12-4-23 - Into the Desert

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. 

Black Friday and Giving Tuesday are past; colored lights blink on every other house. Must be about time for John the Baptist to saunter out of the desert, just as our consumer frenzy churns toward its secular apotheosis, to remind us that it’s Advent – and that “theosis” pertains to God.

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

We only seem to let John out once a year, this not-so-cuddly prophet of repentance. Repentance is not much in vogue, and John is more than a bit odd, in his weird attire and diet of locusts and wild honey. We could consider him a proto-vegan, but for his camel skin coat and leather belt.

But John is where all four gospels start to tell “the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” as Mark begins his account. John is the one sent to “make ready a people prepared for the Lord,” the angel Gabriel told his father Zechariah when announcing John’s improbable conception. Zechariah himself sings out when John is born:  “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins."

This suggests that repentance is our entryway into the “knowledge of salvation.” Repentance is a pre-requisite to feeling the need of salvation – awareness of what we need saving from. If we’re all hunky-dory without Jesus, he really need not have bothered with all that incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and redemption business. We have to believe some level of estrangement with God, and accept some degree of human culpability for the state of the world, in order to comprehend or even desire salvation.

Accepting these realities is repentance. Repentance doesn’t have to be a laundry list of personal sins and short-comings. It is an awareness of being less than what we were created to be, and a desire to accept forgiveness and invite the kind of healing that remedies that fault.

So let’s begin Advent with repentance, since that is John’s specialty. Like those who traveled out of their safe zones to go see him in the wilderness, to hear his call to repent and receive his baptism of cleansing, let’s wander away from our patterns of stuckness, our self-justifications, our self-saving strategies, and ask the Holy Spirit to show us how we have grown apart from God. We might try this each day this week, and see what gets freed and released. If it helps, you can use this Inventory of Confession or pray this Litany of Forgiveness. (You can find other resources for spiritual work here.)

Where does our pride kick up? Where do our relationships cause us to wince or get defensive? Where is shame rooted in us, a deep sense of unworthiness? We can bring these into the light of God’s love, feel the feelings related to each root of bitterness, and begin to release it to God for forgiveness and healing.

The forgiveness has already been given. The healing begins as we accept the forgiveness and desire new growth.

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