"Meeting John in the Desert"

First Presbyterian Church
December 10, 2006
Peter S. Buehler
Luke 3:1-6

"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"

If you've seen an organization chart of a company or agency -- a diagram of who's in charge, how authority is delegated, who reports to whom -- then you "get" first  two verses of our scripture. They are an org chart of the Roman Empire.

At the top is Tiberius Caesar, a figure so important that time was reckoned from the beginning of his reign -- his fifteenth year is where our story starts, or the years A.D. 28-29 on our calendar. And lest we forget, Tiberius's empire was vast. Its boundaries were the Atlantic Ocean on the west, Britain to the north, all land south of the Rhine and Danube Rivers, all land west of the Euphrates River -- modern Turkey, Iraq, and Syria -- and all land north of Arabian and Sahara Deserts. The population figure accepted by scholars today for the Roman Empire of biblical times is 54,000,000, including as many as 5,000,000 Jewish residents. The city of Rome alone had a population of one million. The scope of the breadth and power of this Empire was huge; Tiberius was its god.

In order to maintain control over its far-flung territories, Tiberius needed a bureaucracy staffed by imperial officers, like Pontius Pilate, governor of the province of Judea. Beneath him on the Empire's org chart were the rulers of the patchwork quilt of local kingdoms, like Herod Antipas in Galilee and Philip, his brother, in the areas to the north and east of the Sea of Galilee.

Under them on the chart for the region of Judea were two Jewish religious officials, the high priests, first Annas, then Caiaphas his successor. though the two are often mentioned together in the New Testament. There was no church and state separation in ancient Rome, so Pilate needed the high priests to keep the peace, suppress dissent, and collect the taxes.

The first seven names in our passage, then, read like a Who's Who of the New Testament world. Top to bottom on the chart, every citizen in Judea knew the names listed by Luke; they were the rulers, they symbolized imperial power, their authority was unquestioned.

What follows therefore is an astonishing statement. In the fifteenth year of the Emperor, says Luke, when these governors and kings and high priests ruled the land, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. Say what? God's word came to who? God's word came where? Did we skip 53 million steps on the org chart? If God were going to change the world, shouldn't the story start in a city -- a capital, a center of government and commerce? And shouldn't someone in the line of power lead the charge -- a descendant of Caesar's -- not some low-level temple assistant's son?

What's with God?

I wonder if we don't ask that question too. Because God's ways are so different from what we expect. We look back over our lives -- past years, past decades, past months -- and could not ever have predicted how things have turned out.

We could not have predicted the challenges we've faced! Comedian Flip Wilson said, "If I had my whole life to live over again, I don't think I'd have the strength." We understand what he's saying.

Yet God's geography, like God's timing, is right. So often it has been in the desert places of our lives that we have found our strength, and have heard God's voice. It is no surprise that the wilderness is our meeting place with John, that our story begins here.

Even now, in the midst of all our Christmas preparations, with so much on our minds, John bids us to come out and meet him, and hear him say: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'

No one else says this to us. No one in power, no one above us on the org chart -- only the Baptist. God is coming, he says -- not God exists, or God is always with us, or God is within us, or any other theological statement we are apt to make. God is coming! This demands something of us. We must do some things to get ready. No matter if we have believed for a week, or a year, or a lifetime, we have work to do.

Two things: repentance and forgiveness are asked of us. God is coming, but to meet him we need to do some work, some preparation. Beginning with repentance. Honest reflection on our lives.

I hope this week we make time for some quiet reflection. Time when we turn other things off. Time to turn to God in silence, even to ask the question What do I need to repent of? Sometimes it's not obvious.
Not that we're so vain, or clueless about our shortcomings, it's just that often we're busy and preoccupied that we don't let God's truth go deep. If we're impatient, we're also impenitent; we don't take the time we need to hear God's still, small voice.

When I am pressed for time I literally don't see, hear, taste, or smell; it's as though my senses shut down. Birds can be singing the most magnificent solos, the fragrance of Christmas greens may be in the air; overhead huge clouds alternate with blue sky, the advent of rain and the earth's refreshment -- but if I'm preoccupied I'm in a vacuum of distraction.

Repentance is getting out of our own way; repentance is opening a window; repentance is letting ourselves live! Blessing God with a simple awareness, allowing ourselves to be in this wonderful world, to enjoy it and not be in a rush to get through it.

And to be fully aware of our need for our neighbors, all of them.
Professor Robert Franklin of Candler School of Theology at Emory University calls our attention to Martin Luther King, Jr. -- a John the Baptist of our modern times, if ever there was one. It was Dr. King who reminded us that we are all interdependent. "Whether we realize it or not," he writes, "each of us lives eternally 'in the red.' We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women. When we arise in the morning, we reach for a sponge that is provided for us by a Pacific Islander. We reach for soap that is created for us by a European. Then at the table we drink coffee that is provided for us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese or cocoa by a West African.
Before we leave for our jobs we are already beholden to more than half the world. All life is interrelated." (Quoted in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Spring 2006, excerpted by Martin Marty in Context, November 2006)

In Advent, the Baptist would have us prepare the way of the Lord by repenting -- by slowing down, by opening our eyes, and our ears, and our spirits to the interrelatedness of life on our planet.

It was during a recent worship service -- it happened to be our Interfaith Thanksgiving service -- I realized that part of my robe was coming off; the entire front part was coming loose; I was literally falling apart. Which bothered me, because the robe was still new.
With only a few days to spare, I hustled it down to our dry cleaner for a repair. Their English is limited there, but I was assured it would be ready by Saturday. I wondered what it would cost to fix; I didn't want to know, so I didn't ask. A few days later Kati picked it up for me; it was ready just as promised. She said "You're not going to believe what they charged." I sat down; I prepared myself for Bad News.
"$12. They said they just like taking care of their customers," she reported. And I was instantly reminded not only how much I depend on other people, particularly people like the gentle souls at my dry cleaner's, but also of how an unexpected kindness can change my thinking entirely. How such Advent moments, God's gracious coming to my world of assumptions, never ceases to cheer and surprise.

I wonder if true repentance doesn't happen in small ways, with small changes in thinking and doing. Not about-faces, dramatic scenes of being struck by lightning. Someone this week was telling me how he just feels more alive than he has in years. He knows it's from God. Just a quiet awareness, no lightning bolts. A course correction in his life, not a 180-degree turn.

I wonder if what John the Baptist asks of us in our desert moments is such a course correction, a shift in direction. More time for prayer in the morning or evening; more gratitude felt, acknowledged, and expressed to the people who help us; a greater measure of devotion to the God who comes, a greater willingness to be disciples of Jesus Christ in our Mondays to Fridays.
And in Advent, forgiveness. Forgiveness is the Baptist's invitation to us to be truly ready for God.

This work of preparation is work indeed -- yet forgiveness, like any beautiful thing, is lasting, and life-changing, and always worth the trouble. Sometimes it's as simple and as difficult as letting go.
What do we need to let go of? What do we cling to that is keeping our hands and our hearts closed?

Is forgiveness even possible, we wonder or is it only something we vainly try? Bonnita Spikes of Baltimore, MD, experienced a grief-driven desire for revenge when the hospital's curtain was pulled back to reveal her husband's dead body with a bullet wound to the chest.
He was an innocent bystander in a 1994 convenience store shooting in New York City. The killers were never found. It took time, but Mrs. Spikes eventually realized that until she "let go and let God" she was only prolonging her own pain. Since then, she has worked with Open Society Institute-Baltimore, spending time with people on death row and their families, and with victims and their families. It is the work she wants to do; the good she is doing began with the forgiveness she chose for herself. (Reported in the Baltimore Sun, November 7, 2006, and quoted in Christian Century, November 28)

What do we need to let go of? Whom do we need to forgive? For what do we need forgiveness, and of whom do we need to ask it?
Is this the preparation asked of us this Advent? Are we willing to separate ourselves from the many voices of this season for a brief time in order to go out to the desert to meet the Baptist and listen to his voice? In the midst of other preparations, can we allow ourselves this time of pilgrimage, this time of letting go and letting God?

Advent is sacred time. In no other season of the year is the past, the present, and the future so close together in our hearts.

I'd like to invite you to consider representing this in some way where you live. When you are decorating your home or apartment, find the very oldest ornament you have, whatever it is -- a decoration for the tree, a character in a crèche, even some old object in your house unrelated to Christmas -- and set it next to a gift you've been given which you've not yet opened. Let the past and the future be next to each other in this way. Let these two objects represent for you how God holds both your past and your future in his hands -- and therefore how you are ready to say Yes to God today, Yes to God's rule in your life, Yes to whatever it means for you to be faithful in this season of your life.

The Lord be with us in these days, and in every unexpected moment when we happen to hear the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'

When we hear this voice, we will know what to do.