I wonder how many of us have found ourselves in a wilderness, where we were disoriented, and felt that we were all alone, at some time in our lives? I have a very distant memory of being “lost” as a small child, that is, not knowing where my parents were, and not recognizing anything familiar around me. Mostly what I remember about that experience is the panic I felt, because I was, for all practical purposes, in a wilderness, and felt my life was in danger.

As an adult, I have had two different experiences of being in a wilderness. One wilderness experience took place 20 years ago in Paris, at the Charles de Gaulle airport. I was traveling alone, and had arrived on a flight from Chicago. I had a connecting flight that left from the older airport, Orly, and I couldn’t figure out how to get to that airport. None of the passengers I asked knew the answer; all the airport employees had long lines of people waiting to check in, and I could find no signs about taxis or ground transportation. As I became more desperate, my limited ability to speak French evaporated. Finally I had to stop running up and down, face the fact that I would miss the flight, and do my best to calm down. After a while, I was able to locate a taxi, made it to Orly airport, and got a later flight. Even though I had been surrounded by people, the language barrier and the circumstances caused me to feel all alone and disoriented. Another kind of wilderness occurred last spring, after my mother’s death. It seemed that a fog closed in around me--I knew that somewhere in or beyond the fog were friends, and familiar responsibilities, but for quite a while I couldn’t see them, and I felt disoriented.

Yet a fourth kind of wilderness experience happens when someone we love becomes seriously ill. I think it is actually easier to be the ill person, than to be the wife, or father or grandmother of the ill person. A serious illness changes everything: our daily routines, our jobs, our usual involvements \ with family, friends and church are all abandoned, and therefore we feel alone, even though there may be real support coming from family, friends and church. Being in a wilderness of any kind, makes us feel vulnerable, confused, and frightened.

I have told you all this because wilderness is one of the central themes of the Bible. In our first reading from Isaiah the wild animals of the wilderness have become tame, and in our Gospel reading, there is that wild man John clothed in camel’s hair, preaching in the wilderness. Throughout both testaments there are numerous references to the deserted areas, devoid of people and habitations. The same Hebrew word, midbar, is sometimes translated desert, and in other places, wilderness, but a forest can also be a wild place. Most of the allusions to wilderness are negative: it is a place of hunger and thirst, where food cannot be grown, it is full of dangerous animals, and of robbers and outlaws. It is chaotic, a place without order or law, where evil spirits might be encountered.

And yet, the people of Israel also remembered that they had begun as a nomadic people, moving with flocks and herds from one desert to another. The proper dwelling place of God was a tent, long before it was a Temple. The memory of those 40 years wandering in the wilderness, eating manna, and drinking water from the rock, had not disappeared in the time of Jesus. Throughout the Bible, both God and the King, are described as shepherds leading their flocks. In that tradition, Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd in the Gospel of John. The wilderness was also one of the principal places people met God. When the second wife of Abraham, Hagar, fled to the wilderness, God met her and provided food for her son. Jacob had two encounters with God in the wilderness, and Moses received the commandments in the wilderness of Sinai.

Therefore when John went out to the wilderness, he was deliberately choosing a place with many associations for the Jewish people. First it reminded them that their ancestors were nomads; but more importantly it called them out of the villages and cities, out of their familiar surroundings, into a wild and possibly dangerous place. John’s purpose was clearly to wake them up to the way they were living, in order to get them to change. Both the Latin-based word Repent, and the Greek word metanoia, mean “think again, change your mind, re-evaluate the assumptions you’ve been making”. And in fact, when people leave behind their normal work, routines, and homes, to go to a strange place (whether it be on vacation, or on business, or on retreat), they often do get a new perspective on their lives, and do change their way of thinking--it works today just as well as it worked for those first \ century Jews.

