Wilderness. 

John the Baptizer comes to us in this second week of Advent, or rather the Advent story takes us out in the wilderness to see and hear John preach. It feels like we are leaving the familiar places of home to go out into the unknown in order to hear a message from John. 

It is pretty clear to see that our safe and familiar places have become less safe and comfortable over the course of the past few years. Our homes, our places of work, our community gathering places have been breached… breached by dangers and risks we never imagined, and change we did not anticipate. An air of unfamiliarity has overtaken them. 

This is something that I have noticed this Advent. The breezy comfort that we once exuded in our day-to-day lives just five years ago, has been replaced with a mild discomfort that seems to be everywhere. 

It is no wonder the crowds left their homes and communities to hear John preach, their world had few places for safety and comfort either. 

Usually, when we think of wilderness, we imagine dangerous, secluded, sprawling and untamed lands. Maybe the wilderness feels unsafe. 

Yet, the wilderness can be a place to get away. To go out from the chaos that looms over us at home, to leave behind the troubles that close in on our lives. 

In my five summers of working bible camps, two were spent at a Southern Alberta camp called Wilderness Ranch. Deep in the sprawl of the Porcupine Hills and at the base of the Livingstone Mountain Range, there was a certain clarity to be had. Away from phones, electricity and plumbing; away from the hustle of modern life, there was the opportunity to think without distraction. To sit on a horse following a well-worn trail and let the mind ponder and in that pondering to hear again the call of God. To sense the Spirit’s promptings anew.

In the Old Testament, God often sent the people out into the wilderness, to learn and grow, to be changed. To encounter the divine. God often meets us in the wilderness, where with all the baggage of life left behind we can listen and hear God again.

We are in a wilderness moment again as a church. Not a wilderness moment where we have been cast out into unsafe places. But rather a time where God invites us to leave our baggage behind, to leave our preoccupations and worries behind, to discover the unburdened freedom and space to listen for the divine once again. 

John the Baptizer is out in the wilderness this week, and so are we. John is God’s sign of hope in a suffering world and it just so happens that hope is what we are looking for.