In preparing for any homily I start out by reading through all of the readings for that day. On Monday, when I read through the Scriptures (Advent 2: Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12), what stood out to me was the action and the language. The Old Testament reading with it’s images of lions, lambs, wolves and bears struck me with all its strange images of animals acting contrary to their natures. In the Gospel reading I was struck by its almost apocalyptic language - firey baptisms and the Messiah waving his winnowing fork and clearing things out and all that unquenchable fire. Scary stuff!
Tuesday I read the lessons again and nothing came. Wednesday, same thing.
But at lunch on Thursday I was sitting at the Dockside Restaurant downtown, and somewhere between a drinking some coffee and a having couple spoonfuls of soup, it occurred to me that anytime when dealing with Scripture it’s easy to get hung up on the language. And it’s really easy this time of year to get hung up on the action. The stories themselves get almost get in the way of our understanding.
We’re now on a countdown to Christmas, after which we sort of even out and end up at Lent. Then we start another countdown to Easter and, then, Pentecost. We gauge our progress towards these events by the action, the plot - where we are in the story. And we camp out in these stories because we like them so much. We associate many childhood memories with them. They give us emotional, warm fuzzies inside.
Sitting there in the restaurant, what Sophie (our affectionate term for the Holy Spirit) said to me was, “You have got to get past the stories, past the action. You've got to get past the what, where, and the when and get to the WHO because that where you are going to find what I have to tell you.”
Today’s Gospel starts, “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea…” The Gospel of Mark is similar. Luke gives a little more detail. He records Zechariah’s prophecy about John, that he would have “the spirit and power of Elijah,” meaning John would be a prophet like Elijah. And he goes on to say of John, “The child grew up strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly in Israel.” That means he spent thirty years there before he preached his message of repentance and baptism. John's Gospel reports another detail. Those Jewish leaders who went out to where he was baptizing even asked him if he was the prophet Elijah come back. He told them, “I am the voice of one crying the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord.”
And what about this Elijah, the predecessor of John? God sent him to the wadi Cherith and there was a terrible drought, and then God sent him to Zaraphath and the drought was there, too. Three years of drought. I got online and looked up Cherith because I wanted to know where it was on the map and got a search result for a video. On the video a young man was reading Bible passages about the Prophet Elijah on location from Cherith. He was standing there holding his Bible and behind him was the most dry and desolate desert I think I have ever seen, and that was Cherith.
Our New Testament reading today was written by the Apostle Paul. What about him? We all know the story of his conversion on the road to Damascus, but we have to go clear to his letter to the church at Galatia (Galatians 1:17-18) to find out what happened after that. He says, “I went away at once into Arabia" (i.e., the desert). At some point he returned to Damascus. Then he says it was three years before he went up to Jerusalem where he had his historic meeting with Peter. Many scholars think and some traditions have it that Paul spent those three years in the desert receiving instruction from the Lord.
The desert. This going into the desert seems to be the thing that ties all these characters in our readings together today. The common denominator. And need I point out the obvious example? Even Jesus, just as soon as he was baptized by John, went into the desert.
What is it about the desert?
I continued thinking about this as I was finishing my lunch. Just as I was deciding to let it go and think about it later, it came to me. Sophie said, “There it is! This is what I want you to know. To get to the heart of Advent. To get the most out of this season you have got to be like these guys you've been reading about. They really wanted to know and to see God. They wanted to know what he wanted for them and they wanted to serve him. They wanted to be filled with his Presence. They desired and got this intimate friendship with God that brings understanding. And to do it they had to go where where it was necessary to get it. And so do you.”
This is the insight I received, and it’s my job to give it to you. So, here goes.
