Preparing in the Wilderness (Dec 7)

Readings Isaiah 11: 1-10 and Matthew 3:1-12
Image, Joseph Stella, Tree, Cactus, Moon, ca. 1928. 

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea. The wilderness held important religious significance for John’s people. It was in the wilderness they wandered the forty years between the Exodus from Egypt and the Conquest of the Promised Land. The wilderness where the people grumbled and disobeyed, where the first generation who crossed out of Egypt were buried. At the same time, the wilderness was where the people were fed from God’s hand, led by God’s visible presence and for this reason the wilderness takes on ongoing symbolic power both as the place of nation’s trial and woe, of exile and loss, of God’s judgment and wrath, and as an inner place of trial, fallowness, and encounter.
 
So, what does it mean then, for John to appear in the wilderness? What does it mean for the people of Jerusalem and Judea to go out to him? Because if anything the wilderness is the antipathy to Jerusalem and Judea – the antithesis of these holy places. It was the arrival in the promised land that spelt the long-awaited end of the wilderness wandering, it is the Temple and the City which so often provide refuge from the threat and trial of the wilderness. And yet, it is from the wilderness that the voice of the last of the prophets, cries out. Here, clothed in camel hair and sustained by locusts he stands in wait for the people.
 
Here, in the wilderness, the making straight of Christ’s paths begins. Here, in the wilderness, the way is prepared… is this not counterintuitive? Was not the point of the wilderness that it was something overcome? A test triumphed over by the faithfulness of the people and the fidelity of God? The long-awaited promise given to Abraham is finally fulfilled in the Joshua generation and the promised land becomes the people’s home… and yes, there have been exiles, and yes, there have been catastrophes, and yes, they are now occupied, but nonetheless it is the city, the temple, the land that has provided time and again the bedrock of the people’s identity, their hope in troubled times, the burning furnace of their trust in God. Why then, in those days, does John the Baptist appear in the wilderness? Why are the people called to go out to him to be baptised in the Jordan – the last landmark they passed through to reach the land awaited?
 
Matthew, of all the gospel writers, takes the most pains to stress that Jesus, while being the world’s saviour, is Israel’s Messiah; locating Jesus within the story of God and God’s people. And so the work of John, to prepare the way of Lord, make his paths straight, is not just something that concerns the Messiah, but the whole people. The story of Jesus (like all stories of God) is a communal one, one of relationship and covenant. And so the ways cannot be prepared, the paths cannot be straightened solely for Jesus – you can’t just build a highway, the whole city’s infrastructure needs to be adjusted to accommodate it.
 
It is typical of the prophets of Israel to amplify their message with theatrics. Ezekiel lay on his right side for 390 days and his left for 40 to represent the sin of Israel and Judah respectively. Jeremiah bought a plot of land mid-siege to signify the eventual return of the people following exile. Isaiah walked naked for three years as a sign against Egypt and Cush. John’s dress and diet certainly fit in this tradition, but so too his location, so too his demand that the people come out of the places of stability and religiosity and into the wilderness.
 
Seen this way, the people are drawn to the wilderness as an act of prophetic reminder and preparation. They are reminded that while the wilderness was a time of trial and woe, it was also a place in which the people knew the nearness of God and the immediacy of God’s provision. The wilderness was a place of preparation where the people we trained for their task of witnessing to the nations the particular way of God. The call to the wilderness is a reminder that while the land serves as a testament to the faithfulness of God, it should not obscure their continued reliance on God. Do not presume to say to yourselves ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ John warns the brood of vipers, and likewise do not presume that just because you have Moses and the wilderness generation, Joshua and the conquering generation as ancestors that somehow your story is done: God is able from these stones (these wilderness stones no less) to raise up children to Abraham. Come to the wilderness, John teaches the people, to remember the need to repent and depend, to remember that the story is not settled, and be prepared for God is about to do something new.
 
As we move further into Advent, as the star and the cradle edge closer to our minds, as we begin to hum hark and holy in the supermarket, might we also hear this call from and to the wilderness? A call out beyond the safe and the stable, out beyond the geographies that signal arrival, out beyond the walled familiar, to hear anew the message of the kingdom’s nearing, hear anew the message of repent, hear anew the good news of great joy. Where and from whom might we hear this? What strange form and action might it take? How might we be prepared for the way of the Lord? How might our paths be made straight to meet his? How might our own presumptions be upturned so that the threshing floor of our faith might be swept again by the Holy Spirit; made ready to be gathered again to the granary of Christ? 
 
Because our hope is found in nothing short of the power of God to meet us in the wilderness and lead us into new life. In nothing short of God’s power to breathe life into dry bones and raise up children from stone. This is why we come again and again to the table of Christ, to be fed not as those who have arrived, but as pilgrim people on the way toward a promised end. We come, again and again in repentance, recognising the at-handness of the kingdom. In this we prepare our hearts, make straight our paths, and turn to the one who comes in the name of the Lord to see him already here – arms outstretched feeding us with own his body and blood, which he shall do with gladness and mercy, until the earth is full of the knowledge of the Living God as the waters cover the sea.