Sunday, December 3, 2017 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Christmas at Mark’s House

Advent Sermon Series: A Tour of Gospel Homes

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 67
Isaiah 35:1–10
Mark 1:1–8, 16:5–8

It is while waiting for the coming of the reign of God, Advent after Advent, that we come to realize that its coming depends on us. What we do will either hasten or slow, sharpen or dim our own commitment to do our part to bring it.

Joan Chittister

The home sat in a blue-collar area of town. Many of the families that lived there were people like my Grandpa Elbert, who painted houses for a living, or like my Grandfather Ivan, who ran a booth at a local flea market. Some of the houses were nicer than others, but almost all of them were well-kept. People took pride in their yards, in the appearance of their home, and, most of all, in the decorations they would display for Christmas.

But there was this one house—this one house that caused cars full of families to line up for blocks each year between Thanksgiving and Christmas day. The family at that house would begin setting up their decorations in September, because it took that long to get it all done. They had big snow globes and blow-up Santas. They had lit-up reindeer and elves that circled around on a fake ice rink. They had a couple of big nativity sets with large midnight stars hanging over them, as well as decorated Christmas tree after tree after tree. Those decorations and many more filled the entire yard, with barely any patch of grass left untouched. The house itself was also one big decoration, covered in strands of light—blinking and flashing and colors and white. And, of course, perched above it all on the roof, a big sleigh with lit reindeer that would lift their heads.

But that was not all. Whenever you drove by, you also wanted to make sure your windows were rolled down, because they had the whole thing set to music. The lights blinked and turned on and off depending on the song. One of the Santas would do a little dance, and the skating elves were also synchronized to the beat. For a child, it was magnificent—a real Christmas treat for all the senses. For an adult, it was rather garish, and you could not help but wonder how much all of that electricity cost that family. And for a neighbor—well, it must have felt like Advent lasted forever as car after car slowly drove down their street, rendering any other travel after dark impossible for weeks on end. That family went all out with their full-bodied attempt to make it the most wonderful time of the year.

This Advent season we are going to take a trip similar to the one I just described from my childhood. But instead of heading out to the Lincoln Park Zoo Lights or the display at the Arboretum, we are going to travel to the homes of the Gospel writers to see how they each decorate for Christmas, how they mark the birth of Jesus. Next Sunday we will have to show up with candles in hand as we travel through the deep dark to John’s house. John’s house won’t have a tree up just yet, but each window will have one of those fake candles that you plug in and turn on. John is all about the light, after all. He might even have a big Moravian star hanging on the front porch, lit up with all of its points shining in all directions. Then John, the poet, the philosopher, the professor, will invite us to sit down as we discuss the immense complexities of life.

A couple of weeks later, we will find our way to Matthew’s house: that will be a crazy time, with a strange sense of foreboding and shadow mixed in. That street will be almost as full as that street in Waco, since cars with license plates from all over will be parked on the side, some even pulled up on the curb, making travel down the street almost impossible. All of those cars from all over indicate the huge family reunion gathered inside: ancient grandparents, and aunts and uncles we’ve never even heard of, cousins two and three generations removed. We might even spot a few camels along the way.

And then finally, on Christmas Eve itself, we will sing “Away in a Manger” as we journey to Luke’s home. In his yard we will see the stable—finally—and perhaps glimpse that midnight star. Angel choruses could even fill the sky, and we will be able to find the address on the birth announcement itself. And undoubtedly Luke will have a big, beautifully decorated tree standing in the bay window and with twinkling lights and ornaments that say “Baby’s First Christmas.” That is the journey we will take in the services I am preaching. But today we start with Mark.

Now, given the scriptures I read, you might think I left my mind behind on my Thanksgiving vacation. Earlier this week, I got an email from our worship coordinator, Shawn, gently asking me if I really did mean to include the Easter reading as part of the Gospel lesson. I understood why he asked: it is a weird thing to do, especially on the First Sunday of Advent. But Mark’s whole house is a bit odd—at least it’s quite different than the other ones we will see on our tour—because Mark’s house stands bare. There is not one single decoration to be found. No wreaths, no tree, no candles in the night. As we walk up to the front door we are not even sure if anyone is actually home.

The house feels empty, and yet as my friend Agnes has said, it is an emptiness that proclaims “a holy power like none other.” Furthermore, the emptiness and lack of décor actually make sense, because Mark does not say one single word about Christmas. He does not make one single comment about the birth. Mark bypasses Bethlehem completely, as he begins with, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God . . .” before immediately heading to a fully grown-up Jesus waiting for his baptism by John.

Why is that? Why is it that this Gospel, the one written earlier than any of the others, has no birth story, preferring to plunge us immediately into the wilderness with Jesus at the beginning of his ministry? Biblical scholars have speculated several reasons why this might be. First, some think that since Mark is the first Gospel written, he might not have known those early Jesus stories being told around the land. Or perhaps Mark decided that since those birth stories were told so frequently in his congregation, he did not want to waste any of his words retelling them.

