Advent 2
Scripture Text: Matthew 3:1-12
I've been thinking about this moment for some time: what would I share with you by way of a sermon that could describe some of what I've experienced these past 3 months? ...and all in about 7½ minutes! Well, I'm lucky that John the Baptist has provided an opening.
All I'll remark on from Matthew's powerful story of John standing in the river Jordan baptising his brothers and sisters are two things: wilderness and repentance. In my mind and from what I've experienced over the past few months, and really over my life-time, I've come to realize that the two are inseparably linked.
Wade Davis, in his book resulting from the 2009 CBC Massey Lectures entitled "The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World," was an inspiration to me over the past 3 months. Wilderness has always been important to me, from the boreal forests of NW and NE Ontario to the Pacific Ocean to the Great Lakes and the great rivers to the mountains and the plains. From wilderness I have learned that I can turn my life around and begin again. Wade Davis, as an anthropologist and ethnobiolgist, has spent time in a variety of wildernesses around the world and with the people of that wilderness. Davis has been on CBC a number of times talking about the loss of language in the world and that in 20 years more than half of the languages of the world will be lost, and consequently—and this is key—the wisdom that goes along with that language—wisdom that can only enlighten the whole world, wisdom that gives us wings to fly and the inspiration to change, to turn around, to repent.
Davis said this in the opening chapter of his book: "But whether we travel with the nomadic Penan in the forests of Borneo, a Vodoun acolyte in Haiti, a curandero in the high Andes of Peru, a Tamashek caravanseri in the red sands of the Sahara, or a yak herder on the slopes of Chomolunga, all these peoples teach us that there are other options, other possibilities, other ways of thinking and interacting with the earth. This is the idea that can only fill us with hope."
I would add John the Baptist to this list, and Isaiah, and Jesus, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Mary of Magdala and Salome, all of whom experienced the power of wilderness and landscape and talked about turning our lives around—collectively as community and individually. What Davis and the men and women he has talked about, and John, Isaiah, Mary, Mary, Salome, and Jesus have in common is that they have been informed by the landscape around them. The desert, the mountains, the valleys, the waterways, the lakes, the oceans, the cities, the towns help us to see beyond our modern sensibilities of mind, matter and rationality, if we open our eyes to see in new ways. Why do we live here if not in part because we are inspired by the mountains and the Kootenay River valley, and wonder of this small valley town; the wilderness—the landscape that surrounds us—takes us beyond the limitations of our world and changes us, if we let it.
That is what happened to me out in the desert of southern Utah. I had taken a back road to a major highway that would lead me into Arizona. On this gravel road I stopped, listened to the silence, prayed, listened again to the silence, had lunch... and it happened: a moment... a presence... a new beginning... an assurance that life is more powerful than death. That was my moment of repentance; I literally turned around because I thought I was not alone, and I wasn't. "We are not alone; we live in God's world..." And I have continued turning around... turning my life around, re-experiencing God's still, small voice of love and life.
As much as I felt ready to return to work halfttime, I wanted to return in Advent because this is such a wonderful time of preparation, if we let it be. We need to listen to the ancient wisdom that invites us to practice moments of quiet reverence, or noisy interaction with others, or quiet festivity, or sad reflection on loved ones gone but not really gone, or meaningful rituals. Advent, leading up to the incarnational time of Christmas, is our invitation to practice the presence of God in others, in ourselves, and to truly listen wherever we might be and in whatever wilderness or landscape we might find ourselves—including the mall and downtown—to make room for the ancient wisdom that takes us beyond ourselves to experience transcendence, to experience a new presence, to turn our lives around and begin in a new direction.
Advent and repentance is not in the narrow sense a time of introspection and asking for forgiveness as we turn our lives around. It is rather, a time of expansion, in which our lives are opened to new ways of being, to new opportunities, to new ways of practicing peace, to new ways of justice, to new ways of building community, to new ways of knowing that God is intimately part of us, each of us and all of us! That's why Advent marks the beginning of a new church year.
And because of this new beginning, with Isaiah, we can proclaim:
"The wolf WILL dwell with the lamb;
The lion and the fatling WILL lie down together.
And a little child will lead us all."
May it be so. Amen.
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