Now, about the desert. I am not advocating that to know God you have to go to some literal desert. You do not need to go home today and announce to your family that you won't be spending the holiday with them because you've bought yourself a ticket to Death Valley. Or the Gobi. Or the Kalahari. But I am here to tell you that if you want what those apostles and prophets who went to the desert wanted and got, an intimate relationship with God; or if you want, at the very least, to be able to understand these stories we’re so fond of this time of year and to be able to hear what God wants you to get out out of them, (and God must want us to get something out of them because our New Testament reading today says that everything in Scripture was written for our instruction), then we have got to go there, too.
We have got to go to a place where the layers that we are wrapped up in are pealed away – our materialism, our holiday greed and overconsumption, our self-centeredness, our hate, malice, frustration and angst. All the masks we wear. All the body armor. You know, the attitudes we project to show the world how good we’re doing when maybe we’re not, and all this emotional baggage we carry around all the time. And especially at this time of year, we carry it around even more. I'm sure we all have at least one family member who melts down during the holidays because they have issues. I'm not sure if we are carrying around more baggage at this time of year or if we are carrying all the really sensitive stuff on top like an overcoat. But to get past all this stuff that burdens us and prevents us from seeing clearly and have a meaningful Advent and Christmas, we have got to retreat to a place where we can no longer hide behind or be buried under these things. We are not going to see clearly until we get all the stuff off us, and see ourselves clearly. It’s like not being able to see the forest for the trees. There’s just too much stuff. And once stuff is cleared away there’s always a better view. And when we have a better view we have better understanding and we can get the most from this Advent or any season. We have to go to our own desert. Not the literal one, the interior one. That’s why we hear that Advent is a reflective season…It's because we turn inward. We turn inward to get to the heart of matters.
I had a conversation with Fr. Gary the other day in which he pointed out to me that Anglican teachings on Advent often include the first and second comings of Christ, whereas in his Lutheran tradition, the take is a little different in that they often include a third coming, Christ in the Eucharist. But today, I’m thinking there is a fourth coming. That’s almost a pun. "Advent - Forthcoming."
“Christ is formed in your HEARTS by faith”. We all know this verse but, most of the time we hear it read with the emphasis on the word "faith." For today, we are going to place the emphasis on the word "hearts" because that is where Christ is to be found. In this deep interior place in your being, your heart of hearts - what the desert mothers and fathers of the first centuries of the Church knew. They went to the literal desert to get themselves to a place where they would not be distracted so they could get to their interior deserts.
At times it is not pretty there, in our hearts - our interior deserts - because that’s where we hold all of our secret thoughts and unrealized dreams. Our fears and insecurities. Our disappointments and feelings of worthlessness and rejection. But we have got to go there because that’s where Christ is - in our hearts. That place where God has placed that deposit of his life substance within us, the Holy Spirit, so that we never have to be alone or filled with fear or feelings of worthlessness again. It's one of those spiritual paradoxes - the place where we are hiding away all of this unsightly, personal baggage that gets in the way of our understanding is right where God pitches his tent and decides to live with us.
These prophets and apostles we’ve just been talking about – John, Elijah, Paul - God may have illustrated his point by having them go to literal deserts and have the scripture writers tell about it, so we could be instructed by it. They went there physically, but you can bet they also went to that interior desert – that place deep inside themselves where they communed with God, learned from him and gained understanding because they came out changed men.
This interior desert, this desert of the heart, calls each of us. Elijah went there and he was changed. John the Baptist grew up there and look what was he to do and be for God. And Paul. He did a complete turn around. He went from being the premier persecutor of Christians to the premier Christian himself, with such an understanding of the things of God that his writings make up most of the New Testament and he teachings continue to instruct men more than two thousand years later. Can't get much more change than that.
I, too, go to the desert. And I sure can testify that my desert is not pretty at times. But I can say, with a certainty, that it has changed me. Is changing me from day to day, for the better, the more time I spend there. This Advent, this reflective season, I promise you, if you go there, to your interior desert and meet the One who dwells there, the One who promises to be with you and give you understanding, it will change you too. Amen.
(Preached at Christ Episcopal Church, St. Helens, Oregon, December 5, 2010)
