From the Daily Office, Friday/Saturday Dec. 18/19, 2020
Luke 3:1-9
The Proclamation of John the Baptist
3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
5 Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
The Gospel of Luke provides us with another lens through which we can look to learn about the life and ministry of Jesus. It differs in several ways from both of the other synoptic gospels of Mark and Matthew, and from what we learn about Jesus in the Gospel of John. We don’t know who wrote the Gospel of Luke. While you may have read that it was Luke the physician and traveling companion of Paul depicted elsewhere in the New Testament, that is speculative. We do know that it was written after the Gospel of Mark, probably between 80 and 90 CE. The Gospel of Luke is the first of a two-volume work by the author, the second volume being The Acts of the Apostles. A central theme of Luke is baptism for repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In Luke Jesus is the rejected prophet. Early in his ministry he is rejected by the Jews in his home town of Nazareth, where they attempt to kill him. He is later revealed to be the universal savior, for Jews and Gentiles alike. Jesus’ ministry focuses upon justice for the “poor and the oppressed (For anyone interested, the book Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell is a fascinating story about the life of Luke.).
The central character in our reading from Chapter 3 today is the prophet John the Baptist, whose ministry of preaching and baptism marks the real beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Notice that John’s is “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” All four Gospels depict John as being in the wilderness.
I’d like to switch from the exegesis of the scripture (in essence what it actually says) to the hermeneutics (in my much simplified definition, what its meaning and relevance is to our lives today), and I will focus wilderness. Scripture is replete with references to the wilderness. According to The New Strong’s Concordance of the Bible the word “wilderness” appears 305 times in the Bible. The wilderness for John was—as it can be for us—both a place and a state of mind, a desert where he had lived alone in solitude, but also in companionship with God. Imagine his nights alone beneath a crystal clear sky with infinite stars, no human noise or clamor to distract him, only the natural world of which he was so much a part, and the Presence of God. That was the
wilderness from which John came. The place was the remote and barren lower Jordan River Valley, and the state of mind one of knowing his call from God, one of conviction because of his direct communion with God. Then he enters the busy world of humanity, and begins his ministry of preaching and baptizing, preparing the way for Jesus. Jesus too experienced the wilderness. Following his baptism he was led by the Spirit for forty
days of temptation in the wilderness. He too was alone. Perhaps Jesus entered this wilderness to contemplate the meaning of his recent baptism and the soon-to-begin ministry into which God had called him. Mark tells the story this way: “‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (Mark 1:11-12). During those forty days of self-searching and in communion with God, Jesus faced the temptations and prevailed, and left that wilderness to begin his ministry.
Dr. Gerald May was a psychiatrist and later spiritual teacher who co-founded the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, an ecumenical organization and community devoted to the Christian contemplative tradition. He wrote his last book The Wisdom of Wilderness while suffering from a terminal cancer that would soon take his life. Wilderness to him was not just a place, but also a state of being. The root word for wilderness is “wild.” The primary meaning of “wild” is “natural,” and “natural” comes from the Latin “nasci,” meaning “to be born.” Wilderness, then, is not only the nature you find outdoors, but can also refer to your own true nature—the you that is closest to your birth, perhaps the you that is closest to your divine source. In this book, May describes
numerous encounters in nature with what he labeled “a divine guiding Presence,” which he also called “the Power of the Slowing” and Wisdom. It was for him a sense of unity with the world. He frequently felt the call of this Wilderness. It was his “longing for God… for love, for union, for fully being in life, for being vitally connected with everything.” The Wilderness was also the source of healing from his sense of separation from his true nature, his “wildness,” his oneness with God.
This sense of connectedness and oneness with everything, of God’s Presence in the moment, and of letting go of whatever distracts you from that Presence, are at the heart of contemplative prayer and contemplative living. John the Baptist and Jesus “surely found this unity with God in their time in the wilderness. While it may be in the natural world where you find it, it doesn’t have to be. It might be in any present moment.
Rev. Bob Donnell
12/19/2020
Prayer for Knowledge of God’s Creation (BCP, p. 827)
Almighty and everlasting God, you made the universe with all its marvelous order, its atoms, worlds, and galaxies, and the infinite complexity of living creatures: Grant that, as we probe the mysteries of your creation, we may come to know you more truly, and more surely fulfill our role in your eternal purpose; in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
