>>We find ourselves on the second Sunday of our Advent season. And this Sunday and next Sunday we hear from John the Baptist, the beautiful gospel we hear today, which I’ll talk about in a second.  

But first, I want to introduce you to or maybe acknowledged a season, or series you may have seen on Netflix. Do you have Netflix? Of course you have Netflix. Everyone has Netflix! On Netflix there’s this series called The Chosen. Have you seen the Chosen? It’s a number of seasons now. And then the Chosen, really what it does is it goes through the beauty of how Jesus individually, specifically, and deliberately chose his disciples. Chose his apostles one by one – disciple, apostle by apostle, inviting them to follow him. And it’s really a beautiful portrayal of the calling of the disciples, the apostles.  

And in the season of the Chosen, we see, of course, John the Baptist. We come to know John the Baptist, not right away, but eventually we come to know John the Baptist. And so his disciples, Jesus’s apostles, are getting to know John the Baptist. Well, believe it or not, as goes depictions and as goes movie series, it turns out that Peter, the great Peter, whose second reading we just heard from. Peter doesn’t like John the Baptist and John the Baptist doesn’t like Peter. Peter thinks that John the Baptist is too crazy. In fact, Peter calls him “Crazy John.” The Baptist, Crazy John the Baptist. That’s what he calls him.  

Be that as it may, what Peter’s putting his finger on is the fact that John the Baptist is very mission driven. John the Baptist knew exactly who he belonged to. He knew exactly what his mission was. He knew exactly what he was called to do. Go to the Jordan, baptize people, bring about freedom from their sins, and point to Jesus, who is to come. Talk about being mission driven. John the Baptist knew exactly how he was to carry out his mission, and so he did. He baptized people in water. Jesus baptized people in the Holy Spirit. And Jesus, along with Peter, helped people be free. Jesus helped people grow closer and closer to him.  

Friends, as we celebrate this Advent season, as we prepare ourselves to celebrate the birth of Jesus, let us make sure we’re letting go of anything that keeps us from Jesus. Let us make sure that we are mission driven, always focusing ourselves on our journey, our relationship with Christ Jesus, because we know he is the Son of God, the one who brings us salvation and hope. As we heard about in the beginning of Mark’s Gospel today. Maybe John was a little crazy. That’s okay. He helped us know Jesus.