Sermon on Sunday, December 5, 2010
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
Growing up, I was a scout. First a cub scout and then a boy scout, I spent a good seven or eight years learning how to tie double bowlines and tourniquets—how to set up a basic shelter and cook over an open fire. I enjoyed scouting. My brother and my friends were all in it with me, and we had fun on all those camping trips and weeks at scout camp.
Our scoutmaster was a man named Del LaGow. Mr. LaGow was a loving man who made ample space in his life for 30-some-odd pre-teen and teenage boys. He was always interested in teaching us how to cook Cornish game hens in a Dutch oven buried in a pit of coals or how to splint an injured leg with the contents of our tent bag. Through it all, certain things were ingrained in us, the scouts of Troop 31: Always bring a first aid kit and a tarp, keep your matches dry, and there is no such thing as too much rope. That all goes with the old scouting motto: “Be Prepared.” As boy scouts, we were certainly prepared, and to this day, I always pack rope, usually a few too many bungee cords, and at least one extra tarp. Mr. LaGow would be proud, I suppose.
A word that usually shouts out from Scripture during the Advent season is “prepare.” John the Baptist would have made a good boy scout, out in the wild, earning merit badges in sewing clothes with camel hair and living off the fat of the land—if you can call locusts and wild honey the “fat” of the land. But he was out there—living beyond civilization in the wilderness, surviving. And his message to anyone who would listen was, “Prepare! Prepare the way of the Lord! Make his paths straight!”
John the Baptist must have been an amazing presence—the kind of person you meet just once and then never ever forget—because he had crowds coming out in the wilderness to hear him and be baptized. John wasn’t doing miracles. We don’t know of any healings or turning water into wine. He wasn’t out in the wilderness multiplying fish and loaves or walking on water. He was just preaching the same sermon over and over again: Prepare the way of the Lord!
One of the reasons we know John the Baptist was popular was that the Pharisees and Sadducees themselves went out to see him. John must have been more than a blip on the radar screen—more than just some crazy prophet out in the wild eating bugs and preaching sermons—because these religious elites, even, ventured out there to see just what in God’s name he was doing. Did they feel threatened by John’s ministry? Were they out in the wilderness to keep an eye on him? Or were they, too, drawn to John’s charismatic personality?
In any case, the Pharisees and Sadducees serve as powerful reminders in the story of John the Baptist. They remind us that the announcement of Jesus’ ministry did not come from within the religious establishment. Jesus’ life was not a plan hatched and then signed off on by a committee of faith leaders. No one with any religious clout in Jesus’ day had a word to say about the scope and shape of his ministry.
If Jesus came today, we in the church might like to think that we could prepare a little reception for him—maybe a little meet-n-greet after church so that he could get to know people. Before he came, we’d probably make a couple lists: “What to do to get ready for Jesus’ coming” and then “What to do when Jesus gets here.” We’d like to think that we could invite him to preach during worship and then speak during our Sunday school class. We’d love to think that Jesus would linger near the church as long as we like, taking our questions and talking with us about God.
John the Baptist, however, reminds us vividly that Jesus’ ministry was not a church program. Jesus was not the brainchild of an institutionalized religion, sent to celebrate and reinforce the status quo. Rather, he was the child of a rambunctiously loving God, sent in part to turn religion on its head. So no, the announcement about Jesus’ coming did not appear in a Temple newsletter, and it was not in anyone’s Sunday morning bulletin. Knowledge of Jesus’ life did not begin with a select handful of pastor-types and then filter out into the congregations. It began with John the Baptist, out there in the wilderness, preaching to anyone who would listen.
Sometimes you have to be in the wilderness to get your message across, though, and truth be told, sometimes you have to be in the wilderness to hear what God is saying.
Mike was a man who went to church every Sunday, but it wasn’t until he went through the wilderness of cancer and chemotherapy that he learned to trust God through each moment and thank God for each breath.
Emily was a woman who’d grown up in church and Sunday school, but it wasn’t until she experienced the wilderness of a troubled marriage that she dug more deeply into her quest to find God’s direction for her life.
Jay and Helen met in a campus Christian fellowship and got married in the church, but it wasn’t until they trudged through the wilderness of a difficult pregnancy that they began to rely on God’s presence together.
Now let me be clear. I do not believe that God sets up “wilderness moments” in our lives. I do not believe that God shoves our lives into the wilderness—into cancer, into troubled marriages or into moments of anxiety and fear—so that we can become more able to hear God’s voice. But the trust is this: sometimes you and I, we find ourselves in the wilderness, don’t we? The wilderness of disappointment, the wilderness of loss, the wilderness of depression or sorrow, the wilderness of real financial trouble… Sometime’s life’s path takes us through the long, dark wilderness of slowly losing a parent or a spouse.
The loving gospel truth is that God will not leave us alone in the wilderness. And sometimes the wilderness is where we are more apt to listen for and receive news of Christ’s coming in our lives.
The invitation I would like to share with you this Advent season is for you to actually venture off into the wilderness. You can skip the part about eating locusts if you want, but you really should get out into the wild for a change.
Adam was a church-twice-a-month kind of guy. But then he started tutoring some middle school kids in a troubled school, and in the wilderness of those students’ lives he heard Christ calling him to new depths of faith and faithfulness.
Megan never really went to church at all—just never made the time. But in the wilderness of the local homeless shelter, she met men and women who trusted Jesus with each second of their lives, and she began to wonder…
Alex was a leader in the church—sang in the choir and served on the Session. But then his friends at work started getting laid off. Rather than avoid the awkward conversations, he kept calling, kept in touch. And guess what—in the wilderness of his friends’ struggles to find work and figure out what to do with themselves, Alex heard Christ’s voice in his own life, and began to wonder more fully if he was doing what he was called to do.
I suppose as a pastor I’d love the thought that the church is going to be the place where you can listen most attentively to God’s voice. And sometimes it is. But sometimes you’ve to get out into the wild, because it’s in the wilderness that you can most completely prepare for Christ’s coming in your own life.
Long before Fred Craddock was a well-known theologian and preacher in the church, he was a bright seminary student who was sometimes too smart for his own good. He’d written a paper on one of his heroes, a man by the name of Albert Schweizer. Schweizer was German doctor and a kind of “Mother Teresa” in his generation, as he’d spent much of his life serving the critically ill in Africa.
Fred Craddock earned an A+ on his Albert Schweizer paper, and considered himself something of an expert. About that same time Schweizer was coming to town to play a benefit concert (besides being a doctor, he was also an accomplished musician). So Craddock planted himself in the front row at that concert, hoping for a little Q and A afterwards, during which he would show of his brilliance.
The concert ended, but afterwards, Schweizer didn’t ask the audience, “Are there any questions?” Instead he simply said, “I thank you for your hospitality and your gracious reception of me, but I have to leave now to catch my plane back to my people in Africa. They are sick and hungry and dying. If any of you have in you the love of Jesus, come help me.”
Fred Craddock’s self-serving, smarty questions turned to ashes right then and there. And his life became pointed in a whole new direction. This was Fred Craddock’s invitation into the wilderness—the wilderness of sickness and struggle that so many human beings face—the wilderness that prepared him to make way for Christ in his own life and to be faithful.
Friends, I don’t think it’s any stretch of the imagination to say that there’s a wilderness out there waiting for you to come and prepare for Christ’s way in your own life. Somewhere out there, outside the city limits of your own comfort zone, God is calling you to listen and be faithful. May God grant you courage and strength for the journey there and the ministry that follows. Amen.
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