The change John was intending and working toward, was a return to the heart of the Jewish religion, in order to prepare a new beginning. There was something powerfully compelling about John and his preaching, that drew people to make a long journey out to that desolate place. They probably had to bring their own food and water, just as we would do if we were going to the Mojave Desert. Although a few people may have gone out of curiosity; I suspect it was clear that no entertainment would be provided. The only thing happening out there was this spiritual work of changing your mind, confessing your sins, and receiving a baptism, a washing, for repentance. This year, while I was reflecting on the fact that some Scribes and Pharisees also came from Jerusalem to hear John, I had a new insight about the meaning of the wilderness. It came to me as I was thinking about how the Temple in Jerusalem did provide the ancient method for being cleansed of one’s sins. If a Jew committed a ceremonial sin, making himself or others impure, he came to the Temple with a sin offering: either a lamb or a bird, which was burnt on the altar. If it was a sin against a person, or the breaking of a commandment, he came with a guilt offering, which was also burnt on the altar. These offerings made atonement to God. Now the Scribes and the Pharisees were very careful to follow these practices, described in the book of Leviticus; however the ordinary people often could not afford the time or the expense of traveling to Jerusalem to offer even a turtledove.

Now comes John, who proposes a different place, and a different process for atonement. John is anti-establishment: he is proposing that sins can be confessed and forgiven outside the Temple system. He is proposing that some interior change in a person’s way of thinking, in their heart, is an adequate atonement in the eyes of God, and that a simple ritual of washing administered by John, is the sign or symbol of God’s forgiveness! No wonder the scribes and Pharisees came out to see what John was doing: he was threatening their whole religious system! And it is no wonder that John called them, a brood of vipers, for John was asking for much more than the correct performance of ritual: he was calling people to prepare themselves for a new coming, a new advent, of God to his people. I see a fascinating parallel between that ancient event in the wilderness, and something that happens today. The parallel is that religion in general, and both Judaism and Christianity in particular, always have two dimensions. One dimension is the visible practice of religion, as it is performed in worship, in the offering of sacrifice, in the celebration of the sacraments, and in the reading of Scripture. The other dimension is the invisible and interior attitudes of commitment to the covenant, of faith in Jesus, of prayer and devotion, of thanksgiving and of hope. When people have those interior attitudes of faith and devotion, then the visible practices of religion are meaningful. But if a person has never learned those interior attitudes, or something has happened to dissolve them, then the visible practices also lose their meaning, and appear to be empty.

What happens today, is that some people raised in Christian homes, only learned the practices, but not the attitudes, and so as adults, they view worship as irrelevant. Then it also happens that other people who have learned the attitudes, have lost them along the way. Probably there are many reasons this happens, from the stress of getting an education and a job, to the distractions of our entertainment culture, and all the difficulties life can throw in our way. Recently it was revealed that Mother Teresa felt separated from God for nearly 40 years. Over the years of my ministry, I have heard so many stories (often at weddings) from people who have left the church because they had lost the interior attitudes of faith and hope, which meant that the visible practices of Christianity had become meaningless. Just as John was apart from the Temple, so those people were in a spiritual wilderness apart from the church, where they may wander (spiritually speaking) for years, or decades.

The surprise is, that God comes to meet us in the wilderness. It happens all the time that someone comes back to the Christian community because God has spoken to them when they least expected it. Perhaps God answered an inarticulate prayer, or gave peace in a time of high anxiety. Perhaps Jesus has come to weep with one who mourns, to comfort another who has been rejected, or even to call someone to do the work of the Gospel. Way out there in the “wilderness” of our secular culture, far away from any visible practice of religion or reading of the Bible, far away from any conscious thought of God, the Divine Presence is revealed, and the interior connection to the living God is re-established.

This is the true meaning of the wilderness: it is both a place to be lost, and a place to be found. I wonder if you have been there? I have several times, been found by God in the wilderness: the memories of those moments when God spoke to me directly, are more precious and profound than any in the happy times. For this reason alone, Isaiah’s vision of the wolf living with the lamb, the lion eating straw like the ox, and the nursing child playing over the hole of the asp, makes sense to me. For the Creator, the Redeemer, the Holy Spirit, are present in every wilderness, and in all wild things, bringing peace, healing, and strength for the journey.