Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Scripture: Mark 1:1-18

Friends in Christ, Advent grace and peace to you today and always.

There’s a Peanuts comic I love: Charlie Brown and Lucy stand behind a wall, and Charlie thoughtfully muses about the new year. He asks Lucy, “Do you think you’re a different person than what you were last year?” He turns to looks at Lucy and says, “Do you think you’ve really changed? I remember last year you said you were going to try to be a better listener…” In the final frame of the comic, Lucy turns to Charlie Brown and says, “What?”

We’re getting close to the time for New Year’s resolutions—are any of you thinking about your 2024 resolutions yet? I love the idea of being energized by new goals, but once I start thinking about possible New Year’s resolutions, I start to feel defeated because they usually look exactly the same as they did last year, and the year before…and the year before that. Many of my frustrations and foibles haven’t changed or improved. I could give myself the same demerits every year. I won’t tell you what they are, but I’m guessing—hoping—that many of you can relate.

Maybe this says something about my tendency to set impossible goals for myself. But I also think it says something about the human condition. We’re messy. Life improvement isn’t a linear path.

One of my mentors, who I would meet with regularly to process my life in ministry, gave me the gift of a helpful image that I’ve never forgotten. I would often say to him, “I feel like I discuss the same topics and frustrations with you over and over. You must be so bored hearing them every time we meet.” That may have been true, but he graciously told me that life is not a linear track, where we start at the bottom and consistently improve. Instead, life is a spiral, where we revisit the same parts of ourselves, but each time we revisit them we approach them from a different space. We learn more and more about ourselves and about life through this continual repetition. If you’ve made the same New Year’s resolutions for many years in a row, you’re not a failure; you’re revisiting them with a different version of yourself who has lived another year.

This repetition is built into our lives and into our liturgy. We repeat the order of worship that’s been used for centuries. Each year when Advent begins, the sanctuary is dressed in blue fabrics and we hear familiar hymns. We bring out the Advent wreath and light the candles. At home, we put out well-loved decorations and bake cookies that remind us of years past. Many of us delight in this repetition that stirs our memories and connects us to the people in our lives, those who have died and those who celebrate with us now; it also unites us those who are near to us and those who are far away. The ritual brings comfort.

We cling to the first 8 verses of gospel of Mark this morning that start with, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” There are nods to the past: we hear echoes of the creation story from Genesis in Mark’s prologue. The promises of Isaiah are claimed. John the Baptist’s clothing reminds us of Elijah’s.

The time of promise is over; the time of fulfillment is here.

We need a new beginning, for as we repeat our traditions the world also repeats the terrible repetition of war, oppression, hunger, and suffering that feels as awful as or even worse than the year before.

Dare we hope that there is something new for us and for the world?

While we repeat traditions and rituals this season, we also experience this Advent as changed people. We are not the same people we were last year. This Advent season at Gloria Dei does not look like the Advent season of 2022.

Last Advent none of us knew I’d be at this pulpit today, wearing a blue cape!

Some changes are wonderful—like the gorgeous new blue paraments we have this year. Some changes are difficult—like missing beloved people who aren’t with us. We revisit Advent every year from a different space, with new eyes.

What in your life has changed since Advent of last year?
How are you different?
What are you seeing with new eyes?
How has Gloria Dei changed?
How are we different?
What are we seeing with new eyes?

We need to return every year to God’s unfailing promise to arrive among us.

We need to prepare for Jesus’ birth every year, to experience the promise, the hope and joy of God’s incarnation. To be assured that God always gives us a new beginning. No matter what kind of year we’ve had, no matter how much we’ve changed or not changed, God arrives, with a power like no other—power through solidarity, a power that lives in the margins.

John the Baptist proclaims in our reading today, “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. 8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

The readers and hearers of Mark’s gospel experience the beginning already knowing the end. We know how the fulfillment takes place. We experience the birth of Christ as true to who God is and always has been—a God determined to save us through the power of the Holy Spirit—the same Holy Spirit that returns to us again and again:
-when we hear the same Scriptures we did a year ago, and they connect with us in a new way
-when we notice lyrics in Advent hymns we haven’t noticed before
-when we resolve to hope in a world that feels hopeless
-when we know comfort when we thought no comfort was to be found

God returns to us again and again, in this place, in our hearts, in our homes, in the places in our lives where we most need God’s love, mercy and grace. Amen.