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Christmas can arrive wrapped in lights and joy while grief, loss, and the sense that this world is deeply broken remain close at hand. The Gospel of Mark opens with “the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ,” echoing creation itself and pressing an Advent question beneath all the decorations: What kind of beginning can Jesus bring to lives that do not feel whole?
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Well, I will have to think for a moment about what makes the ultimate Christmas tree. That’s our series for advent: the ultimate Christmas tree. Anyone have a tree like that tree? No, not exactly. Not exactly. You don’t have a dancing tree? I think a tree that could dance would be pretty close to ultimate, although I kind of like the snow machine tree version too, right? But what would make the ultimate tree? Is it the ornaments, the lighting? You saw some different lighting effects? Yeah, it might use just a pinch of AI to create some of those effects on that tree. I’ll confess. I can’t get a tree to dance. I haven’t figured out the choreography yet, but we know some of it we could actually do.
What makes the ultimate tree? Maybe it’s the presence around the tree that look beautiful in their beautiful shiny packaging. Maybe that’s it. What makes the ultimate tree for you? Well, we don’t grow artificial Christmas trees like many, maybe most of us have, but we certainly have trees out in our yards. As I was thinking about the ultimate tree or even just a good tree, I thought back to a tree my grandparents planted years ago when they moved to their last home. They moved there and they wanted to make it feel more wooded, so they got some different trees and they planted this one beautiful tree on the side of the house, and it grew and grew and it got really big and shady. It was a beautiful tree.
And then we had one of those unfortunate spring storms that likes to rip through, and it went right through and split it in half, and there really wasn’t much of the tree left. It was not going to be the ultimate tree anymore because it needed to be just taken down. There was nothing left. And so, regrettably, we cut down the tree. It was gone. But if you’ve ever cut down a tree, you know that it’s one thing to cut down the branches, it’s another to cut down the trunk, but to actually get in the ground and get the trunk out of the ground, that’s a whole other ordeal, and we had it just a little bit out of the ground, and this tree that my grandparents had planted, we decided we’ll just leave the stump there. So we left the stump there.
All of a sudden, you saw a little shoot up the side of the stump, and then another shoot upside and stuff. By the next year, it was a little bush. By the next year, it was a big bush. And if you drive by that tree today, that tree is taller than the trees around it. It is a big tree again, grown back from the stump. What does that tell us about trees? If we’re not thinking, how do we just get the outside appearance to look good? We get that right Christmas decoration, but how do we have a tree that is truly a good tree? Well, it depends an awful lot on the roots. That tree proved it, right? It lost all its leaves. It lost all of its branches, but it still had a great root system, and so that tree said, I’m going to come back because I have the resources. I have the footing. I am ready to be a healthy tree.
We need to go deeper than just the external trimmings. A lot of times at Christmas, we don’t, right? We’re so busy. I would imagine all of you have felt that a little bit this week, trying to rush to and fro. You start the holiday season with Thanksgiving and there’s obligations and things to do. At church, we’re getting ready with decorations, and we’re starting a new series. There’s so much to do, and it’s really easy to just go speeding through that and forget what makes the ultimate Christmas tree. What was it really ultimately about? Because if it’s the decorations that we take down in a couple months, if it’s the presents that some of which we might treasure for years, but a lot of which, if I were to ask you next year, you received different gifts, what did you receive? You have to think because it’s not something we fixate on usually constantly.
And that’s all it’s really about. It’s kind of empty, isn’t it? We need to go deeper. We need to know there’s more growing underground. And the reason we have a church, and not uniquely as a church, but along with our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world, why we spend time with Christmas, isn’t it so that we can plan that superficial, that pretty but passing thing? But so we can go deeper.
Over the next four weeks, we’re going to look at the roots of each of the gospels because we’re given four gospels, and each gospel is rooted in an aspect of what’s so important about Christmas. Tonight we’re going to start with the gospel of Mark. And our first root, our first essential root to understand the power, the majesty of what happens at Christmas is to understand that what happens, and the one who happens at Christmas, will creation is the key root of Christmas.
