December 10, 2023 | Mark 1:1-8

Like the Professor in All the Light We Cannot See, John the Baptist is broadcasting gospel good news in the middle of the night.

We all want hope which is why we left our Christmas decorations up well into the new year during Christmas of 2020 when the darkness of death and despair was a kind of cloud around us.

We all want hope which is why we put our Christmas decorations up earlier and earlier, year after year.

We all want hope which is why we will gather on Christmas Eve, light our candles, hold them up, and sing “Glories stream from heaven afar… With the dawn of redeeming grace.”

For as much as we love the lives we have curated for ourselves, our Advent and Christmas declarations shout, as voices calling out from the wilderness, that despite our best efforts to stop God, God is putting an end to the evil age. We are living in the beginning of the end right now – a time between two advents.

John the Baptist is an often-forgotten character from our gospels. We read about John’s ministry a few times, and then he is forgotten. By the time the bright lights of Christmas overtake our living rooms, John will be a character we reluctantly remember. But (and it’s a big but so you know it does not lie), maybe that is good. John disappears, proclaiming that the Light of the world has come so that the spotlight John held now falls on Christ.

As we wait and anticipate the return of Christ, may the attention we draw to ourselves begin to fade and give way to the Light that shines into the darkness. God is not finished. God has not gone silent.

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