Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free
In her book Their eyes were watching God, Zora Neale Hurston tells the story of Janie and Teacake who find themselves in the midst of a great hurricane. Their shelter is shabby and unsafe in the howling wind and whipping rain. They fear for their lives and here Hurston expresses what many of us have experienced,
“The wind came back with triple fury and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others and their shanties, their eyes straining against the crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”[1]
Almost everyone has faced their time of storm where they do not know whether they will come out on the other side. It may be something that comes up quickly, catching you not only by surprise, but perhaps unprepared. This storm may come in the form of the sudden death of a loved one, the loss of a job, a friendship that suddenly ends, having something you prize unexpectedly taken away. Or it may come on slowly. You may see it coming, but despite your best efforts the wind howls and the water rises and you have no idea if you will make it through—like an illness that does not respond to a cure, a teacher or boss that no matter how hard you try just does not like your work or support you, the struggles of someone you love who, no matter how hard they try and no matter how much you seek to help, cannot seem to avoid suffering.
Storms rage in our world. Millions of weapons in the hands of angry, vindictive people continue to leave lives ended, families destroyed, and our leaders seemingly powerless. People from many of the world’s countries race against time in the effort to change our global energy policies to avert environmental catastrophe. Violence in many parts of the world continue to force millions of men, women, and children to flee their home and countries.
We find ourselves staring at the dark, but God comes to us in the very place where we feel most lost and vulnerable. In the darkness as well as in the light, God is there to walk with us— to guide us to a place of peace.
The word of God came to a man named John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. Not in a place of power or great wealth, but far away from the center point of civilization, to a place that was deserted, harsh, and survivable only by understanding the unpredictability and its isolation. But it was here, where God came to John and gave him the charge to be a messenger to lead the people to freedom. He was to prepare the way out of the wilderness for the people to come to the Lord.
For those of us who live in the Berkshires it is hard to imagine how desolate a place the desert is near Jerusalem. It is as barren as can be imagined. Nothing but miles and miles—as far as the eye can see and beyond—of blowing, formless sand. The heat can reach beyond 110 degrees. Without irrigation, the land turns quickly to desolation.
But it is here where God comes to build his highway—to make the paths straight, the valleys filled and the mountains brought low so that all shall see the salvation of God. Into the wilderness, God speaks to his prophet John to call all people to salvation.
Like Moses, like the prophetic voice in Isaiah 40, John challenges God’s people to see the wilderness as a place not of desolation, but of hope. God is calling them, like the Babylonian exiles, to leave their captors behind and head home through the wilderness. God is calling them, like the people of Israel in Egypt, to join an exodus out of slavery into God’s promised fresh start. John preaches that the first step on this journey toward freedom is a baptism of repentance.
John’s hearers were probably already familiar with two kinds of baptism: the baptism by which Gentile converts became Jews and so embarked on a whole new way of life; and the ritual washings that the Qumran community understood as cleansing them, but only if they turned from their sins and obeyed God. Both types called for changed behavior. John’s baptism of repentance does too. Repentance (Greek metanoia) is not mere regret for past misdeeds. It means far more than saying, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” Metanoia means a turning around, a change of mind and heart, a transformation of life that bears visible fruit. But John’s baptism was once and for all.
This baptism of repentance led to being set free—released– from sin. Release (Greek aphesis) is the same word that Jesus uses twice in Luke 4:18 to describe his mission: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me … to proclaim release to the captives and … to let the oppressed go free … ” The release or forgiveness that follows repentance does not undo past sins, but does unbind people from them. It opens the way for a life lived in God’s service. It opens the way for a new way of being. By proclaiming such release, John fulfills his father’s prophecy: “you, child, … will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness (aphesis) of their sins” (Luke 1:77).
Preparing the Lord’s path means opening ourselves to God’s entrance into our wilderness—into our times of sorrow and pain, into our times of being knocked off course by life’s changes and changes of this life and opening our hearts to the One whose mercy is sure.
Preparing the Lord’s path toward peace requires overturning the world as we know it. John quotes the prophet Isaiah to describe the earthshaking transformation that must take place. –valleys filled full, mountains and hills humbled (tapeinoo), everything crooked made straight and true.
Preparing for God’s arrival means rethinking systems and structures that we see as normal but that God condemns as oppressive and crooked. It means letting God humble everything that is proud and self-satisfied, and letting God heal and lift up what is broken and beaten down. The claims that the world’s authorities make often conflict with God’s claims. Paths that seem satisfactory to us are not good enough for God. John calls us to let God reshape the world’s social systems and the landscape of our own minds and hearts. God’s ways are not our ways.
But God’s ways lead to salvation. God’s glory will be revealed in Jesus, the judge who comes to save us. This is the good news that John proclaims, and it is good news not just for us, but for the whole world: all flesh will see God’s salvation.
No matter the storms that may rise in our life and in our world, the Word of God comes to us in our wilderness.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.[2]
God’s salvation looks like a new dawn for those trapped in darkness and death’s shadow. It is light that reveals a new path, the way toward peace (Luke 1:78–79).
John harkening back to an earlier prophecy of Isaiah offers words of comfort as we journey in times of darkness, in times of storm, that we are heading someplace that is good. God has promised that all will be saved—all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Grasping that hope, in this time of Advent, this time of waiting and anticipation of the coming of Christ, let us be a part of preparing the way.
And how can we do this? We begin by turning toward God. We let God enter into our wilderness places, our places of darkness, our places where hope is longing to break free.
We come together in Advent believing that together we can love each other into doing the hard work in hard times. At the table of Eucharist, God makes space where grace can happen. In a time when there is so much fear and separation, the table invites us to a shared vulnerability and a shared newness of life. When we come to the table of Eucharist we hear the words, “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” It is at this Table that we live out the belief that all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
John cries out in the wilderness and calls us to prepare for the coming of Christ—to make a space in our hearts and in our lives so that God can transform us and guide us into the way of peace. We may believe that in the storms of life we are staring at the dark, but we are called to keep our eyes watching God.
[1] Zora Neale Hurston. Their eyes were watching God. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1937, 191.
[2] Wendell Berry. “The Peace of Wild Things.” New Collected Poems. Berkeley CA: Counterpoint, 2012, 79.