A Voice in the Wilderness

Years ago on a trip to Wyoming, our family camped at Dinosaur National Monument.  We had a camp site on the edge of the Green River.  It was across from a sheer cliff that rose out of the water.  The geology was dramatic and unique and resulted in a near perfect echo.  Our boys who were something less than ten at the time were consumed by their new toy.  I remember them shouting at the wall and then waiting to hear their own voice returned to them in a way that technology can't hope to match.

When I was small, my mother took me hiking all over the Sierras and later in the Pacific Northwest as well as in Arizona and the Rockies.  Vacation was pretty much an excuse to live outdoors someplace beautiful.  From one of those early trips, I vaguely remember my first encounter with an echo.  It wasn't much as echoes go.  It was just a little rattle after a loud shout that didn't fit my expectation of how my shout should sound.  It gave me an excuse to make noise though and my mom used it to teach me about sound waves traveling though air.

Wilderness is very good at teaching us how loud the quiet can be and how easy it is to ignore the noise.  Eventually, you start to recognize the sounds of where you are and to reflexively sort the unique from the background. 

Listening and hearing are much harder to do in the day to day of going back and forth to work, maintaining social relationships and delivering children to the their destinations.  Often or even usually, some kind of audio media player is on, blaring noise that was designed to entertain us.  Kids in the car usually up the volume a little so the radio or whatever has to be dialed up some...or a lot.  And then of course, some one calls on your hands free phone.  At this point, if you are able to remember where you are, where you're going, who you're talking to and which of the miscreants in the back seat is responsible for the crying erupting from that vicinity, you may congratulate yourself on having successfully navigated the important skill of multitasking, crucial to existence in post modern society.  If you're familiar with this scenario you probably should make a note to add your mental health professional to your hands free speed dialing appliance.  Little details like that are what makes post modern life worthwhile.

This is all quite unwilderness like.  It isn't necessarily clear who to listen to or who to listen to most when everything makes claim to being our top priority. 

If though, as we move through Advent our goal is to slow down and listen for the presence of God in our lives, we can look to someone who lived in the wilderness to accomplish the same.  In this way we can pick out a bit more of the small voice that whispers, "The King is Coming."

John the Baptist was born a few months before Jesus.  When he began his ministry, he moved out of town to live under the stars, telling people about the coming of Christ.  Several New Testament books mention him and the historian Josephus mentions him as well.  He was pretty popular in his own right and time. For Advent, there are some things worth noting about John the Baptist and his wilderness ministry.

John didn't really have a message of his own.  His function was simple.  It was to announce that the world we live in and even our very lives if we would allow it, were about to change drastically for the better.  It is a "better" that transcends circumstance, even to the point of bodily existence.  It is so extreme that the only idea that can capture it is the concept of rebirth.  The day we are anticipating is the day of the beginning of the human manifestation of God that John was born to proclaim. 

John was outside the ebb and flow of society.  People had to go out of town and presumably out of their way to hear him.  To move toward understanding this season and the coming Epiphany, we're probably going to have to pull ourselves some distance from the river of activity that carries us through the Christmas season.  It's possible we might even get tired or a little sore from the trip.  Merry Christmas.  That particular soreness is part of the original message.

John had a pretty different diet. He ate locust and honey.  ("Would you like locust with your honey or honey with your locust?")  One of our children was in the military and at one point learned to eat bugs, including grass hoppers (locust wannabe).  There's a specific instruction or two that helps get them down, or at least helps them stay down.  Even so, it's worth nothing the dearth of locust based cuisine currently available.  John denied himself "real" food in order to focus himself and to bring focus to the imminent ministry of Christ.  Likely, this was a combination of aspiration and obedience rather than one or the other.  It might be worth messing with our diet here and there during Advent.  A walk along the beach with a growling stomach isn't living in the wilderness but if we let it, it can point us in that direction.  If we let it, it can whisper to us of the voice in the wilderness. 

John's message included a heavy dose of repentance; that is of desiring to change and of actually changing the direction of one's life.  This isn't a bad idea for any season but as we move through Advent to Epiphany it's worth remembering both what has been given and what we're asked to give.  I heard a Catholic priest a couple days ago saying that for 2000 years the only season more penitential than Advent is Lent.  As of yet, I haven't heard that repeated in any department store music tracks.  Since that's part of the season, we're going to have to spend some time in the wilderness of repentance to fully embrace Christmas.

If this doesn't sound like the usual dose of "God bless us everyone,"  well good.  There's plenty of that already and just maybe even that message would benefit all the more from a little wilderness.  Let's leave the furious activity behind for just a moment, step into the wilderness and listen to voice there, calling us to love, repentance and the coming King.     

Fasting Slowly

Modern Christmas has been modern for a while now.

The big lament in modern Christmas as evidenced by Christmas movies is usually that it's is too commercial, too fast paced and just too out of control to capture the "true meaning" it holds.  If we throw in newspaper articles and editorials, we have a history of at least a hundred of years of contrasting what Christmas has become as opposed to what it's supposed to be.  We love the idea; we just don't like living it out.  And yet year in and year out, we continue to celebrate it in the same way anyway.  I think this century old conundrum points to one of the "true meanings" of Christmas, namely hope.

Generally, we don't like denying ourselves much of anything.  (I suppose I didn't have to say "generally.")  At Christmas time, that affection for indulgence is elevated to religious importance.  I include in this definition of self indulgence, our seasonal generosity to our kids.  After all they're our kids and they need all the stuff, experiences and "joy of the season" we can inflict on them...probably.  As a result, we wind up doing all the really important seasonal things until we're exhausted and broke.  We mean well, nothing bu the best really.  Hiding under this all too often failing is another "true meaning" of Christmas.  This true meaning is about generosity of heart and spirit.  It is giving to the point of sacrifice.

We will also likely bend, break borrow and steal everything necessary to be with some component of our extended family.  I love my family and I love spending time with them.  I can't remember a Christmas season in which we didn't travel somewhere to be with someone; in some cases we have even traveled good distances on Christmas day.  I can honestly say that in every case this was, at least on balance, wonderful.  Never the less, it is tiring, can be expensive and can lead to the occasional uncomfortable moments that only those truly close to us can provide.  And here we run full into what is certainly the greatest of the "true meanings" of Christmas.  Love.

 At Christmas time, we're carried away from the hope, generosity and love of the reality of God and his love incarnate in the person of Christ, on a raging river of seasonal activity and expectation.  We can't change the fact of this unpleasant circumstance by riding the current.  We're going to have to do something about it...on purpose.

We can and probably should commit to slowing down some, paring back the activities and commitments.  However, just about any change in behavior can't be limited to subtraction.  Something has to be added back in place of the original offense.  We not only need to prepare for the stuff of Christmas, we need to prepare for what we are remembering.  And most of all, we need to prepare ourselves.

Redeemer Anglican church is intentionally preparing for Christmas in what might seem to be a counter intuitive way.  They offer a day a week fast, concluding by receiving the Eucharist.   The middle of the week (fasting day is Wednesday) becomes a speed bump, slowing us down and hopefully jarring us a little, returning us to the reason we're celebrating.  One day of the week, meals are left behind (yea verily, even very excellent Christmas candy) allowing the rumbling stomach to pull us back to the place where Christ lives as the center of our thought and prayer.  The place where unless all movies and articles do lie, we've always wanted to be.  While it might be counter intuitive, it never the less makes sense doesn't it?  After all, it's chasing after the Christmas for which we were created.

We're preparing one more time, to experience the hope, generosity, joy and love of the greatest gift ever given.  Praise God, Merry Christmas and "may God bless us, every one."