Let’s go ahead and pray and ask God to help us to understand the depth of what He’s doing that we remember at Christmas time, and then we’ll dig into Mark chapter one.
Father, thank You for this evening. Thank You for Your word. Would You help us to understand it more clearly? Lord, let me get so busy, we get so overwhelmed. We get running in so many different directions. We need You to help us to stay focused on what is true, what is good. Father, as we enter into this Christmas season, as we were in the season of advent, would You help us to use that as a genuine time of preparation, that we would draw more closely to You, and that You would take our roots, the roots of our lives, and bring them more deeply into the nutrition, into the strength of Your truth? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So, we don’t normally start talking about Christmas by talking about creation, but it’s not a bad place to go because creation itself points to Jesus. That’s what we see in verse one of Mark one: “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the son of God.”
You might say, “Well, Tim, that, Pete, read a little more. You’re just reading essentially the title, right? I mean, this is… What do you mean creation points to Jesus here?”
But to understand what Mark is doing here and Mark, the whole gospel, Mark’s fascinating because Mark compresses everything. He’s on an urgent mission and he wants to get out quickly. He’s writing to Roman believers or believers or potential believers. He’s evangelizing the truth of the gospel and he wants to zip right to it.
And here at the beginning, he does that by the way he titles it because the phrasing he uses mirrors that of the Greek translation of Genesis chapter one.
So it doesn’t dwell, it’s not going to say, “Let’s talk about thousands of years ago when God made the heavens and the earth and how He did it and now God connect all to you.” No, he’s content with just a passing reference, but that passing reference is, “Well, I’ve got to begin my book the same way that the book of Genesis begins.”
Why? Because without saying very much at all he wants us to be thinking in terms of how creation itself is tied to Jesus.
We’re going to get more deeply into this in a few weeks when we get to the Gospel of John, but I think it’s interesting that Mark starts here. Mark doesn’t spend time on a lot about the Christmas story. And in fact, that is the Christmas story as far as the gospel of Mark goes, right? He does not talk about angels coming to Mary and Joseph or anything about shepherds and wise men. He’s not going to do any of that.
No, the next verse, which we’ll look at in a moment, goes straight to John the Baptist. He doesn’t have time to dwell on building the story. He wants to get to the meat of it very quickly.
But as he does that, he hints here: Why is he in such a hurry? Well, for the very reason that it’s tied to the beginning. Because what Mark has to tell us is the new beginning, the recreation, the fixing of things.
A new creative work is about to begin, and he begins by saying we’re at the beginning.
Mark doesn’t spend a lot of time building up to it because what really matters is what’s going to happen next. Now, that’s not to say that we shouldn’t study and benefit from everything that’s before, but if you imagine Mark, it’s sort of, if you’ve had that opportunity to share the gospel with someone, someone says, “Tell me what you believe.” And there’s a whole bunch of things that you could tell that person about what you believe about Jesus and about what it is that Jesus came to do and how our salvation works and so on.
You could spend a lot of time, but there’s probably that one thing that God’s really touched your heart with that you want to share. Maybe you even thought about that. Someone says, “Well, I’d like to talk about this.” So you start thinking, “Well, what book of the Bible should I go to? What should I tell about my own story? How should I do it so that I can get right to that, especially if I only have a few minutes to tell?”
That’s what Mark’s doing here. And he wants to begin by saying, this is a beginning. Not just a continuation, but it is that.
Mark’s going to allude to that in the next section. He’s playing two different things at once here, two different themes. Yes, a theme of continuation, of the prophets, of fulfillment. Tom spoke of some of that during our advent wreath lighting. There’s that. We also need to understand that God’s going to do something new.
Down the street from me, there’s a laundromat, not the one right here at church, but another laundromat. And it has a big banner out right now. It says, “New machines coming soon.”
