Pastor's Corner
Embracing The Wilderness
Perhaps I am just getting a bit older and so have been remembering
things from my past more often. Now mind you, I’m not ancient! But,
well, I am not 25 anymore. Funny, that. I remember very clearly a few
years ago when I went to sleep one night as a 25 year old and woke up
the next morning and I was 41. Go figure.
What has been most interesting about that sudden aging process how much
it turned my memory towards the notion or idea of “Wilderness.” The
Wilderness is a powerful metaphor. It always carries with it a
combination of place and time. That is not surprising if you consider
any experience you may have had in the woods. In woodland you perceive
the landscape around you with all your senses. You are enveloped by the
natural world with its colors and scents and sounds; its movement from
brightness to shadows.
Time is narrowed and its passage is no longer measured by evenly spaced increments. Your perception of time becomes measured by moments of experience each with its own significant duration, however long or short they may be. Your scope is limited to what can be seen through the trees and brush until, perhaps, you come to an opening on a hill or mountain and see the some vista open before you. It is then you recognize the vastness, the wildness, of the Wilderness in which you have been moving. You recognize the nonsense of measuring life against place and time with means imposed arbitrarily by maps and clocks.
Creation, and our created-ness within it and as part of it, is about the movement of our life through Wilderness—movement through moments of uncertainty to moments of understanding, from sorrow to joy, confusion and wisdom, from isolation into love.
As I am moving on from St. Peter’s I suspect that it could feel like a
Wilderness moment. I guess what I want to ask you to consider is this:
“Is the Wilderness really that bad?” It is, after all, the metaphor for
our faith. God’s people wandered 40 years in the Wilderness as
preparation for entering the Promised Land. Jesus spent 40 days in the
Wilderness as preparation for his earthly ministry.
In Luke 3:1-6 we read this:
(1) 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.'"
Luke places us
in a specific moment of time and place by listing those historical
figures—many who figures who played a specific part in the story of
Jesus. He also places us in a specific place—the Wilderness!
John the Baptist
is there in the Wilderness proclaiming that change is coming! He
preaches a message of baptism and repentance and forgiveness of sins.
And we hear the words of Isaiah “The voice of one crying out in the
wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every
valley shall be filled,… the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall
see the salvation of God.”
It is from the Wilderness moments of life that salvation comes! It is
from the Wilderness moments of life that renewal happens and the
Promised Land is entered into. It is in the Wilderness moments of life
where we encounter the very Spirit of the Living God.
So I say to us all simply this: Let us not fear the Wilderness. Let us
enter it with expectation and thanksgiving!
Peace, Pastor Mark
