Isaiah 40:1-5; Mark 1:1-12; December 10, 2023; Second Sunday of Advent
I often like to begin my sermons with a metaphor. An allusion. A story I invented and wrote, or one I ripped from the news, my memory, or pop culture. It sets up the rest of the sermon and then doubles back. You’re used to it by now, but sometimes, reminders are good. So, on that note…
One of the more incredible yet frustrating shows I’ve ever seen on television was called Westworld. Anyone ever see it? It was on HBO. Seasons one and two were remarkable. Captivating. Smart, philosophical, even, at times theological. But seasons three and four were so bad that the series was outright cancelled without a true ending; and if you go looking for it now on Max (HBO’s streaming service), it’s not even there! The whole library and its contents just poofed, vanished, erased. That’s how poorly it was all executed.
The whole thing was like this meme… perhaps you’ve seen it before. Please, put it on the slides, Ben. [Show pencil drawing of a horse – the back legs are detailed and artistic; the front legs and the head are cartoonish and ridiculous]. It’s a great meme, and it’s good for lots of occasions when something starts off well but ends up rotten. Just think of all the applications you can use it for in life. Love, sports, your kids, you name it! Okay, Ben, you can take it off now.
The first two seasons, the good seasons, focused on artificial hosts (robots, if you will) in an adult-theme park called “Westworld,” which was populated by rich, cosplaying jerks, or human patrons called guests. Hosts/robots and Guests/humans. The guests/humans were free to enact every possible sin imaginable on the hosts/robots. And yes, it was often as horrible to watch as it sounds. A meditation on the worst aspects of free will.
The creator of the theme park and the artificial hosts was a man named Robert Ford/Sir Anthony Hopkins; and in these host’s AI brains he implanted something called “the maze.” A metaphysical journey where if the hosts escaped it, they could become self-aware, right the wrongs done upon them by the guests, and then flee the park, entering a place called “The Valley Beyond;” a place much like Heaven, where all the rough places would be made plain, and where they could live a life free from all of the evils of Westworld, from all of human sin and depravity.
Now the way that the hosts would encounter this valley, also known as “The Sublime” (there will be a quiz after the sermon…), was through a door. But that door would only reveal itself after the hosts endured a lifetime of trials and suffering; after they mastered the maze of self-awareness and self-actualization. In other words then, the hosts had to pass through a wilderness, full of darkness, devils, and trials, in order to find a better world to come. A world that would radiate goodness and light in the sublime of their creator’s benevolence.
Complicated, yes, but also pretty cool; and as you can see and hear, also synonymous with the best aspects of our faith, which too are complicated but also pretty cool. So, watch it, if you can find it. Just seasons one and two, remember. For when Westworld was at its best, it was brilliant, and if you could stomach all the explicit and the violent therein (much like life unfortunately today), you might just be richly rewarded for your faith.
Our Old Testament text from Isaiah captures a lot of this. Does anyone here know the context and situation in which the people of Isaiah 40 find themselves? Isaiah gives us a clue by beginning our text saying, “Comfort, comfort my people…” you see, the people had been taken into captivity by the Babylonians. They had lost their land, their homes, their families, and they were separated from all they knew… they were, in short, in exile. The exile. And that’s where our text begins. In exile.
Where once God’s people had occupied a land flowing with milk and honey, as detailed and rich as the back part of that horse, they were now in the custody of those whose traditions and customs were completely unlike their own. Their lives and their faith now seemed as ridiculous and trivial as the front part of that horse. Cartoonish and irrelevant. And so, they began to ask, how on Earth did we get here?
Yes, many of God’s people in that time, we learn in scripture, began questioning their faith and the sovereignty and benevolence of their creator, asking “How could God allow this? How could the Babylonian god claim victory over ours? How did it start off so well but end so rotten?” Yes, the exile was a tough experience for Isaiah and God’s people, not too unlike the experience of the hosts of the park, not too unlike the experience of God’s people in the Middle East and around the world today who collectively ask, how have on Earth we gotten here? How has it gotten so rotten?
And yet, even so, the prophet tells them just as he tells us (Isaiah 40:3-5): “A voice will cry out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. For every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. For the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together.” All people shall see it together.
See, as we explored earlier this year during Lent, and later on during the story of Hagar in Genesis, God hears us. For God hears all of God’s people when we cry out, “How has this happened? How long must we endure? How long must we suffer?” God hears us, my friends!
For just like God positioned John to be out there in the desert baptizing and cleansing people from their experiences with sin, God hears us and finds us when we are lost in the desert wildernesses of our life; in this weary world full of crushing loads, where midnight isn’t clear but rather riddled by shootings and bombings, killings and rapes, forced pregnancies and deliveries, and the never-ending bleakness that is on all of our news stations and media feeds.
God finds us and is miraculously there with us; there, Emmanuel, in these places and in these times. For while God is indeed present in joy and wonder, yes, absolutely (praise be and all that!), God is yet made incarnate down in these lows: for God came down not to be born in a palace, but to be wrapped in tattered swaddling cloth in a lowly humble manger, where cattle fed and did their business; and what’s more, God even then hung up there on a cross not with flowers below, but while wearing a crown of thorns above.
So, when we ask, how have we gotten here; and why does it all feel like that horse, that its all unravelling and going so poorly, trust that God has already asked those questions too! From the first moment of the Fall all the way up to when we rejected Jesus as Christ, and even, up to today.
The first place Jesus goes after he is anointed, following his baptism, is where, my friends? Where? Mark tells us where — it is out into that desert wilderness of sin and rejection, temptation and evil. It’s like Mark is telling us, whether we want to hear it or not, that being in the wilderness is a reality of life, and thus an important step in our own spiritual journey.
For just as it was important for John to be baptizing there in the wilderness, it was equally important for Jesus to start there to begin his own ministry in the wilderness; and just as it was important for Isaiah’s people to go through the exile so to redefine and capture their faith (for it was in the exile that they began to promote the first rumblings of a monotheistic theology); it is also important and necessary for us to go through our own wilderness, our own exiles, so that we might find new answers and revelations to our faith in the midst of our own west-world of sin and depravity, doubt and uncertainty.
Just the same way then that the season of Advent is important for its test of expectant patience the wilderness is important for it teaches us to be more prepared to look for the door out, when the darkness attempts to overtake us and depress us.
But don’t be depressed, my friends, for here’s the good news: there’s an escape hatch! For God has not left us abandoned in a maze, but through the Son, has already built that door for us to open and pass through. For the door of life was built by the Carpenter of carpenters, a Mighty Counselor, our Lord and Savior, who liberates us not only from the desert of sin, but who saves us from the eternal desert and captivity of death, through his dual victories of incarnation and resurrection.
All we have to do then, my friends, is knock. Knock and the door will be opened; and there, after we step through, in the valley beyond, in the sublime hope of our faith, every hill and mountain before us will be made low, and every rough place made plain.
For the beauty of our faith is always this: that we have been given serenity in all seasons. Even in the worst of seasons. For we know that these seasons, are not the last, but only temporary blips in the grand season of a time to come.
Where a voice will return and reach into our hearts saying, “Comfort, comfort, comfort my people. For behold, I am with you, now and forevermore.”
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
