 100 in 2015. I don’t know what her faith background was, and it doesn’t matter to me and I’m convinced it doesn’t matter to God, either. Boggs was in Detroit during the riots of 1967, and she said initially she was persuaded by Black Power and Malcolm X. But when the destruction and violence broke out, she realized that Martin Luther King, Jr. was right about nonviolence as a way of life, as a philosophy. She said, “In the 1950s, Einstein said the splitting of the atom has changed everything but the human mind, and thus we drift towards catastrophe. And he also said that imagination is more important than education. In other words, the time has come for us to reimagine everything. … We have to re-imagine revolution and get beyond protest – we have to re-imagine revolution and think not only about the change in our institutions but the changes in ourselves.” We need, she said, “to grow our souls, to say that proudly, and unashamedly to talk about the kind of tremendous human transformation we have to make. We must be courageous enough to think that way, and to talk that way and to relate that way.”

“Tremendous human transformation.” If you don’t like the scary, churchy word, “repentance,” try “tremendous human transformation.” John the Baptist would approve. Or even, “to grow our souls.” I think he’d be okay with that, too.

The good news is not only at the very heart of who God is, but also is what God calls us to be. It’s not just John who is called to cry out and prepare the way. It’s all of us. Right here, right now, by making a difference in the lives of the people God has put all around us. Comforting, loving, and participating in God’s revolution of compassion and hope. God is continuing the story of the good news of Jesus in and through our words and actions and each of us will have a hundred and one opportunities this very week to contribute to that sacred story, to make it come alive, to help God keep God’s promises here and now. Advent is about waiting for the fulfillment of all God’s promises, but we don’t wait passively; we’re invited to throw ourselves into that venture both trusting God’s promises and living them right here, right now. After all, as Mark says in his first words, Jesus’ story is just the beginning. The story continues to unfold both around us and through us.

© Joanne Whitt 2023 all rights reserved.