This coming Sunday is the 2nd Sunday of Advent. As noted in last week’s commentary, the season of Advent has its own goals, purpose, and sense. That does not include jumping right into the infancy narratives. While one might argue that is where the story of Jesus begins in “time,” it is not a complete idea to describe what is unfolding in “time” but has been planned since the foundation of the world. The danger of beginning with the infancy narratives is that the real story of salvation can get lost in the all-too-familiar Christmas scenes. Those scenes will be celebrated in their own time and place – the Christmas season. But this is Advent.

On the First Sunday of Advent each year, we hear some of Jesus’ teachings about the “End Times.”  In each case, the text is taken from a passage that comes from the end of Gospels when Jesus seems to be speaking about apocalyptic events.  The Second and Third Sundays of Advent focus on the preaching of John the Baptist.  The emphasis is on the role of John as Herald.  Finally, on the Fourth Sunday of Advent the Gospel reading relates to some of the events that immediately preceded Jesus’ birth, including Joseph’s dreams (Year A: Matt 1:18-24), the Annunciation by the angel Gabriel (Year B: Luke 1:26-38), and the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth (Year C: Luke 1:39-45).

The Gospel readings of the four Sundays of Advent come to us in reverse chronology.  We start with the end of time.  We continue to the period when Jesus was an adult.  We end in the days before his birth.  Like a funnel, Advent opens with a giant theme, the grandness of Christ the King, and it ends with a specific one, the child lying in a Bethlehem manger. And so we begin not with the “life” of Jesus as a chronology, but The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. 

Here at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel we discover, not the manger scene, but the meaning of a gospel as proclamation, and the importance of the titles “Christ” and “Son of God.”  Mark reminds us that gospel originally meant “good news.” Christianity did not begin with a new book. Its Scripture was that of the Jewish people. Christianity began with a “new message” about what God known through that Scripture had done in Jesus Christ. The good news itself is a simple message of salvation in Jesus.

At the beginning of a new Liturgical Year, it is good to be reminded that Advent is a season of preparation and trust that the good news, the gospel, has begun in the promises of God, taken form and shape in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and will come to fruition in the second coming of our Lord and Savior.

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