“A Way in the Wilderness”
Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8
The Rev. Dr. Seth E. Weeldreyer, First Presbyterian Church of Kalamazoo
December 10, 2023 – Second Sunday of Advent
We set off into the wilderness to prepare for Christmas. Wilderness … well, a cut-your-own tree farm. We’d measured space at home and brought the tape with us. Sometimes, friends, we need a way to reality-check our inflated imagination or skewed estimations when out in the world. Trees can look smaller in the field, then bulge into the living room, bend against the ceiling. We did okay this year—nice shape, a bit of unique character, enough branches and gaps for ornaments we’ve spent time culling. And about perfect for the lights we had. As soon as the trunk gets in the stand and wired to the wall, we do a plug-in test. This year, two half strands of bulbs stayed dark. As I strung I calculated how to pile or drape them in the back. Finished effort? Beautiful expression of the season, cozy comfort with soft music and a crackling fire. The next day or maybe even later that night, the corner of our eye caught a flicker on very slow delay. Another half strand going on and off, on and off. I haven’t had energy or sufficient annoyance to fix the problem. And as I sat in peaceful quiet at home this week, I decided maybe it is good expression for the Advent season.
Amid all our downtown commercial cheer and church decorations, it reminds us that not all in our world and personal lives is perfect bright lights and beautiful displays. I want the tree, like life, perfectly balanced shimmering with graceful illumination. Still, often darker places remain in our hearts and lives together. For all the packages filling beneath our trees and parties filling our calendars, Advent in church recalls the gaps in God’s glory among us. Advent calls us to leave room, to make space, to open ourselves ready for Holy Love in Christ to come among and within us.
That’s what Isaiah tries to encourage among people he loves. He’s not writing about Jesus particularly, though early Christians like Mark found his vision helped make sense of what they felt and knew in Jesus. In the reality of captive exile Isaiah and his people face life might feel more like nearly all the strands of lights on the tree won’t illuminate – just a half strand or two, a few bulbs here or there actually shine. How can he kindle hope, joy, peace, purpose imagined into their fears, frustrations, and sadness. You see, friends, wilderness places in the Bible are real vast desert geographical horizons of rock and sand, and they’re hard, barren, rocky emotional expanses inside us, relational between us. Whenever, wherever life can seem a bit of a wasteland. In the wilderness, Isaiah cries out … in the wilderness, not along lush riverbanks or picturesque coastlines … in the wilderness prepare the way for God to among us.
A voice says cry out, but what shall I proclaim, Isaiah yearns. An easy prosperity gospel promise: say special code words someone deemed faith, assent to some ideas, controlled constructs and blissfully, it’s all good? If in a moment that provides needed comfort and courage, thanks be to God. It’s true all we ever really have is the moment. But in depths of honest reality it’s often more deceptive than helpful with dementia or other diagnoses, layered years of loneliness, repression, shame and addictive temptation, visions of fire, cratered rubble, lifeless children and traumatized innocents in Gaza and Israel, smells of rough life that come in among friends on Wednesday night—not quite evergreen candle, and after our hugs a hint of scents that leave with us as well. What shall we cry? Isaiah aches as he asks. All people are grass—our mortal frail lives are like flowers of a field withering, in storms or fading simply as seasons naturally turn. Let’s strip away any illusions and get real, Isaiah says. We may not last, but the Word of God, the presence and power of Holy Love arising within us, flowing through us, radiating and enduring so far beyond us … this steadfast sacred You-Are-Loved promise endures from the beginning of all time to all generations.
Comfort, comfort my people, says the Holy One. Warm flannel pajamas, fuzzy slippers, and cozy firelight with a cup of hot chocolate is nice. Maybe we’ll sense it tonight in our beloved Christmas Chocolate and Vespers service. For Isaiah, comfort in the wilderness means much more. Divine comfort begins when we share a cup and a treat and complain and rage and cry with a friend and know deeper than all words said and all that can’t be expressed … know that we are not alone. Divine comfort trusts that as we toil up mountain-highs and slide down valley-lows of wilderness pressures or depression, it will all be leveled in the loving solidarity we share. Divine comfort abounds in rough zones of violent threat made soft gardens of delight as all people see it and know it together. You see, friends, holy lament is often the first step on our journey into the wholeness God desires for us. Better than idle crotchety negativity to which we can all succumb, it’s recognition, acceptance, naming what’s wrong with loving intention to be part of making it right. Because you see, Isaiah’s voice in the wilderness moves from comfort to the “Go Tell It on the Mountain” tidings that God is with us. And so, in and beyond moments of compassion and consolation, God moves us to commitment to make it all different. Maybe amid realities of our struggles the mind or body will never recover. Still, we’ll glean enough strength to hear the story and tell the detail again; to remain determined to cherish whatever our hands and feet can accomplish. Maybe powers in government halls and business board rooms will remain tainted by insensitivity and selfishness; as ceasefires still get vetoed. Still, we’ll glean inspiration to forge kinship, to seek fairness and justice, to make choices about how we shop and speak and vote all to create an environment for peace to flourish, where lifelessness turns to resurrection for all people and creation.
God brings abundant life in peace in wilderness places. We celebrate this Advent / Christmas promise. We cherish it and, eventually in our way, go share with others. First, we must receive it whole-heartedly. We prepare God’s way inside ourselves. Better than a wizard’s yellow-brick road, we live faith guided by what I imagine as an LED radiant compass of love and yearning to serve fully alive. Friends, we set off into the wilderness to prepare for Christmas. Truth is, we’re always imagining and measuring space for God’s peace in our homes, work and social places, beginning with all our frustrations, fears, joys, and desires we feel. As we go into the world far beyond a tree farm, we need a way to reality-check our inflated egos and skewed estimations of others. That’s who John is. Mark begins the good news of God’s love in Christ, inviting us to go out and join him in the wilderness.
I wonder what wilderness places we enter this advent season to truly make our way to the birth of Christ among us and Holy Love within us—new life we believe God desires for us. Wilderness … how do we feel exiled from God, like Israelites in Babylon? How do we feel oppressed by some kind of power in this world like Jews under Roman occupation? Ultimately, inspired clarity in the wilderness comes through centered simplicity. In a moment we’ll hear more about the goodness of simplicity, a quiet life. First, friends, we know sometimes we’re in a deserted wilderness we don’t desire or choose—alone, abilities limited, maybe moved to a new place at Christmas, far from our beloved no way to get home … in some life all too quiet. Sometimes we can’t even fathom what desired quiet simplicity could look like, blessed or burdened as we are by responsibilities, beloved family. However it comes, often God calls us to go into our wilderness places with holy intention. Singing, praying: Watchman, tell us signs of promise in our night … with other travelers may we find blessedness, peace, light, truth that as we hasten on our way home, Emmanuel will come.
Last spring, we went on pilgrim journey into the New Mexico desert wilderness, centering time together with Belden Lane seeking the Solace of Fierce Landscapes. Such wilderness places around us, he writes, mirror any brokenness within us; and thereby begin to heal us; as we move into the emptiness, the wild hard terrain of our deepest fears. In wilderness places we learn to lower expectations, increasingly content with less and less, giving up lofty often unrealistic or deceptive ambitions. We discover the importance and comfort of embracing holy indifference, learning to delight in nothing so much as simplicity.[i] Friends, I expect that what Lane encourages, as John and Jesus lived, may seem so opposite our ordinary lives. Opposite much of the cultural messaging we hear, pressures we feel. Maybe conflicting with good desires for life together with family and friends as we’ve been taught to imagine and pursue it. Fill our homes and hands with new tech gadgets that promise improvement. Fill our kids’ lives with activities. Fill our minds with wants and entitlements. Fill our bigger closets and barns with more stuff.
Now, I hope I’m not just being an old anti-fun fuddy-duddy curmudgeon. My Christmas list included tech ideas, if they actually make life more efficient not more complicated and frustrating. In the spirit of comfort, good socks are always a great gift!
I have been nurtured in recent weeks by going with my dog to simple, rustic cabins near monasteries where I read and hiked and worshipped. Still, I get that maybe the best some of us can hope for is a few moments in the middle or book-ending crazy days on the go. However we can get it—begin and grow in it—that’s the peace, solace (Isaiah might say comfort) faithful people have sought for centuries across all generations. It resonates with a more mystical side I believe we all have, often overcome by the practical.
Belden Lane urges: Solace lies, at the still point of emptiness—beyond hope, beyond proof, beyond consolation … releasing little by little the anxious thoughts of the distracted ego, the false self and surface biases or impressions of others … opening to radically different people on the clean, level ground of an unspoken humanity. No longer driven by short-lived feelings, we doggedly work for God’s way of love without thought of reward. We wait to see what Holy Light comes in our dark uncertain nights of the soul, content simply to be with God alone. Prayer becomes less a matter of specific petition than of relationship. Moving beyond the objectifying of one’s self, one’s neighbor, even one’s God, the wilderness traveler arrives at a lonely desert place where love is now possible because it finally is wholly free. If the danger and release is sufficient, we come to the end of ourselves alone, to the only place where God is met. Beyond language, beyond human control, beyond all that is safe … Wilderness simply occasions the vulnerability necessary for trust.[ii]
I imagine Isaiah’s people would have traveled under the same starry sky by which shepherds and wisemen found their way to Jesus. Maybe the very same hills and valleys and desert patches. Come with John and Jesus into the wilderness and repent, Mark invites us. Repent doesn’t mean say how bad we are set on incessant repeat. Repent = metanoia, change, rethink / reorient … go a different way toward the fullness of peace God wants. Call to change begins with ourselves, receiving good news shared by others.
Here are a couple of recent examples.
Gary and Pam – Gary in hospital …. Pam sent text giving thanks for all the supportive connections, cards, prayers
You may know we’ve put up Billboards around town for this season. One member shared this week that she and her spouse were gong to a doctor’s appointment. He was hesitant to go in … then he saw the billboard: You Are Loved! It was a sign, he said and she glowed … and he went in.
Friends, I want life, like a decorated evergreen, perfectly balanced shimmering with graceful illumination. Still, not all in our world and personal lives is perfect bright lights and beautiful displays. Often darker places remain in our hearts and lives together. I want the horrific violence to cease in Gaza and so many other countries and street-corners in our own not atop headline news. I want all children to have safe homes, enough food, warm winter clothes, loving encouragement to grow into curiosities and unique personalities. I want all people trapped in a wilderness of circumstance or choice / consequence to find a way toward true abundance of peace and flourishing God desires. I want the course of events in the world to turn around, change, go a different way. And I recall Palestinian Christian peacemakers: don’t bother coming over here to try to make peace until you make peace and practice it in your own back yard. And I know that to address poverty, reconciliation, advocacy, business policies, charitable generosity … start with our biases and hubris, lest we make it worse.
Friends, we’ll get to Go Tell It on the Mountain. To sing the carols, decorate the garland and trees, lighting candles and illuminating the darkness … all that the season means in whatever way we celebrate. We’ll get to seeking the peace of Christ in the world as God intends us to share. First today and in this season of Advent when all the world is already celebrating Christmas, take time in some way to enter the wilderness with trust in Holy Love. To center in the grace of humility, gratitude, simplicity.
Maybe when Christmas comes a slow-blinking flickering strand of lights will stay lit without a wink.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 216, 227.
[ii] Ibid, 216, 227-228.