I’ve been thinking about that banner a great deal, and I was trying to figure out if it was really clever marketing or really bad marketing, because I’m imagining if I need to wash some clothes this week and I need to go to the laundromat, and I have my basket of clothes here, and I come up to the sign that says, “New machines coming soon,” do I really want to use those old machines? Why are new machines coming soon? I’m assuming it’s not because they want shinier paint on the washers and dryers. I’m assuming it’s because they need to clean better, right? Or faster maybe, but probably better. I don’t think they’re making it two minutes faster or something.
And so if new machines are coming soon, do I want to put my clothes into the old machines? What’s it saying about the old machines? It’s saying there’s something wrong with it. Something broken about it.
Now, maybe if I went to that laundromat all the time, I’d be rejoicing at the science of new machines, because I’m about to go to a different laundromat. I’m so tired of the machines always breaking. And so I see that and I say with a shadow of joy, “Woo-hoo, there’s new machines coming.”
That’s kind of what Mark’s doing for us. Because Mark isn’t referring to something that we don’t know. He’s not writing to someone who says, “Well, I figured you had perfect machines and I was coming to wash my clothes, and now I don’t know if I want to go in.”
Mark is writing to people, people like us, people like everyone who understand that the world has issues. The world doesn’t always work right. There’s pain.
It’s one of the challenges when we talk about creation points to Jesus. We say, “Well, if creation points to Jesus, what are we supposed to say?” Because it seems like there’s a lot, a lot that’s broken in creation. But as Mark speaks of a new beginning, what he’s pointing us to is the fact that yes, creation is broken, but the creator has come back to fix it.
The beginning of the gospel of Mark is essentially an invitation to understand, as we often dwell on on the first Sunday of advent, that things are not how they ought to be. It seems there’s something that needs to be fixed. The question is, how do you do it? How do you get there?
Many years, we’re not doing it this year, but many years we’ve had what we call the Blue Christmas service. I hope that we do it again. And it’s a service where we spend some time reflecting on losses and pain that we’ve encountered over the year. Why do we do that at the beginning of the Christmas day? Well, because we come in and there’s all the shininess, all the pretty lights, the ultimate Christmas tree is being put up, everyone talking about how you have the best one.
And we say, well, that’s fine. I can put up this beautiful tree and it looks like the ultimate tree, but you know what? Everything around it breaks. I can put the shiny packages and the glistening lights, but it doesn’t mean everything’s right.
Tonight we’re actually kind of bringing those two services together: the first week of advent and what we normally do at Blue Christmas. I invited you over the last few weeks to share names of lost loved ones over the past year, those who had passed that we as a family grieved together over. Because one of the hardest things about coming into the Christmas season is that process of grieving, right? If we have lost someone close to us, and that person isn’t going to be there at Christmas, and we’re not good, whether they were living nearby or with that phone call or that email, that’s still that connection that’s no longer there.
We feel that acutely when we’re celebrating something joyful and wonderful, and yet we don’t necessarily feel joyful, and it’s sort of like, well, am I lacking faith? Am I not living as I should as a Christian if I feel that way?
What do we find over and over again in scripture? We see that in Isaiah chapter 40, God is the God of comfort. He comes to us in the brokenness.
There’s an old German evangelical tradition known as Toten Fest, or Toten Sonntag. It’s the Sunday off that Sunday right before advent, but it fits also very well with this first week of advent, to take time to do that same thing: to put those griefs before our God, to honor those loved ones’ names in the past, and to bring them before God, because we recognize that we’re carrying that grief.
And so I did invite you over the last few weeks to send in those names. I have a list here. We want to take a moment as we’re reflecting on this recreation that God’s doing to just reflect on how our God understands that we don’t come to advent to pretend that these things aren’t happening, but rather to acknowledge that these things are happening, that we are broken, that we do grieve. And really, as we think about what we’re told here, this isn’t some kind of off-message thing where we’ve missed the point. No, it’s actually right on message, exactly what the Lord wants us to do: to come and to bear our grief before Him.
