‘The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness’ (Luke 3:2)
The wilderness is a brutal place. It is dry, empty and cruel. It is the place of demons. But it is also the place where people met with God.
We read of Hagar. We meet her in Genesis. She was Abraham’s concubine, and she was sent away by Sara, Abraham’s wife, with her son Ishmael. She goes into the wilderness. She can’t feed her son. She can’t feed herself. And when she runs out of water, she sees no hope, no future. So she sits down, puts her son some way away from her, and waits to die. But God steps in and meets her.
We read of Moses. He was an Israelite, but he was brought up in Pharoah’s household. He was a prince of Egypt. He could have done so much for his people. But he loses his temper and he kills a man. He is shamed and has to run for his life. And this prince of Egypt ends up looking after sheep for his father in law in the wilderness. But God comes to meet him in the burning bush, and speaks to him, and gives him a task to do.
We think of David, the one destined to be Israel’s greatest king. For many years he wandered in the wilderness as a fugitive from King Saul. He writes, in Psalm 63, when he was in the wilderness of Judah,
“O God, you are my God, I seek you,
my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” Psalm 63:1
Or we think of the prophet Elijah. He had an amazing triumph on Mount Carmel, when he had seen a dramatic demonstration of the miraculous power of God. But straight after, he drops into the pit. The queen wants him dead, and he runs for his life. He flees into the wilderness and, like Hagar, wants to die.
‘But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now O Lord take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors”.
But God leads him to the same mountain where Moses had earlier met with God. And in the silence of that place he meets with God and is recommissioned by God.
And now the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.
It is not necessarily what we would expect.
Luke has just listed the political rulers of the time, beginning with the Emperor Tiberius.
He has listed the high priests of the time.
If the word of God was going to come, surely it would have come through them in the temple.
God spoke with people in his temple: we think of Isaiah who is given a vision of God in the temple.
And 30 years earlier, God had spoken to Zechariah, John’s father, in the temple, when he was offering the daily sacrifice. He had told Zechariah that he would have a son who would prepare the way for God’s coming king.
But now the word of God does not come to the priests in the temple, but to John in the wilderness.
The wilderness, the literal wilderness, is a place of testing.
It is a place where all that we rely on is stripped away from us
There is little water, little food, and no other people. It is raw and naked, too hot and then too cold, the place of wild beasts.
It is the place where we are brought face to face with ourselves, where we more easily can encounter ourselves, without the distractions that we usually surround ourselves with in order to run away from ourselves.
Glen, my curate asked me, ‘Why is it that Anglicans like silence and poems?’. I’m probably growing older, and I’m aware that some people have too much silence, but I do regret the lack of silence in our society. It stops us from looking in on ourselves.
I was speaking with someone who was telling me of all the work that they do for particular people in need. And then in a moment of sharp self-reflection they said, ‘But perhaps the reason that I do all this is to avoid facing myself’. And for a moment our conversation became real.
Today on social media, there is a great deal of noise – there is so much that is judgemental and so little self-examination.
Well, the wilderness can be the place of self-examination.
It can be the place where everything else is taken away, and we encounter ourselves.
And the wilderness can also be the place where, if we are prepared to be honest with ourselves, and to face up to our sin, and to go beneath our immediate desires to our deepest desires, and if we hunger and thirst for God, then it can be the place where we encounter God.
Of course, we do not need to go to the literal wilderness to meet with God.
Often we are driven into wilderness experiences: locked in because of COVID, broken because of failure - moral or business or personal - or crushed because of debt or sickness or grief or shame - at our wits end, not knowing which way to turn.
We are helpless, forced to face up to ourselves: our own sinfulness and brokenness.
I think of one former politician in the United Kingdom. Jonathan Aitken was a government minister. He lied in court, got caught, was publicly humiliated and sent to prison. But in prison, in his wilderness, he met with God. He became a follower of Jesus Christ, and he is now an ordained priest and serves in prisons as a chaplain.
I spoke of how individual people met with God in the wilderness. We see that continuing in the New Testament: Jesus himself spent 40 days in the wilderness. He was tempted by the devil. But it was also the place in which angels ministered to him, and from which he came filled with the spirit of God.
James, Peter and John when they went up a mountain with Jesus saw him in his glory.
Paul, who after his conversion and initial ministry, goes into the desert for 14 years - we hear little about that period of his life, but it clearly was significant for him: a time of personal encounter with God.
There are the desert fathers and mothers
The word of God came to John in the wilderness.
John was that messenger, foretold by Malachi. He came to announce the coming of the Kingdom of God, and also to call people to prepare themselves to receive the king.
He called them out into the wilderness to examine themselves, to strip away the things that they put their hope in, and to turn from their false gods in repentance and turn to God and receive his forgiveness and his cleansing. And the symbol for that was baptism.
And so people came out to him, in the wilderness, to be baptised.
There are echoes here of the people of Israel.
They were slaves in Egypt and they cry out to God. And God rescues them. But before he brings them into the promised land, he leads them through the Red Sea, a picture of baptism, and then through the wilderness.
It was for them a place where they were stripped of all the things that they had relied on while in Egypt, a place of hardship and testing.
It was a place where they had to confront their inner demons, of rebellion against God and of God’s punishment.
But it was also the place of great provision, where they ate the bread of heaven, where angels came and ministered to them. And the prophets also speak about how it was a time of deep intimacy between God and his people.
Deuteronomy writes how God ..
“sustained him [Israel] in a desert land,
in a howling wilderness waste;
he shielded him, cared for him,
guarded him as the apple of his eye.” Deut 32:10
The wilderness is a harsh place.
But when we are taken there, or when we choose to go there, and if we are prepared to face up to our own brokenness and sinfulness, and if we are prepared to bring it to God, and receive the gift of the forgiveness and mercy of God, then it can be a place - no, the place - where we most powerfully encounter the protection and love of God.
‘Even though I walk through death’s dark fail,
I will not fear, for you are with me.
Your rod and staff comfort me’. Psalm 23.4
It is the wilderness, the valley of the shadow of death, which can be the place of deepest intimacy with God.
And we also hold onto the fact that not only does God walk with us through the wilderness, and in time lead us out of the wilderness, but that in the end he will also transform the wilderness: into a place of abundance and beauty and life.
“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.” Isaiah 35:1-2
