Yet we go astray if we let our attention get drawn to the limelight. We would make a mistake if we allowed our gaze to turn toward the representatives of the Establishment, the powerful. Instead, as we prepare for the Incarnation, we remember that it takes place in obscurity. And, in order to get there, we have to pull our attention from the glittering thrones of power to the wilderness—and tune our ears to a voice coming from that wilderness.
The word for wilderness translated from the Greek here is “Eremos”—eremoß (er’-ay-mos) was used 10 times in Luke’s gospel. It has the connotation of a place of desolation. It has been variously translated into English as “wilds,” “wilderness,” “deserted place,” “desolate place,” and “open pasture.” The broadness of its meaning is indicated by its definition in a Greek-English lexicon as describing places which are solitary, lonely, desolate, uninhabited. It also describes a flock abandoned by a shepherd as in 15:9 when used in the metaphor of the 99 sheep. Interestingly, it is also used when describing a woman neglected by her husband from whom the husband withholds himself.
The very first Christians tended to be urban dwellers—yet for those who came from Judaism, the wilderness bore strong memories from the Torah and the histories of their people. At the surface, the wilderness was a place of chaos, disorder, fear, tempting, deprivation. It’s a place where a person by themselves faces serious danger of starvation, or accident, or exposure to the elements.
The wilderness is not a place we modern folk normally choose for ourselves if we see it as a place of barrenness. As in almost everything in life, it all comes down to perspective. That stripping away of every extra extravagance can also be clarifying. Preparation is key, of course, and respect for the power of the land must be acknowledged. Focus only on yourself, and the wilderness is overwhelming. Focus on how you are interconnected with the unspoiled landscape that stretches before you, and the wilderness can be a place of insight, spiritual renewal, and physical renewal.
Wilderness also has a positive side. It is a place that one enters by cutting off one’s past in an attempt to make a fresh start, and one is utterly vulnerable. But vulnerability, which is the power of hope encouraging us to try, leaves you open for good things—new vocations, new relationships, new perspectives.
For those who encountered John and later Jesus, the wilderness also was God’s favored place from which to show God’s care and concern. It’s where God made a covenant with Abraham, where Jacob wrestled with God and became Israel, where manna fell from heaven and humans ate the bread of angels. The wilderness is a place where the people of Israel were formed as a people during their exodus from Egypt. It is a place of crying out—but also, it is a place of hope.
And we need that voice of hope. As we continue in year two of this pandemic, we certainly have been thrust into a wilderness experience of our own—a wilderness where we have been tested and tried, a wilderness where we have been challenged to finds an inner strength and resilience. Where we have been challenged to see through the particularly western sin that the only thing that matters is our own personal freedom. Instead, perhaps the voice of God crying out in this wilderness is a reminder that we are bound up together, and that we cannot spurn concern for those around us.
The events of this week draw our special attention to another way in which we have been thrust into a wilderness. I stand before you today wearing this orange stole created for Bishops United Against Gun Violence because we had been plunged yet again into a continuing national nightmare.
The tragedy of the modern insistence on individualism is that it is a false idol, an idol of death and meaninglessness. Ultimately, it diminishes us and makes us feel vulnerable. It weakens, threatens, lashes out, and destroys. It makes everyone else around us a competitor for scarce resources, an enemy who is trying to deprive us of something if we don’t get there first. This viral pandemic continues because of the refusal of too many to look beyond the tiny circle of themselves and consider the impact of their actions upon others. The pandemic of gun violence continues for exactly the same reasons.
This wilderness of violence and nihilism is one of our own making. Can we hear the voice of one crying out a word from God from this wilderness? Can we hear it, acknowledge our need for turning around and choosing a different path? That is, after all, the meaning of repentance.
The words of Isaiah remind us that the wilderness, for all its barrenness, for all of its wild beasts, for all of its lack of comforts, is also a place where the horizons stretch on forever, after the mountains are levelled and the valleys are lifted. And once we experience that change of perspective, the view becomes so broad that “all flesh” can see God’s salvation.
God’s declaration comes out of the wilderness via John because that is where Israel was formed as a people and where the covenant with God was made and remade, again and again, through God’s steadfast grace and lovingkindness. Thus John’s proclamation is for repentance—a literal turning around to return to God.
The wilderness is a place for repentance, and we all like to think we have no need of that. But what if the path of repentance is also the path of liberation for all of us—liberation from the dangers that very much threaten each of us right now in our modern wildernesses?
Perhaps this pandemic—both the viral one and the one of gun violence-- is the voice of God crying out in the wilderness that the way of selfishness, the way of clutching our possessions to us rather than embracing those around us, the way of contempt for each other is the crooked path. Perhaps the voice of God crying out in the wilderness right now is a call for us to return to the value of community and compassion, to seek justice for those around us because ultimately that increases the security and contentment of all.
Perhaps the voice of God calling to us out of this continued pandemic of virus and violence is a reminder that we were not meant to be separate and exposed, but we are instead actually a part of something larger than ourselves. A reminder than the Jesus John prepares the way for commands us repeatedly not to grab everything we can for ourselves but to love one another.
Because the good news is that repentance is possible because God is faithful in ways we struggle to be. God’s love is enduring far beyond our own fickle attachments. God calls us to draw our attention from ourselves to each other and all creation as a precious gift to remind us that we are not only never alone but beloved and precious, even as we struggle, stumble and go astray. For it is only when we cast aside our delusions that we don’t depend on each other can we see the image of God in each other.
There is a voice calling to us in this wilderness—and it’s a voice that is calling us back from the brink into being brave enough and strong enough to become a people of faith and hope. To become a people the world desperately needs right now.
Hear the voice crying out in the wilderness, calling US to discipleship and witness against the forces of fear and death; calling US to make straight the Lord’s pathways— straight into our hearts, if we open them in faith. May we hear that voice, and turn to God in trust. And then begin to walk the straight path of liberation. Freedom is waiting to be born.
Amen.
Preached at the 505 and at the 10:30 Eucharist, online and in person, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.
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