Advent 2
Hanging of the Green
7 December 2025
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
W. Gregory Pope
WHEN GOD COMES NEAR
Isaiah 58:6-14. Mark 1:1-15. Philippians 4.5
Nestled quietly inside Paul’s letter to the Philippians between the call to joy and the path to peace is a simple four-word sentence that changes everything. It is the hope that makes joy and peace possible: The Lord is near. When we feel burdened with sadness, when we feel out of control, when nothing seems to make sense, even when God seems far away, sometimes the best we can do is prayerfully rest in this promise: The Lord is near.
It is not the experience of most people that God sweeps in and fixes everything. It is not the experience of most people to always feel joy and peace or to even always feel the presence of God close by. The greatest saints throughout the history of the church who’ve had the courage to write honestly about their relationship with God – almost all of them acknowledge seasons in their lives where they experienced the absence of God. They called it “the dark night of the soul.” And yet hope enabled them to believe the promise even when it was contrary to experience. The hope that trusts: The Lord is near.
When times are hard and God doesn’t seem close by perhaps we could repeat this promise as a prayer, as a confession of our faith: The Lord is near. Because sometimes words have the power to speak reality into our experience, especially when it breathes with the inspiration of Holy Scripture: The Lord is near. Such a prayer can be the bridge of hope on the journey to joy and peace.
Yes, there are those times when God feels so close we cannot imagine life without God. I hope you’ve known those moments. Yet honesty requires of us to say that there are other times when God seems very far away, when our prayers seem to disappear into an empty sky, when the only thing more vacant is our desolate heart. You cry out to God but God does not seem to answer. Even when we’ve been on your Sunday best behavior. We’ve prayed with all the faith we can muster, but our hearts feel like windswept dust on the Dakota plains.
Sometimes it’s our circumstances that seem to block the sense of God’s presence with us. At other times our grief or our sin leads to a sense of God’s absence. So we need to hear the voice of John the Baptist as he helps us prepare the way for God to come near. John says we prepare the way for the Lord into our lives with repentance, with changing what needs to be changed.
After his baptism, Jesus went throughout Galilee echoing the words of John and adding the good news of the gospel, saying, The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the good news. The good news that God is coming near to save you. The good news that you can be saved, that you can change, that life can be better, richer, happier.
Repentance gets a bad rap often because we place it on the lips of hellfire preachers. But repentance is not a groveling judgmental word. It is a shining high-spirited word. It is trumpets at dawn. It is rising and walking in newness of life! It is turning your life toward the light of God’s love. Repentance brings a lightness of heart, like a burden lifted. That’s what can happen when God comes near.
Repentance is a change of mind, a change of habit, a change of direction, a change of clothes. We put on Christ and his law which is the law of love. Love, Isaiah says, that loosens the yoke of oppression and injustice. Love that shares bread with the hungry. Love that gives the homeless poor a place to stay. Love that provides clothes for the naked. Love that meets the needs of the hurting and afflicted.
Then, says Isaiah, then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly. Your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom will turn to noonday bright. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. The well-being of God’s people, the experience of God’s nearness, is bound to our work of compassion and justice for those around us in greatest need.
Are you ready for God to draw near in Christ, in a bundle of new life wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, lifting your head to the stars where the light of God’s love fills your heart with hope?
Thank you, Paul, for that most needed reminder that The Lord is near. The Lord is near. Thanks be to God.