CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS

 A SERMON FOR THE 3RD SUNDAY IN ADVENT

We have just read the record of John—John the Baptist.  We find out first of all who he isn’t, “Who art thou?” “I am not the Christ.”  “What art thou then?  Art thou Elias?”  “I am not.”  “Art thou the prophet?” And he answered, “No.”  The Jews who questioned him have been sent by the Pharisees to find out who John is and report back to them.  Frustrated by all his negative answers, and fearing to return to their masters without any information of value, they finally resort to begging John for some hint of who he really is.  “What art thou? That we may give an answer to them that sent us.  What sayest thou of thyself?”

His answer is familiar to all of us.  “I am the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness.  Make straight the way of the Lord.”  This is a man with a mission.  He has been sent by God to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight his coming, so that when the Christ finally appears, the people will be ready and will recognize their Messiah.  This is a mission beyond important.  Without the preaching of St. John the Baptist, without his signal of identification “Behold the Lamb of God!”, how was anyone to know that Christ was indeed he who was to come and redeem Israel from all his iniquities?

So why, why, why on earth, then, did St. John go out into the wilderness?  Put yourself in his shoes.  What if you had been given the mission to get the world ready for the coming of the Messiah.  Where would you have gone?  Surely to the high priests of the temple, Annas and Caiaphas, or to King Herod in his royal palace, or to the Roman governor of Judea with his legions of soldiers and messengers.  But John the Baptist chose instead to go out into the desert.  “I am the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness.”

There’s a very simple explanation why St. John did this.  He wanted to avoid the priests and kings and governors because, quite simply, he knew God’s will and intuitively recognized what God wanted of him.  God knew, and St. John Baptist knew too, that the priests would be jealous and suspicious of anyone claiming to be the Christ, that the king would fear the coming of a new king in his land, that the Romans would ruthlessly put down anyone who might be a danger to the stability of the land they occupied.  So God inspired John to go out into the desert where he could preach in relative peace and obscurity.

That’s one reason he went so far out into the desert.  But there’s another reason too why it was better for John to be so inaccessible.  If you think about it, it was a way of dividing the sheep from the goats.  When it comes to choosing the wide path that leadeth to destruction or the narrow road to salvation, there are two types of people.  There are those who stay in the comfort of their own homes and make no attempt to disturb their routine by venturing into the desert on the off-chance that the Messiah may have come.  And then there are those who diligently seek the truth whatever the cost.  God doesn’t want to give us salvation on a silver platter, without any effort on our part.  Easy come, easy go.  We don’t appreciate things that come too easily.  The harder we have to work for something, the more we realize its importance.  So God created the opportunity for the Jews to work for their salvation.

It is likewise incumbent on each of us to do our Sunday duty by “going to Mass.”  We do not sit on our sofas and wait for the priest to come and bring us Communion in our homes.  Only in urgent situations when we are sick or otherwise homebound should we expect the Church to come to us.  It’s our duty to go to the church.  And so here we are this morning, doing our duty.  In church where we belong, joining in prayer with the voice crying in the wilderness.  We’re all crying in the wilderness, and there seem to be very few of us.  We try to convince our family members, our friends, co-workers, people we meet, that they should come here too and find the real presence of Christ, him who standeth here among us, but whom they know not.  But unfortunately, most people fall into that second category, unwilling to make the long trip to Urbana, to inconvenience themselves for the sake of truth, obedience, grace and even salvation.  Instead they prefer to stay home, spending their Sunday relaxing with not a thought of Almighty God in their heads.  If they venture out, it’s only to go to breakfast at Bob Evans, or visit grandma, maybe do some Christmas shopping at the mall—anything and anywhere except where God wants them to be.  We cry out in the wilderness for them to come and join us.  But they don’t come.

We who did heed the commandment of God commandment to come to church this morning are now invited, on this third Sunday in Advent, to rejoice.  “Gaudete!”  Rejoice.  The non-church goers receive no such invitation, and yet many of them take it upon themselves to rejoice anyway.  But their rejoicing is, generally speaking, not for the same reasons we rejoice today.  They seek, often desperately seek, to be joyful during this holiday season.  They want to relive the joys of their childhood by putting up Christmas trees, exchanging gifts, partying, making sure all the usual happy holiday traditions are observed.  Many of them will even put up a nativity set on their front lawn.  But alas, it’s usually not to venerate the Christ Child and the holy family that they do this.  It’s just another tradition, another version of Santa’s grotto at the mall. 

And this is why these otherwise good souls never attain to the true joy of Christmas.  Their joys are transitory, mere distractions from the awful things going on around us, not to mention the fears of what may be yet to come.  Our joy on the other hand is the true joy that comes from God and makes sense of all these terrible times.  It is the coming of our Saviour that instills us with that true inner joy, that “peace of God, which passeth all understanding.”

Today, we have another reason for rejoicing as several of our children here will be receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation.  Please pray for them as God the Holy Ghost enters into their souls and they join the rest of us as warriors of Christ, bringing with him his sevenfold gifts and inspiring them with his joy and peace.  From this time forth, these children will join their own pure voices to the rest of us crying in the wilderness, and be ready to fight with us, like St. John Baptist, for what is true and right, preparing and making straight the way of the Lord.