So I’m going to read these names. We’re going to share them together.
If it will allow me too… Give me just a moment here. Technology’s been a little interesting today.
We are reminded that we live in a broken world, right? A world that doesn’t always work as we would like. That’s why we have backups.
But we want to follow that tradition, and traditionally, what you do as you read off the names is you ring a bell.
[bell rings]
It worked a little while ago. Building anticipation here. I apologize.
Three, two, one, back. Okay.
We’re going to read these names, and trivial problems aside, we realize that these are much heavier griefs. Our hearts are heavy as we bring these, and some of these names we’ll know. Some of them are names of other parts of our church family here, and we may individually know them, but we as a church do, and we grieve together.
Benny Blanton. Buddy Brown. Thomas Burquett. Caprice Dobson. Mike Freeze. J. Hafner. Guadalupe Hernandez Hernandez. Gerald Jackson. Martha Martin. Juanita Martinez. Mary Jane Known. Jose Alfredo Gonzalez Nito. Asher Outlaw. Ben Elmo. Sarah Pacina. Killer Momo Robo. Galen, thank you. Mike Wasserstein. And Joe Williams.
It strikes me as I hear that bell ring and the resonance of it, it reminds us of this emptiness that we often feel, this darkness. We feel it. But we’re not the only ones to feel it. Everyone that Mark was writing to had felt it. Everyone in the ages since felt it. Everyone before that has felt it. We’ve all encountered those times that we feel that deep and abiding loss.
And as I think about what we find in the story of Christmas, for all the glitz and the shine that we put on it as believers today and simply as cultural members of a society that celebrates Christmas today, we might think that the Bible would be surprised. You might think that it seems like, well, that’s not right. Why would you begin advent by remembering those who have passed in the last year and playing that solemn bell?
It’s because that actually hits closer to the message of Christmas and what the prophets have been saying and the way that we usually sell.
Because as the prophets talked about the coming of the Messiah, they didn’t say, “We know you have everything so great and you have this great festival plan that is going to be just fantastic. You’re going to celebrate every year and play great songs on the radio and you have all that.”
No. No, what were they saying? We know that you are in the midst of a broken world and it hurts. Because sometimes that self-inflicted hurt, where you strayed from the Lord and you feel it now.
You know, sometimes it’s the brokenness of the world, the fullness of the world: death and destruction.
You know this, the Lord isn’t surprised. His word isn’t surprised. No, Jesus came precisely because those things are true.
The season points us, who are in that bell-ringing moment, to something new, a promise, that our ache, that we come before the Lord and acknowledge when we read off those names and when we privately feel grief, that that isn’t the end of the story.
But the one who authored creation, that in Genesis we’re told that there was this beginning and God came into the world and spoken to existence, that’s the same voice, the same one who came into the world as a baby. Came into the world to actually experience what we grieve over, to take it on himself so that there would be a recreation. That’s what the prophets were foretelling.
Mark chapter one, verse two: “It was written in Isaiah the prophet, ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way. A voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’”
This beginning that Mark speaks of comes from Jesus. Recreation comes from Jesus.
Mark shows he’s an incredibly subtle writer, and it’s kind of interesting. You probably wouldn’t even catch this if you’re just reading by it quickly, but there’s something interesting about how Mark quotes Isaiah.
When he does it, he’s quoting it in this way to say, “There’s more to this than what you realize. Yes, God’s going to make the path straight, but I want you to understand exactly what the story is behind it.”
He does that by referring to Isaiah and then not quoting Isaiah initially. Kind of an interesting thing.
People have spilled a lot of ink over this because in that quote that he gives, the first part of it is actually from Exodus chapter 23. And the second part is from Malachi chapter 3. It’s only after he’s quoted those two that he comes and he arrives at Isaiah and quotes from this comforting beginning of this new movement in Isaiah that we started reading when we went to Isaiah 40 earlier tonight.
Why would he do that? Why do you say, “I got to tell you something about Isaiah but I’m going to take a little detour first. I’m gonna go to Exodus and I’m gonna go to Malachi.”
Why is he doing that?
Because he’s pulling together the pieces to say, “You’ve had this promise of rescue that’s been coming, has been building, and I want you to understand all those promises, those prophecies pointing to the Messiah in the context of Isaiah.”
So that when you read what God writes in Isaiah about comforting His people, you realize all these other promises, yeah even the promises where it says, the Messiah is going to come, he’s going to judge, he’s going to stand up for the righteous, those are meant to be promises that are comforting.
So I was made to come to bring comfort.
All the actions that you could see before that, whether it were dreams or visions, whether it was the rescue from Egypt or the promise of a return from exile that we find in Isaiah, whatever it might be, there was this message saying that, yes, here God sent a messenger and here’s this message from the messenger, and that message is that God’s going to do this thing, this important thing.
But in the recreation, in this incredible thing that Mark says, “Hey, what can I tell you about because now it’s happened?”
Nothing changes.
All these promises that have been being given over time are woven together. And we find out how they can be comforting because there’s not just another message from God.
John the Baptist is going to come on the scene and proclaim that the Lord is coming and that people should repent and believe, but when he says the Lord is coming, it’s not just another message from a prophet.
He’s going to be able to say, “And here is the Lord. He’s here. He’s amongst us. He’s walking right in front of us.”
And Mark can say, “People actually saw Him.”
Somebody did.
So he didn’t just talk about comfort. He talked about restoration, talked about fixing things someday. He actually came to do it.
One of the interesting things about the way that Mark phrases that first line in this gospel, the gospel of Jesus, it could also be translated “the gospel from Jesus.”
And so again, people, if you get into a biblical commentary, you open up a couple on the shelf over there, you get studied by all, you get into all these debates on these things and think, “Well, why argue over that?”
Well, I don’t think Mark’s point here was to have us argue over.
And Mark’s point here wasn’t necessarily to pick one or the other.
I believe Mark knew exactly what he was doing and he wanted us to understand this is both the gospel from Jesus. He’s going to say it. He’s going to be the one to speak it. We hear the words of the Lord from the Lord Himself dwelling amongst us.
That’s why it’s so comforting.
And that the good news is actually the Lord speaking Himself, not just about something else.
Gospel of Jesus and from Jesus, a key difference. He proclaims Himself, and He Himself is the comfort that we’ve been yearning for.
Mark’s, like all the gospel writers, do a whole lot more. But when we think about this starting point, Mark gets to the heart of what is important about the Christmas story from the beginning.
We live in a creation where we need that banner up. We want to know that that banner is up that says “New creation coming,” because you know we walk into the laundromats of our life and the acquainted plot doesn’t work and the clothes come out all soapy and sometimes it tears them up and the dryer doesn’t actually adjust temperature and shrinks everything. That feels like life.
And if there’s something, if there’s any one thing that we’re going to take from the Christmas stories to understand, I think it’s to understand that God knows that and that’s why He came into this world.
He didn’t come into this world so we could pretend everything was good, everything was right, but rather to make everything right.
And so for Mark, rather than going into this really beautiful story, and we’re going to get into some of that next week with Luke of how it all came to pass, and that has its own beauty. Mark’s not going to spend time on that.
He has to get to the urgent matter of saying it’s actually past and it’s fixed and that if you believe in Jesus, it’s not going to stay broken.
You know, so many things that are broken and stay broken time and again.
Anytime I’m looking for an example saying that gets broken and stays broken, all I really need to do is think about our, I’m sure everyone’s favorite local internet provider Spectrum.
No offense if you work for Spectrum. I know you’re trying.
But it’s always right for an illustration because there’s always something that is either broken or I know it’s going to break again soon.
I know it’s going to break again soon.
If I say it hasn’t gone down for a while, boom, it’s like, maybe they have what? Maybe they have AI in there. Is this thing? I don’t know.
