Margie Quinn
It has been four hundred years since God has spoken to God’s people; four centuries of silence in which no one has heard from God. Right after Malachi gives us a proclamation that there will be a prophet to come, we hear nothing from our Creator.
A lot happens in those four hundred years. There is destruction, war, devastation, exile, and deep suffering. When the Israelites hope to hear from an angel, a prophet, heck we will even take a burning bush again, they don’t hear from anyone.
And then in this passage, for the first time in four hundred years, we hear from God. Here’s how it goes down: In the fifteenth year of the reign of a really important Emperor, when this really important guy was a Governor and a really important guy was a Ruler (and his brother was also a Ruler and his friend was a Ruler, and there were a couple of high priests who had a lot of power)... in that time, the word of God came to…John. Did you catch that? We begin our passage with a political roll call of the ruling class, the people who hold the highest seats of power. And we quickly discover that the word of God came to…not him or him or him or him, but him. The him in this story is John the Baptist. Y’all remember John the Baptist? He’s this strangely dressed guy who feasts on a diet of locusts and honey, who would have definitely would have been bullied growing up for the way that he looked. We learn that, after this successive string of men, the word of God is coming to…him?
Yep. After four hundred years of silence, God decides to turn the world right-side-up again, and finds John. God doesn’t just find him anywhere. He’s not at the urban city center in this story. He’s not sitting in some office at his desk or in an executive chamber. He’s in the wilderness. He could not be further away from noise of Caesar’s world. We don’t know why he’s out there. Maybe he is running from something or running to something. All we know is that this is where God finds him that day: smack dab in the middle of a wasteland, perhaps prepared, perhaps not, to receive a word from a God that has been pretty dang quiet for four hundred years.
The first thing we learn about this word that God sends to John is that it so animates John, it so empowers and encourages him that the first thing he does once he receives the word is to go all around the region of the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Think about it: God’s word could have animated John to do a lot of different things in that moment. We could have learned that, “The word of God came to John, who ran straight into the city and ran for office, and had a position of power for the rest of his life.” But no, we learn here in Luke 3 that the word of God inspired John to preach repentance and forgiveness.
I want to break those words down. Repentance, metanoia, just means the changing of one’s mind, the reorienting of one’s heart, the transformation of one’s own agenda from that of Caesar to that of God. Repentance means to turn away from selfishness and shame, resentment and hatred, and to turn toward love, again and again. That is what the word of God did to John that day. It made him get up and start walking around and teaching people about metanoia, about reorienting our hearts.
When the word of God came to John, it made him want to talk about forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness: the Greek translation of “forgiveness” just means, “to let go.” Isn’t that beautiful? That the word of God when animated in John encouraged him to tell people that you can let go. You can let go of all of that hatred you feel toward that person that you don’t even know. You can let go of all of the shame you feel about yourself when you look in the mirror. You can let go of all of that pain and tension within your family and trust it to someone else. You can let go.
That is what this strangely-dressed, locust-eating guy is doing in the wilderness that day.
“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,” he continues. “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Prepare the way of the Lord. John could have done a lot of things to prepare for Jesus’ coming that, to me, would have made a lot more sense. In my own life, my preparation for this Advent season has looked like picking out the perfect tree, stringing lights in my house and sweeping for the first time in a while. It looks like anxiously and frantically making sure that my house looks welcoming and spirited to reflect the season. Those are the ways that I’ve prepared for the coming of Christ.
And this guy, who I’m sure if I saw him on the street today I’d look the other way, is preparing by walking around a region that is known as a place of great pain and great freedom and simply saying to people, “Someone is coming. I’m not him. I’m pointing to him. Someone is coming that is going to set you free and help you experience a kind of love you can’t imagine. That’s what’s coming, and I’m here to prepare you and myself for it.” All of this coming from a man in the middle of the wilderness.
If the word of God can meet John in the wilderness, maybe it can come to me, not when I feel like I’m on top of my life but when I feel the most vulnerable to it. And perhaps in being a vulnerable recipient, in throwing my hands up and laying myself bare, perhaps that’s when I could most clearly hear what a loving voice might have to say.
That loving voice could meet us when our hearts are broken. When we are in between jobs. When we can’t seem to heal that persistent injury. When we are timidly trying out a new medication. When we have lost someone we dearly love. When we feel out of place at school. When we can’t shake the depressive fog. When we are scared of what’s next. When we wish we were a lot skinnier, or a lot stronger. When we are waiting to hear back from that college. When we don’t feel close to God. When we go through the motions of our lives but don’t feel passion anymore. When we find ourselves in the middle of the wilderness.
The promise in this story is not necessarily the word itself, but who the word comes to and where the word comes. The word finds itself in a wasteland and picks a wild prophet who is stripped down and open to what is coming. God picks a man who is open to preparing a way, with a different kind of preparation than what the world at that time (or this time) is used to.
So, I don’t know how to prepare for Jesus this season. But if I look to John, if I look to the way that God came to speak to God’s people, it points me somewhere in the direction of openness, of throwing up my arms and saying, “Help.” In the places in my life that feel most wild, perhaps that’s where God wants to meet me most. So, I don’t want to run away from the wilderness. I don’t want to look at it as exile or devastation or that I’m missing some part of this greater faith thing. I think, like John, it could be exactly where we are supposed to be this Advent season. John invites us to prepare for Jesus in a different kind of way, a way where we are invited to change our hearts, our minds, and to let go.
May it be so.