As we each walk through this season of Advent, we may just find ourselves in some form of wilderness, thirsting for peace, reconciliation and healing – and thus it’s a time we need to be alert, awake, watchful and vigilant to God’s presence. So, perhaps we take the lead from Isaiah where we spend time seeking how we can better “Prepare the way of the Lord”…of how we can look at the valleys, at the crookedness, and the rough places not just in the outside world, but also in our own hearts. What does that look like? Check it out…

1. 1 Deacon Jim Knipper
10 December 2023 2nd
Sunday of Advent Princeton, NJ
As our guest preacher mentioned last week, we have begun a new Liturgical Year, which is centered on
the Gospel of Mark. Coming off a year where we focused on the Gospel of Matthew, where his writings
proclaimed the “Reign of God”…Mark heralds the person of Jesus the Christ. His is the only gospel writer
that puts the name Jesus – with Christ, thereby designating Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God from
the outset. Mark was the first of the Gospels penned and is by far the shortest. And while it lacks many of
the beautiful stories found in Luke and Matthew – in its own way, its beauty is found in the concise, to-
the-point language as evidenced in the opening line we just heard.
Mark minces no words, nor does he want you to have to guess as to who and what he is writing about
when he opens with: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.
And before he introduces the prophet John the Baptist – he connects his gospel with the Old
Testament by quoting the beautiful passage we just heard from the prophet Isaish:
“Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way. A voice of one crying
out in the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.””
Dry and arid desert certainly resonates with all of us as we have each known times of personal drought.
Where our hearts and minds feel weary, broken or burnt out. Where we thirst for spiritual or physical or
mental refreshment and healing and yet we continue to feel parched. And if that isn’t enough, one just
has to watch the evening news where we find ourselves in a world where too many nations and their
leaders opt for power and control and war. Meanwhile the lost and broken and victimized and shunned
wander and wonder if they are really are a child of God.
And yet the biblical image of the desert and the wilderness, which is used throughout the scriptures, is
not a place of hopelessness, but rather a place where God speaks to his people. It is a place where we
often find ourselves forgetting that we are never alone. It is a place of encounters and of miracles. It is a
place where we find that God uses those difficult times for something meaningful and powerful – where
God seeks and finds and calls us back to life in him.
So, as we each walk through this season of Advent we may just find ourselves in some form of
wilderness, thirsting for peace, reconciliation and healing – and thus it’s a time we need to be alert,
awake, watchful and vigilant to God’s presence – without any fear of the Lord. To where we can help
gather ourselves and all of creation to be pointing and paving straight paths to God’s Glory. Where we
can fulfill the words of the prophet Micah: to seek justice and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our
God.
And to that end, it would seem that Isaiah and many other prophets come to the same conclusion – one
which was echoed two weeks ago in the gospel we heard on the feast of Christ the King – namely that
our God desires compassion, justice and peace especially for those who live on the margins and of our
need to go to those margins so that one day the margins will be erased.

2. 2 Deacon Jim Knipper
But faced with personal losses as well as all of turmoil in this weary world – the question remains: how
do we embrace this Advent? How do we fulfill our baptismal call of discipleship, of being a modern-day
prophet reminding ourselves and others that Christ is coming – and…that Christ is already here?
Thomas Merton provided some guidance when he wrote:
“The fact remains that our task is to seek and find Christ in our world as it is, and not as it might be. The
fact that the world is other than it might be does not alter the truth that Christ is present in it and that his
plan has been neither frustrated nor changed: indeed, all will be done according to his will. Our Advent is
the celebration of this hope. What is uncertain is not the "coming" of Christ but our own reception of him,
our own response to him, our own readiness and capacity to "go forth and meet Him."”
For it can be easy for many to throw up their arms in the face of all that is going on in places like Ukraine
or the Middle East or locally on our borders, as we often hear the question – Where is God in all of this?
But Advent reminds us that Jesus, himself, born into this world, was a refugee whose early years were
ones of flight, of hiding, and of seeking asylum…and whose lifetime ministry was one that was in
solidarity to those who lived on the margins.
In writing about the true meaning of this season, Merton continues, saying:
“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come
uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet He must be
in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong,
who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak. With those for whom there is no room,
Christ is mysteriously present in this world.”
So, what is our role? Perhaps we take the lead from Isaiah where we spend time seeking how we can
Prepare the way of the Lord…of how we can look at the valleys, at the crookedness, and the rough
places not just in the outside world, but also in our own hearts. A sort of personal purification in the
deepest sense. To look at the chaos around us and seek where we can bring peace and calmness. To
look at the places and time where perhaps we have closed ourselves to those in need. To self-examine
how we can better be open to having our parched lives refreshed with the saving waters of our God.
All the time knowing that as we are waiting in Advent for the arrival of Emmanuel, that God is always
waiting for us – in the desert and on the mountain top, in straight and level paths as well as the crooked
lines we so often travel. For our God, for whom we wait for, never ever gives up on us and always holds
a promise of healing, of wholeness, of forgiveness and of redemption. So, as we journey through this
Advent may we take the time to look around us and make straight the paths as we look to actively
participate in being a part of the way in which Christ enters this world again and again and again.