But it just breaks again, right?
And in the summer, I found myself for hours on the phone with Spectrum trying to get something fixed.
“Well, it’s not really broken,” the customer service representative explained to me.
“It’s not really broken.”
“That’s intentional.”
It’s supposed to be that way, that when we change you to the new deal, it costs more money and doesn’t go as fast.
That’s part of… wait a second.
And so I got transferred back and forth department or department.
“Oh, well yeah, that might be broken but not broken in the way that we handle. Let me transfer you over to the other department. They can fix that.”
And so it went for hour after hour after hour, and eventually, I got someone to acknowledge part of it was broken and it’s mostly fixed.
Two things that you realize if you go through an experience like that.
One, you need people to actually acknowledge that it’s broken, that’s a really helpful thing.
But then occasionally I got that really helpful representative: “I am so sorry. That’s awful. I would hate that were happening. I’m so sorry. Let me try to fix it for you.”
And you hear that phone click. “Hello? Hello?” And you realize the agent’s gone, right?
It’s not enough that the agent acknowledged it. The agent was gone and it wasn’t going to get fixed.
But we really need two things.
The two things that Mark speaks about here is he opens his gospel one, that there is a beginning coming here in Jesus, a new beginning.
Is something broken? And that Jesus is actually the one coming in himself proclaiming of himself.
So there’s no doubt he can actually fix it.
“I’m not gonna say, well, let me transfer you to the life billing department. It’s a billing issue. If they just put in the right billing code, they’ll be able to fix the speed of your life and they’ll start moving.”
You’re not going to do that.
He’s the one.
We need someone who can actually fix it.
What Mark wants us to understand here, is all these different pieces. He quotes from Exodus, and he quotes from Malachi. He comes to Isaiah, and he wraps that all in this beginning image going back to creation.
He says, all that’s tied together.
There are different departments, creation department, salvation department.
There are these different things and they do different things and they can’t agree on who’s responsible for fixing what’s going on in your life.
No, there’s one God and He’s the one who fixed the things that are broken.
We come with our heavy hearts because we do grieve.
When those whom we love pass, we don’t deny that there’s grief just because we talk about resurrection.
But we come to the God who offers comfort knowing that He’s also the God who doesn’t just say, “I’m so sorry. I feel for you,” but the God who actually has power to fix it.
That even today, as we await Jesus’ second coming, we can say, “Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel,” and it means something.
Because He did come, and He will come again.
Each of the parts, each of the gospels, as it tells part of the Christmas story, is giving us something to give us the confidence that we’re not just staring at a dead stump that needs to be removed from the ground, but something that is robust and will sprout out stronger than before because of what’s underneath that we can’t see.
That the ultimate Christmas tree isn’t just a tree that’s gotten the right lights on it that will eventually fail, but something more, something lasting.
The roots that we read about in the gospels that do root that story, they assure us that there will be growth.
And those places where we feel locked off, where our branches have been cut and it feels like nothing more can happen, where all the leaves have fallen, they’re not done.
But we can see what we’ve lost in creation.
We understand that we’ve lost something from creation, that this is not how it ought to be, but when we come to Jesus, when we talk about the miracle of Jesus coming into the world at Christmas, we can see what we gain in Jesus’ retreat.
Because the story isn’t over in your presence.
Father, we come before You tonight.
We all have our griefs and burdens, some of which we all know about and we bear together, others that might be just tucked away in our hearts and no one else even knows.
These things weigh on us, but we come to the God who knows that as we cry out, “Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel.”
We know that our God has indeed come and will come again, that the work that You’ve done is not just a banner on the wall saying something new is coming, but rather the absolute certainty that Your newness is accomplished.
And we can turn to You even now, You wipe away the tears from our eyes and tell us of the wondrous things that You are doing that will be done, that we will experience, that can never be taken away.
We pray this in Jesus’ precious name.
We thank You for that truth, and we ask that You would apply it more fully to our hearts tonight.
Amen.
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