It's Advent time once again. The
paraments have been changed to Purple. The candles are in place and lit. The
greens have been hung. We our in the midst of waiting liturgically now, for the
coming of the Christ Child into our world. We are called, once more, to prepare
our hearts for the His entrance into them.
It's Advent. And as they do every
year, during this opening season of the church’s liturgical year, the Gospel
readings direct our attention to the figure of John the Baptizer. "Prepare ye the Way of the
Lord!" The Baptizer proclaims to us. "Open your hearts and
change your lives, the Messiah is coming!" He demands of us all.
After so many centuries of prayerful
waiting, the long-awaited word of God finally came-- but not to a palace or
royal court, or even to the High priest in the Temple. The word came, not to the powerful, not to
Herod, not even to Tiberius Caesar in Rome. The word came to a man who had
chosen to live apart from all of this. The word came to a man who had turned
his back on home and family and comfort and leisure as well as from power and
influence.
The word came to John, who had fled
to the desert. Apparently, John had simply chucked it all in one day. He had up
and walked out into the wilderness, to pray and to listen there for God's word.
John had been living out in the desert for so long he'd almost become a part of
it, a crazy, hairy hermit eating whatever food came to hand, dressing in
untanned animal skins. John must have
literally looked like the desert-- and probably smelled like it too.
We have no idea why John had headed
out into the wilderness in the first place. But he was not alone. Since the
Exodus, the desert had held a distinctive spiritual significance for the Jews.
It was (and still is) a rocky, forbidding place where, like the Hebrew
children, you might wander lost. But it was also a place of holy solitude,
where you might find yourself-- a place where you might define who you
were. Above all though, it was a place
where, like Moses and Elijah and so many others., you went if you really wanted
to encounter God.
The desert, the wilderness, was a
place of retreat, a place of prayer and renewal, a place of sanctuary from the
sophisticated wilderness of the so-called civilized world. Whole communities,
single people and families as well, had at various times fled from society and
established themselves out there in the wastelands, seeking simplicity of life
and of worship. They had fled, seeking to escape what they saw as the corrupt
and meaningless religion of the Temple in Jerusalem.
It was from the ruins of one of such
community that the Dead Sea Scrolls came. Some scholars think that John the
Baptizer came out of that same community as well. In any case, John sought, as those who came
before him sought, and those who came after him sought, to escape the snares
and demands of this unfinished, sin-sick, blood-soaked, tear-soaked, polluted
wasteland that we call our world.
They wanted to flee to some place
pure, some place uncontaminated. They sought the real, natural wilderness,
scrubbed clean by God's hand. They sought it so that they could become
pure through prayer and solitude-- like those who have been through a refiner's
fire.
Once he had, in fact heard God's
word though, John did something you might not expect. He came out of the
wilderness. And, according to Luke's account, John the Baptizer began traveling
up and down both sides of the whole Jordan valley. He preached, he beseeched,
he threatened, he begged those who stopped to listen-- to repent.
He called upon rich and poor, great
and small, Jews and pagans and Roman occupiers to change their ways. He
demanded that they turn their lives around and begin to live in a new
direction—with integrity and justice and holiness. John warned them to prepare
for the coming of God's earthly Realm. And he baptized people, forgiving the
sins of men and women and children as a sign of their new life and their
entrance into the Heavenly Realm that was a' comin'.
And perhaps not so surprisingly,
people came to listen to him. He picked up disciples. People talked about John
after they went away from hearing him preach. They told their friends and
family. In time, word of this baptizing
new prophet even reached the court of Herod. Disciples flocked to John. A minor
cult even sprung up around him.
But despite all this, John remained
essentially alone. The day that Jesus stood in the crowd before him on the
banks of the Jordan, waiting to be baptized, only John recognized Jesus for who
and what He was. Nobody else recognized
Jesus that day.
Apparently nobody else that day saw
Jesus as anybody but just another face in the crowd. Only John the Forerunner
pointed to Jesus and proclaimed Him as the real live Messiah, as Lamb of God.
