Only Wonder

A Reflection on the Gospel for December 6th, 2020:
​Second Sunday of Advent

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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 Baptist 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.”

Pause. Pray.

And then read more...

None of this looks easy. It doesn’t look like comfort and joy. There’s John giving up the comforts of home, putting on the garments of grief and going out into the wilderness — a place of disorder and lack. There’s the people leaving their familiar lives, heading out to find John only to be confronted with their own lack and the ways they’ve caused grief. And stepping into the water, rising to wonder if things have changed. 


It can be hard work making a straight path. Growing up in Toronto, the city streets I looked at, through the window from the backseat of the station wagon, had long grown over the way the land had been changed to make the roads even. But we took a trip to the Sioux when I was 10 — on roads cut right into the Canadian Shield. I looked out my window and met a rough hewn rock wall. I looked through  my brother’s window, and there was its mate. I could see that someone had to tear a grove through the crest of this ancient mountain, so that our car didn’t have to climb too high to continue on its way. And the bridges I looked down at, as our wheels rumbled over their joints, built so that we didn’t have to descend into a deep valley, only climb laboriously up the other side. A whole lot of labour and time and resources, to make a straighter path. 


Am I willing to do it? To make a straighter path for You to move through me, to the people around me? Can I face, square on, my own disorder and lack? Can I leave behind my own familiar patterns that comfort me and step into the water? Will I even feel clean when I come to the surface?


John shouts the answer to me, as he did back then. ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me... I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!’  The validity of what John declares is not anchored in his unworthiness, but in the reality of the One who comes. Everything before that was unworthy. Ineffective. Temporary. Preparatory. When He comes it will be different. It always is. When He comes and joins me in the water running through the wilderness, I am made clean. There is no wondering, only Wonder.




Noreen Smith
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