Advent 2C

Advent 2C • 6 December 2009

Have you ever been on the highway in a snow storm when the snow is coming down hard, hard and someone goes barreling by you, churning up an egg-beater type cloud of snow, so dense that for a few minutes, you can’t see anything at all? And you are in one of those moments of driving blind, not having any idea where you are on the road, where the edge of the road is, whether you are going up or down or whether you’ll emerge from the cloud intact? This feeling is frightening and sometimes awesome. It almost certainly reminds me of my fragility and smallness in creation and how much I need to depend on God. That’s one way of experiencing wilderness, Vermont-style, even if it is created by the confluence of weather and human behaviour.

But then there’s the real wilderness, the desert (which, in the time and place of the writing of Luke’s gospel, were fairly synonymous). Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in Night Flight, wrote so beautifully of the desert in evocative and eloquent words, depicting its stillness, its coldness in the middle of the night… and the isolation and desolation so often felt there.

A more contemporary writer, Rabbi Michael Comins describes the desert thusly:

First and foremost, the desert is a dangerous place. Like Hagar or Elijah, you can easily lose the way, finish your water and find yourself facing collapse in a few short hours. Or you might fall prey to desert bandits. To be in the desert is to lack personal security.

The word for the desert is extreme. Since there are seldom clouds to block the sun during the day or hold the heat at night, and moderating oceans are far away, thirty and forty degree temperature swings are the norm. If the day is pleasant, the night is too cold. If the night is temperate, the daytime heat will melt your candy bar, and perhaps your equilibrium. Light is too intense for comfort. The sun blinds, dehydrates, kills. You’ll never see a Bedouin resting in the sun.

In the desert, you get down to essentials. Water, shade and a bit more water. The body wants little food. A heavy pack draws moisture from your body, which evaporates so fast, you might not even notice that you are sweating.

The desert, in short, is a place where people are tested physically, and thus spiritually. If you don’t know which canyons still have pools from the last rain or the secret water holes of the desert people, hope and confidence evaporate.

The desert can be mentally trying even when the body is not under duress. Quite often the horizon is a straight line. Indistinguishable washes, endless plains, the hot wind. Nothing to cling to. Nowhere to go.

Infinite space; infinite fear.

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And infinite possibility. The only center is the center within, and so one looks inward. The desert is a place to become as straight as the horizon, as sharp as a thorn. Learn to live with little. Learn to live in light so bright that nothing in your soul can remain hidden. Learn to live at risk.

The contract reads: courage required.

No exceptions.

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The truth is that life everywhere is just as extreme as it is in the desert. Only we do our best to believe that it isn’t, and in civilization, we can easily delude ourselves into thinking that we’re getting away with it.

The desert does not indulge those who cannot tell reality from a mirage. …Pretense is not an option.

The desert is one of God’s most precious gifts.

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It is into this sort of environment that I imagine John the baptiser wandering. And it was this sort of inner introspection and searching in which his call to repentance invited followers to engage. John’s words of repentance would have been familiar to his listeners—there was the daily changing one’s mind, understood either by the Hebrew shuv or the Greek μετανοια. But, in the religious context, the words took on the meaning of ‘broadening the horizons, transformation of experience, reform of life.’ In the Judaic mind, which would have been that of John’s time, though not necessarily that of the gentile audience the writer of Luke’s gospel intended, turning to God meant turning away from ways that are disobedient or displeasing to God. By turning to God, the person would obtain forgiveness of sins. John does not explain clearly what he means by this forgiveness, but a close analogy would be ‘forgiveness of debts.’ Any peasant would understand that notion since they lived in debt all the time. By turning to God, one might just have those debts forgiven.

John quotes Isaiah 40.3-5, yet another sign of his serving as a transitional figure between the Hebrew prophets and the new prophet, Jesus the Christ. He speaks of straightening out crooked (the Greek being scoliosis, a word we know from bent spines) roads, making new what was old. More important, however, is the continuation of a pattern common in Luke, where he introduces a phrase from the Hebrew Scriptures with the anticipation that its meaning will be fulfilled by Jesus. In this case, Luke uses Isaiah to anticipate Jesus as the saviour who will bring people out of their exile. The way people will be brought out of exile, be it the spiritual wilderness or desert or any other form of exile, is through God’s intervention. God will clear away all the obstacles in the way of God’s people, particularly the low and humble. But to be a part of this path, one must be ready of heart.

We normally think of Lent as our time of journeying in the desert or wilderness. That it is. But Advent, even with its emphasis on preparation and celebration, also invites us to those rough places in our lives, where the roads are very crooked.

It takes courage to set off on a journey to the desert, especially the desert of the heart and soul. It takes courage to be baptised in the waters of life because by so doing, we are affirming that we will embark on a life-journey of repentance and forgiveness of sins. Much of our life may be spent in the desert, where living does not come cheaply.

Today we will be baptising (at the late service) three people, Leah, Michael and Isabella, two youth and an infant. We will be launching them on this journey to the desert and beyond. It is an awesome, fearsome event, but one that is done in community with all of our help and guidance.

No matter how awesome and fearsome the spiritual vastness of the wilderness or the desert might seem, we must trust that God is walking with us, carrying us when necessary, and making clear the path. No matter how much gets churned up in front of us, obscuring our vision, we must remember the gift of reconciliation and forgiveness that has already been given to us.

John the baptiser has called us today to set off on our journey, to repent, to turn anew to God, and to live without pretence. There’s not much time between now and the nativity of our saviour Christ, so we’d best be on our way.

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Michael Comins, ‘The Spiritual Desert,’ www.torahtreks.com.