I’ll Be Home for Christmas: Good News

She hears the car crunching the snow outside her window, pads down the stairs and can hardly believe her eyes, “Peter!” she exclaims. “Merry Christmas.” “Everyone’s asleep.” “Shhh, I know how to wake them up,” he promises as they go to the kitchen to make coffee.

It was one of the longest running commercials on television. The joy on mom’s face was palpable as she hugged Peter and leaned back to look at him. “Oh, you’re home!” It made me dream of surprising my parents by just showing up one Christmas morning.

Christmas planning for us has always included when and where we would be together with family. Not this year. This Christmas Eve, we will not be having a German meal with my family after evening service or heavy hors d’oeuvres with Chris’s family before the 11 o’clock Service. It will be different, just the 4 of us, at home this Christmas.

It is different at church, too. We are putting up the Chrismon tree, and the Holy Family will be surrounded by poinsettias in the Chancel, but there is no reason to put the bows on the ends of the pews or to decorate the youth room and fellowship hall.

It may be different at your house, too. Some have decided not to put up a tree. Others have had theirs up for a few weeks now, trying to spark that Christmas spirit, taking comfort in the visual feasts of the season with tinsel and bows and garland and lights. Our homes reveal a lot about our perspectives and about what is important to us.

Presbyterian pastor and president emerita of McCormick Theological Seminary, Cynthia Campbell preached an Advent Series a few years ago that has now been published titled, Christmas in the Four Gospel Homes. It is the inspiration for this sermon series titled, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Each week of Advent we will go to visit the home of one of the Gospel writers to see Christ’s birth from their perspective.

We begin by going to visit Mark, the earliest of our Gospel writers. The Gospel of Mark is like a simple one-room cabin with one focus, the pot-bellied stove. Life in the cabin centers around that stove – it is the source of warmth and of warm, nourishing food. The stove, the central focus for Mark is the death and resurrection of Jesus. The cross stands at the center of his story.

Some scholars have wondered whether Mark knew the birth story of Jesus. I believe he did. While Mark is succinct, he is detailed. He includes descriptions of Jesus that the other Gospels don’t – like when Jesus welcomes the children to him, Mark includes a detail the other Gospels don’t have – that Jesus “took them up in his arms and put his hands on them and blessed them.” And Mark knows about Jesus’ family. When he goes back to his hometown, Mark says that as he was teaching in the synagogue, questions arose, “What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” I wonder if Mark is revealing that he knows something special about Jesus’ birth when he refers to him as Mary’s son rather than following custom and identifying him as his father’s son. Notice he knows the names of his brothers and that he has sisters. Mark doesn’t have a lack of information about Jesus.

But Mark doesn’t tell what he does or doesn’t know. He tells us what is important for us to know. “ Dr. Douglas Hare compares Mark’s Gospel to other biographies saying, “Unlike biographers ancient and modern, [Mark] tells us nothing about what Jesus looks like, what his voice sounded like, how he presented himself to large crowds, and nothing about his childhood, family training and education, personal relationships, habits and idiosyncrasies. From the first verse to last, the Gospel according to Mark focuses on Jesus’ meaning for faith.”

Mark meant for us to stand at the door of this one-room cabin, take in the whole of the place in one gaze, and focus in on that pot-bellied stove. Some scholars think Mark may have originally been written as a sermon. It was definitely meant to be read aloud in one reading. If you want to read it out loud, it will take about an hour. The style of writing is simple, with short clauses/ thoughts linked together with ‘”and”, “and,” the longest chain is 34 thoughts long. His mood is urgent. In the whole 16 chapters, Mark says something happens “immediately” nearly 30 times. The writing style is not unrefined, though; there is nothing haphazard about the way that Mark puts together the Gospel. Every episode is woven seamlessly into the whole, and every story told is told intentionally.

The first line is the title. The writer didn’t mean for us to know the story by the title Mark’s Gospel. He titled it, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” In the ancient world, Gospel meant the announcement of military victory, the ascension of a new political ruler.

All of Mark is the beginning of God redeeming creation, the beginning of God’s Kingdom. And all of Mark is written with the end in sight, that the destination from the very beginning was established/known/God’s Will. The crucifixion was not a failure.

Just as was foretold by the prophets, one came to prepare the way, offering the opportunity for national repentance in preparation for the long-awaited, long hoped for coming of God’s anointed One, symbolized and sealed by baptism in the Jordan River. When Jesus came to be baptized, Mark doesn’t record what led up to the moment of baptism as any different than anyone else’s baptism. “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”

It is as Jesus was coming up out of the water that God acts – schidzo – God tears apart the heavens – the division between creation and God is ripped open.

The prophet Isaiah had prayed, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you!” Isaiah’s prayer is being answered. The longing of God’s people is being answered. The Spirit of God descends on Jesus and God declares, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

Mark will tell again of God acting with the same verb – schidzo – as Jesus gives a loud cry and breaths his last, the curtain of the temple, that divides people from the Holy of Holies, the place dedicated to God’s presence in the world, is schidzoed, torn in two, and the Roman guard at the foot of Jesus cross exclaimed, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

For Mark, what matters is that the division between God and creation is schidzoed, torn apart, and Jesus is proclaimed and recognized as God’s Son, the Messiah. The anointed One for whom the world was waiting arrives to be your Lord.

Prepare the way. Get ready. Whether you decorate or not doesn’t matter. Whether or not you are not able to gather with friends and family doesn’t matter. Even the stories of Mary and Joseph and a trip to Bethlehem and flight to Egypt, the visits of shepherds and angels and wise men, the stable and the manger, are not what matter.

Mark tells us that what matters is simple, really. God has ripped open everything that separates us from him.
This Christmas, may we awake to realize he has arrived and welcome him home.