Do you remember the story of Adam and Eve? Do you remember
the story of Moses and the Israelites passing through the Red Sea to freedom?
Do you remember hearing the story of the Babylonian exile and how Cyrus freed
God’s people to return to Judea and Jerusalem to rebuild the temple? Do you
remember the day that Jesus was baptized and how God spoke as Jesus was coming
up out of the water? And, do you remember the story of the crucifixion and how
the tomb was empty on that first, early Easter morning?
Today I am here to tell you that each of these major faith events
was followed by a wilderness experience. The same wilderness that we find John
in today.
Last week I told you that Advent was all about time. Well,
the time that we are going to be looking at today is wilderness time.
Wilderness time in the Bible is really important time. It is the time when
God’s people learn more about their relationship with God. It is the time God’s
people learn to rely on God and the community God gives rather than relying on
ourselves alone. It is an already-but-not-yet
time of being released from the old life condition or situation but not
knowing the reality of the new world we are living in.
Adam and Eve, when
they leave the garden, are dressed for success by God with leather clothing and
then sent out to learn about their new relationship with God and one another.
After passing through the Red Sea, Moses and the Israelites need to learn how
to be God’s people in the world and how to live with one another. (I must admit
that they were slow learners because it took them forty years to cover what should
have taken forty days. Today it takes about eight hours in a car with lots of
stops.)
After the Babylonian exile, we first hear the words of God’s
highway in the desert, “A voice cries out in the wilderness. Prepare the way of
the Lord.” From the Babylonian exile, God’s people come home changed, with
another new relationship with God and God’s people.
And when Jesus was
Baptized, the heavens opened and the division between God and God’s people was
forever changed. Even Jesus went into the wilderness to learn about his
relationship with the Father, as the Son of God, and with God’s people, as the
Son of Man.
Yes, and just before the Baptism of Jesus, John comes to us
in that already-but-not-yet wilderness
time. I am sure that you will be surprised to know that theology has a word for
this kind of time. The word is proleptic
time. In this proleptic time, John comes to us in the wilderness saying, “The
kingdom of heaven HAS come near.” This is not some theoretical possibility that
John is speaking of, it is already a fact. The kingdom is so near that in the
verses that follow our reading today, Jesus comes to be baptized.
What is this Baptism of Repentance that John is talking
about? Repentance literally means to
“re-think” or more appropriately, “wrap your mind around this instead of what
you have been thinking.” It is a mindful life-changing way of doing things that
allows reconciliation to be a reality.
So, in this wilderness time, John is challenging people to
change the way that they think about God and their relationships with one
another. John is asking them to put their old ideas of what it means to be
God’s people aside for something new that is coming.
One of the sins that John is addressing, the reason he calls
the Pharisees and Sadducees a “brood of vipers”, is that they believe they are
more worthy to call themselves God’s elect by claiming Abraham as their
ancestor.
Another sin is the people do not take seriously the laws God
gave the Israelites in their earlier wilderness time to care for the widow, the
orphan, the stranger, the poor, the blind, the lame, the deaf, and the maimed.
And, since we too seem to have so much trouble learning how
to do that, we need to think about a world where God comes to be among us to
teach and lead us into these new ways of living. In our wilderness time today,
we are challenged to wrap our minds around a way of living which recognizes and
names the issues of injustice in the world and of oppressive or abusive
behavior we participate in in our daily lives. Then, regretting those destructive
behaviors, we listen again to God’s desire for us to live in harmony and
re-orient our lives so that our relationship with God and the community around
us can go forward in a new direction.
Does this mean that we will be able to be reconciled with
everyone? No! Jesus was never able to be, or even willing to be. reconciled
with the power of the Roman Empire, but he made it possible for us to be
reconciled with the true ruler of our world, this is Godself.
The reason that Jesus could not be reconciled with the Roman
empire is that reconciliation is something that has to happen with all of the
parties involved. If all parties are not willing to recognize the problem, or
regret the outcome of previous conditions, then being able to reorient our ways
of living together are not possible. Since the Roman Empire and the temple
authorities were not able to recognize Jesus as God’s anointed, no regret was
possible, and therefore re-orienting reconciliation could not take place.
Do not despair! We are reminded that the tree of life in our
old ways has been cut down before. The temple has been destroyed, and the
people of Jerusalem have been taken away as slaves to foreign lands, but, from
the stump of that faith tree, a shoot of faith can grow. In this new growth of
the stem there is hope, promise and joy.
Indeed, John tells us that the one who is coming, that is
Jesus, will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. With this image, we foresee
the Pentecost event. We recognize the fire as the purifying fire of the
refinery, the fire that sterilizes and makes safe and good. Indeed, the
winnowing fork is in his hand that will separate us from our sins and bring us
into the granary, the Eden place where God’s relationship with us is made right
again and our sins will be cremated and accounted to us no more.
In this wilderness time of Advent, we are called to bear the
fruit of the tree from which we have gained new life, that is the cross. We are
called to be the new shoot of faith growing up from the stump of old ways. We
are called, in the darkness of our world, to be the welcoming light to those
who are traveling in the dark.
And so, with the empty tomb, we recognize that God’s kingdom
is not only near, but among us, and that we are living in that wilderness time
of the already-but-not-yet, the
wilderness time before our entry into the Promised Fullness of God’s Kingdom.
We enter that world as the seeds of wheat not as the sheaves that have been
harvested. We enter the world as the
harvest that is yet to be planted to be the new way of living with God and one
another.
So may the God of hope fill you with joy and peace in Christ
Jesus, that we will always know hope in our wilderness time together.
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