Mark 1:1–8
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Mark 1:3). Saint Mark takes up these ancient words of Isaiah (see Isaiah 40:3) and identifies the voice crying in the wilderness with John the Baptist. John is the voice crying in the wilderness, calling the people of Israel to prepare for the coming of the Lord through repentance. “John the baptized appeared in the wilderness,” St Mark writes, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mk 1:4). He is the voice crying in the wilderness, calling the people of God to confess their sins and baptizing them in the Jordan River as a concrete sign of their repentance. He calls them to prepare for their Lord’s advent by returning, with all their hearts, to the Lord their God.
John the Baptist is perhaps the quintessential Advent figure. His whole life is pointed toward the one who comes after him: “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me,” he declares (Mk 1:7). His role is to prepare for the coming One. For this reason, the Orthodox Church calls him “the Forerunner.”
The Church speaks in the voice of John the Baptist during the Advent season. Just as John called Israel to repentance in anticipation of the first coming of Jesus, so in Advent the Church calls her members to repentance in anticipation of our Lord’s second coming. The old collect for this week (the Third Sunday of Advent) captures well this analogy between John Baptist and the Church:
O Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger [i.e., John the Baptist] to prepare thy way before thee; Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries [i.e., the Church’s ministers] may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
The collect incorporates the words of the angel Gabriel to John’s father, Zechariah, about John: “He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:16–17). This description of the vocation of John the Baptist could also stand as a description of the vocation of the Church, especially during Advent, namely, “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord,” by turning their hearts to the Lord their God.
In Advent, the Church calls to us, in the wilderness of our lives, crying out to us, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Calling us to repentance, to straighten out our lives, to set our loves in order. Calling us to the simplicity of holiness, to singleness of heart, to whole-hearted devotion to Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
The Rev. Christopher Yoder
All Souls’ Oklahoma City