Mark is the shortest Gospel, after all. His characters are the least developed; his sentences often feel choppy to read; and the pace of his Jesus story is reflected in his frequent use of the adverb immediately. But if we think his lack of a Christmas story is odd, just look at how he handles Easter. We will hear Mark’s version of Easter this coming Easter on April 1, but we had a reminder of it today (purposefully, I might add).

Again, my friend Agnes:

From the empty tomb, Mark says, the women went out and fled, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. This is no way to end a gospel! So unsatisfied was the early church with Mark’s closing words, that not one, but two separate endings were added by later editors! The gospel leaves you dangling with an open-ended conclusion, which really concludes nothing at all.

But Mark’s unfinished ending might actually help us understand why there is no Nativity at the beginning. Mark leaves us dangling at the end of the Gospel because he wants us to go back and reread the whole story again in light of Jesus’ [death and] resurrection. We cannot understand any aspect of Jesus’ life apart from reading it through Easter eyes.

I think Mark’s bypass of Bethlehem was an intentional decision. He did not include a story about Jesus’ miraculous birth because, for Mark, the most convincing evidence that Jesus is the Son of God is not seen in what happened in the stable. Rather, the most powerful evidence for Mark that Jesus is God-with-us is seen most fully at the foot of the cross. Another way to say it is to use the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, words he wrote in his prison cell shortly before the Nazis killed him: “Only the suffering God can help.”

That suffering, that willingness to be a God who is weak in power in order to be strong in love, that willingness to be God in a way that holds nothing back, is the most convincing argument as to just who this Jesus is for the Gospel writer Mark. That might be why, Bill Placher says, “Mark, most starkly of all the Gospels, presents Jesus as at once the Son of God and a human being who ends up abandoned by his friends, subject to a painful and humiliating death, and crying out at the end to ask why God has forsaken him. . . . In Mark it is precisely the appalling way Jesus dies that leads to a first human being to proclaim that he is God’s Son—the centurion’s confession.” It makes sense why Mark’s house is empty of decoration—that holy emptiness is reminiscent of the empty tomb. For Mark, if it were not for the events of Holy Week and Easter, there would be nothing to celebrate at Christmas (Walton, “Christmas at Mark’s House: The Less Said the Better,” p. 4).

This is precisely why Mark’s house had to be our first stop this Advent season, for we are about to plunge headfirst into a season where so much of what happens is focused on celebration and warmth, on family and generosity. We are about to plunge headfirst into the time when we are all expected to be as excited as that family in Waco—to feel like it is the “most wonderful time of the year.” Yet all of us know that it does not feel like that for everyone; it might not feel like that for us. Feelings of grief, loss, fear, loneliness—those feelings can be isolating during the time of Advent and Christmas.

This is why Mark’s Christmas story is important. His house reminds us that Jesus is not just to be found in the stable. He is not just to be found in moments of celebration, joy, new life. No, according to the Gospel of Mark—the Gospel that begins in the wilderness and ends in unexpected silence—Jesus is more often found out in the hurting, grief-filled, lonely, vulnerable, fearful places in life. He is found in the hospital rooms, in the shelter for LGBTQ teens, in the unemployment line, on the corner after another gunshot, around the dinner table with that empty chair, in the home where you are afraid to fall asleep.

Jesus is found there in the context of dashed hopes and unfulfilled dreams, in the injustices and violence of our world. As scholars Brian Blount and Gary Charles note, “Mark was written principally for a people caught up in, and spiritually burdened by, social and political storms. Mark’s Gospel offers much more than a Jesus intended to soothe and mend the troubled soul; here is a Jesus caught up in the troubles and turmoil of a tormented world.” I think we know a bit about that kind of a world, don’t you?

We go to Mark’s house first for all of us who “need a little Easter dawn shining over the horizon of what may otherwise appear to be bleak tomorrows, for all of us who desperately need to hum some Easter Alleluias alongside all of the Christmas Glorias” in order to remember that despite all the evidence to the contrary these days, death and violence and abandonment do not have the last word on our lives or on our world.

We go first to Mark’s house, because—as the angel said to the women at the empty tomb—Jesus is going on ahead of you, to Galilee; it is there you will see him. It is out there, in the middle of the chaos of life, out there in the middle of the messiness and pain found in our city, out there in the brokenness of our families or our neighborhoods or our schools, out there in the social and political storms, where we will meet him, doing his work of healing, of mercy, of calling for repentance and justice, inviting and expecting for us to join him in that work, for us to get going when he looks behind and says, “Follow me.”

So while it might be an unexpected way to begin Advent, an unexpected first stop on our Christmas tour of homes, I am so glad we stop at Mark’s house first, for it is only when we look at the whole of the Jesus story through the lens of Holy Week and Easter, standing at the foot of that ugly instrument of death called a cross and then in front of that hauntingly beautiful and empty tomb, that we are honestly able to see and know the birth of Jesus for what it is: God’s choice of unilateral disarmament for the sake of the world.

Amen.