St. John the Baptist in the Desert

The Second Sunday of Advent presents us the familiar figure of St. John the Baptist preaching in the desert.  St. Mark tells us that all the inhabitants of Galilee and all the people of Jerusalem went out into the desert to hear this remarkable man who was proclaiming a baptism of repentance.  This little detail about drawing people from Galilee and from Jerusalem might escape our notice at first; however, it is a detail to which we need to pay attention.  Galilee was populated by both children of Israel as well as many Gentile peoples.  Jerusalem, on the other hand, was predominantly inhabited by Israelites and, in particular, by the religious authorities of Judaism.  Consequently, John’s preaching seems to be resonating with both those who know the God of Israel as well as those who follow other gods and goddesses.  God is calling all to repentance.

St. Mark deliberately portrays John as someone who resembles the prophets of Israel.  We hear him using the words of Isaiah and Malachi as he calls the people to repentance.  He is preaching in the desert, another important little detail that the evangelists points out to us.  For the Israelites the desert is a familiar place in which they have met God before.  When they were released from the slavery of Egypt, they met God in the Sinai desert.  When they were released from the captivity of Assyria, they traveled through the desert to the north of Jerusalem to return to their ancestral home.  The reading from Isaiah in today’s liturgy is one of seventeen oracles of Isaiah from the section of his writings which we call the “Book of Comfort” in which he reminds the people that God has come to the aid of the children of Israel once before and will do so again, leading them through the desert back to their home.  Using the imagery of a royal procession as it makes its way through the crevices and precipices of the desert, Isaiah and John both tell the people that God will build a highway through the desert so that they can come home.

So it is only natural that at a time in their lives when the people are yearning for God that they would return to the desert.  This is their trysting place with God.  It is in the desert that they first encountered God.  Now that Rome has occupied their land and subjected them to Roman rule, they yearn for the days when God first embraced them.  Their memories take them back to the days when God displayed power and might by leading them through the Red Sea and the treacherous desert to Mt. Zion on which they built God’s holy city.  When they go out to the desert, they are drawn by John’s words which call them to repentance and promise them that one mightier than he is on the way to set them free once again.

As we listen to these words this weekend, it might be helpful for us to put ourselves in their place.  God is promising the children of Israel something new if they turn away from sin and repent.  The promise is just as potent for us as it is for them.  I daresay that we all find ourselves wishing that we could start over again.  Our world is so fraught with corruption, with terrorism, with greed and avarice, with prejudice and bias that we, like the inhabitants of Israel some two thousand years ago, are hungry for words of comfort.  John’s message for us is the same as the message he preached to the people of Israel.  We need to turn away from sin and live up to the promises of our baptism.  Instead of looking for relief from our politicians and from our government and in our military might, we would do better to look for relief by turning back to the Gospel way of life that has been laid out for us by Jesus.  Just as the desert was the trysting place for the Israelites, we too have a trysting place where we can meet the comfort of God’s Word – a contrite and repentant heart.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator