Daily Readings: Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
While Jesus was living in the Galilean hills, John, called “the Baptizer,” was preaching in the desert country of Judea. HIs message was simple and austere, like his desert surroundings: “Change your life. God’s kingdom is here.” Mt. 3:1-2, The Message
The popular notion is that John came into Jerusalem wearing the classic sandwich board, “Repent!” We imagine that the Baptist stood on the streets of Jerusalem in front of Herod’s fabulous Temple, across from the Jerusalem Museum of Fine Art and the First Judea Bank building with a bullhorn, shouting, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. . . . You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
But it didn’t happen that way at all. It’s much more fascinating. Matthew is quite clear. “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea.” That’s where he was proclaiming, “Repent.” So, was he a “voice in the wilderness,” as we say—a lonely coot preaching to the wind and the sand and the bitter rocks? Hardly. “Then,” Matthew says, “the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.”
The topography of this spiritual encounter is hardly a chance feature of Matthew’s story. Notice the symbolic movement: You have to move out of the city . . . cross a river . . . and enter a desert. And there you will meet a very strange man who will offer to plunge you into the water in an act of purgation, cleansing yourself for your encounter with God.
The call of John reminds me of those early Desert Fathers in Egypt, the first Christian ascetics who went out into the desert. They weren’t just leaving the city and its culture; they were leaving the church. By the time Anthony the Great moved into the desert in 270, the church was already not-enough. Nothing wrong with it, just not-enough. Just gradually getting institutionalized. Again, nothing wrong, but in spiritual development terms, the church was mostly about first-half-of-life issues. Building a moral foundation, rehearsing right from wrong, learning impulse control, making and keeping basic commitments, being a stand-up man, a dutiful woman.
But when that program crashes, as it always does on the rocks of the middle voyage, we’re ready to hear John. And that is what people like Anthony the Great did. They listened to his call and literally went out into the desert. And, just as the crowds followed John into the wilderness, so ordinary Christians in the third century went streaming out into the wild to sit and pray with Anthony, with Paul of Thebes, and eventually with the Desert Mothers—or ammas—like Sincletica of Alexandria and Sarah of the Desert.
Many people have suggested that we are on the cusp of a new monastic movement, that the weakness of the contemporary church is pushing people out onto the margins—sometimes literally into the wild—to find that something more. Advent is a perfect moment for each of us to hear John’s call and find some wild place where we can encounter the fullness of God.
Offered by David Anderson, in whom God delights.