Advent 2, Year B | Mark 1:1-8
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
December 10, 2023
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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Western Christianity has a real sin problem. It doesn’t matter your church background or what denomination you prefer. It seems like no matter how often we might “confess that we have sinned against [God] in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone,”[1] we just can’t seem to get things straightened out. It isn’t that we don’t tend to talk a whole lot about sin anymore—even though preachers might not address it directly all the time, references to sin constantly show up in our Bible readings and prayers. It isn’t that we don’t have adequate theologies regarding sin—frankly, most of the Western Church’s ideas are far more overdeveloped than they need to be. But no matter how we try to refine or expand or define or understand it, it seems like we just can’t really get a handle on what the Bible means when it talks about sin.
Each of us has some sort of functioning definition of sin. Some think of it in terms of harming another person or violating a law—stealing, killing, acts of sexual misconduct, etc. And those things certainly fall within pretty much anyone’s concept of sin. Others describe sin as being “anything that separates an individual from God,” which isn’t a bad definition, but in real life it can easily get out of hand, reaching the point where simply being human—having human feelings, emotions, responses, and even physical bodies—becomes an inherently sinful thing.
Look at fear, for example. Fear is something natural to all earthly beings, human or not. It’s built into us as a survival instinct. However, the Bible repeatedly says, “Do not be afraid.” Does that mean that any time fear crops up, I’m sinning by disobeying God? Or worse, does that make fear evidence of some sort of sin nature inherent to humanity? In reality, no. Fear is simply an emotion; it’s something that’ll exist from time to time no matter my relationship with God. But if we tie ourselves too tightly to that second definition, then yes, the very presence of fear in someone’s life becomes evidence of separation from God and is, therefore, the presence of sin.
But our definitions of sin aren’t entirely the problem. No matter if we think of sin in a vague or restrictive manner, our understanding never quite seems to match up with the Bible. We’re constantly missing something.
Take our Gospel reading today. It’s the second week of Advent, which means it’s time for John to appear in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. And what does he proclaim as that means of getting ready? “A baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” [2] And then we see all the Judeans doing just that, coming to be “baptized by [John] in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.”[3]
Now none of that sounds like a particularly big deal. Many of us were baptized as infants or children. We don’t really know what life is like apart from baptism. Similarly, at least once a week we share in public confession, openly professing that “we have not loved [God] with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.”[4] If baptism and confession are all it takes to “make straight in the desert a highway for our God,” then we should be in good shape. We’ve prepared the way, and we regularly sweep off the path. So what more is God waiting for? We’ve met the conditions, just like in John the Baptist’s day. We keep meeting the conditions. So why isn’t God keeping their end of the bargain?
Again, I have to wonder if at least part of it isn’t because of us misunderstanding the nature of sin.
When we think of sin, we think of actions and thoughts—the doing or not doing of particular things: if I don’t commit a crime or if I’m never afraid, then sin isn’t actively appearing in my life. But our way of thinking isn’t remotely comprehensive enough for the ancient world. Our “big” sins frequently line up more with the Bible’s category of “iniquity” while our ideas of a sin nature have developed in such a way as to lean into the heresy that the physical world is evil.[5] However, just like in some more traditional people groups today, people in the Bible wouldn’t necessarily think of sin as something someone does. It’s far broader than that. Nor is it as all-encompassing as being something a person inherently is—it’s far less static. In a more collective culture, sin isn’t something evidenced only through the action or inaction of an individual. Sin is more systemic, something that can happen to you, with or without any other person involved. In the Bible, essentially anything negative that happens reveals the presence of “sin.”
Did you lose your job because your boss went bankrupt? That’s a nasty connection to sin. Broke your leg? What sin made you deserve that? Born with a deformity? It’s obviously the result of some sort of sin clinging to your lineage. No extended family support system available anymore? Don’t look at me; I don’t want your sin to somehow rub off.
Misfortune, failures, mistakes, not quite achieving what you were aiming for—all of that was “sin.” Anyone facing difficulties in life—someone outcast or looked down upon for any reason—could be considered a “sinner.”
When we start to understand “sin” in this broader sense, John’s leveling of mountains and filling of valleys begins to take on a slightly different meaning. Preparing the Way of the Lord isn’t about a bunch of individuals getting things right between themselves and God—it’s about getting right with each other.
Everyone who chose to come to John wasn’t just announcing or mourning over the bad things they had done. They were sharing—perhaps for the first time—their lives’ difficulties, expressing the challenges they faced, admitting the failings they were subject to. They were sharing with others the flaws and divisions they each experienced not simply within their own individual person but within their society. And once able to start seeing across the class gaps and the social restrictions which constantly divided them, the people—collectively—began to “repent,” a word we would better interpret as “change.” They began to make transformations not simply within their hearts but in the lives of those around them.
Preparing the Way of the Lord isn’t about physically grading roads or pouring concrete. It isn’t about digging actual tunnels through mountains or building real-life trestles so God can more easily come among us. Nor is it simply an internal, “spiritual” process; it doesn’t simply focus on me or you making things right with God, of soothing our guilt or smoothing our individual relationship with the Divine. The people of John’s day would have understood preparing the Way of the Lord as inherently interpersonal. It would have been, in many ways, a social leveling, an opportunity for the great—the mountains and hills—to humble themselves and allow their blessings to flow among others and a chance for the valleys—the outcasts and rejected—to be restored to dignity, to be recognized as genuine children and images of God in a world used to marginalizing or ignoring them.
But this “repentance” isn’t something anyone can force upon another. Nor is it something one can shame a person into doing. When the Lord prepares their way in me, I inherently turn to you. I pay attention to reality as it is and listen to your experiences; I put myself in your shoes. And doing that, instead of telling you what to do to improve your own lot, I begin to change. I begin to share, to sympathize, to weep over injustice or pain and then to take what actions I can to undo or alleviate it.
Preparing the Way of the Lord isn’t about instilling change in someone else—it isn’t about somehow making “them” act or think differently. Nor does it settle for a conceptual change somehow hidden deep inside me. When we prepare the Way of the Lord, we find real ways of leveling our differences, of using our unique advantages to the advantage of one another, of sharing our strengths and being open about our limitations. Even as Christians, none of us can prepare the Way of the Lord when our focus is on ourselves. Only when we begin to prepare the Way of the Lord among and throughout our community as a whole might we finally begin to realize the presence of Immanuel, of God With Us.
[1] Book of Common Prayer 1979, pg. 360
[2] Mark 1:4 | All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[3] Mark 1:5
[4] Book of Common Prayer 1979, pg. 360
[5] A common feature of various Gnostic sects; see also Basilideanism and Paulicainism.