John the Baptizer sums up in his own person the whole of God's salvation history
with Israel, and with the world. He literally straddles the Testaments. The
last of the great Hebrew prophets, John points as they did, to the coming of
Christ. At the same time, John opens the
Gospels and begins the process of the salvation of all humankind.
By their very nature, confession and
repentance-- preached by John-- must always precede forgiveness of sins and the
new life-- brought into the world by Jesus. So by their very natures, John must
always precede and proclaim and point to Jesus.
There's always been in the Biblical
faith, the temptation to flee from the world into the wilderness. The sheer raw
beauty of the wilderness reflects the wondrous power of the Creator. In the
wilderness, it's peaceful and quiet and you're sheltered from temptation. There
are no distractions in the wilderness. There’s true holy solitude--just you and
God.
It's
easy to be holy there. That wilderness/solitude tradition also carried over
into Christianity. It was in the wilderness after all, that Our Lord Jesus struggled
with His own identity and vocation at the time of His Temptation. Mystics,
monks, nuns, and others still carry on that tradition of seeking God in
solitude even in our day. And holy
solitude is indeed something that we all need on a regular basis in a
mature, balanced spiritual life.
But it can be hard to find the
discipline, the time, and place where we can be alone with God in the midst of
our busy lives. So there's always within us the temptation to take a
once-a-week short cut, and flee from the world into the sanctuary. It's
beautiful here. It's quiet and peaceful and we can listen for God's word
without distraction. It's easy to be holy here.
But our God will not let us stay in
the sanctuary forever. Just as God's word called John out of the peaceful
silence of his desert, so God's word calls us today. Just as the Divine command
drove John from the serenity of the wilderness and into the cities and towns of
the Jordan valley, so the Holy Spirit today is calling God's people out of the
sanctuaries and chapels and into the hurley-burley of everyday life.
That's after all, where you and I
ultimately must live. John was rudely called from his chosen life of solitary
prayer and meditation to a ministry of preaching and baptizing and prophecy.
The church today-- you and I are rudely called forth from our Sunday morning
prayers into Monday through Saturday witness and advocacy and sharing and
ministry and intercessory prayer on behalf of the neighbor in need, on behalf
of the exploited and hungry and homeless of our world.
John came out of the wilderness,
preaching in obedience to the word of God, pointing with his life and his words
toward Jesus. I wonder, if John hadn't been there to announce that Jesus was
coming, if John hadn't been there to proclaim and point out Jesus on the
riverbank that day, would anyone have noticed? I wonder, how many times in your
and my lives have you and I had the opportunity to point to Jesus? Far more
than we're aware of, probably. I wonder how many have not heard the Good News we bear? Far more
than we're probably aware of, unfortunately.
Theresa of Avila said that Christ
has no hands to reach out and minister to the needy and suffering in this
world—no hands except yours and mine.
Our Savior has no feet to carry the good news of salvation into this
world—except ours. Our Redeemer has no one to point him out to the lost and
broken ones of this world-except you and me.
How many times have we straightened a neighbor's crooked path through an
act of kindness, or forgiveness? How many times have we filled in a friend's
valley of depression by offering a sympathizing word, a shoulder to cry on, a
friendly ear to listen without judging? How many times have we unselfishly
celebrated with joy the unexpected blessing of another? How many times could
you or could I have shown others by our lives, through our compassion, our
caring, our giving, our sharing, the wondrous salvation of our God?
If John hadn't proclaimed Jesus'
coming and then pointed out Jesus that day, would anyone have noticed him? If you
and I do not point directly at Jesus through the testimony of our
lips, who will ever hear of Him? If we
do not proclaim the Messiah’s' coming by the witness of lives of faithful
integrity and our loving ministries in His name, then who can ever be touched
by Him? How we be touched? How can this church be revived? If Christians don't
show others how the Savior’s Advent has transformed our hearts by the very way
we live our lives, how can we transform our owm little corner of God's
creation? How can we join with our Maker in the healing and transformation of
the wasteland of this world?
And if we who call ourselves by His name, don't tell and show the world
Him and His love, then how can Jesus Christ redeem and save the whole God’s
Creation? Amen.
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