Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Advent 2: December 9, 2007
The Rev. Melissa Skelton
Matthew 3:1-12
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: `Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’“
Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and the entire region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
During the last year I was at Trinity Church in Castine, Maine, we as a parish decided to explore the connection between the artistic process and spiritual life. And so all year long we hosted art exhibits and talks and we put together groups in which people used art to express what was going on in their spiritual lives. The climax of our year was a panel of four well-known artists discussing their own creative processes and their spiritual lives. The panelists included a jazz musician, a painter, a novelist and a documentary film maker by the name of Peter Davis. Peter had won an Academy Award in 1974 for his film entitled Hearts and Minds on the Vietnam War.
Towards the end of the discussion, the panelists began talking about the editing or polishing phase in their creative process. Peter said something in the discussion that I will never forget: “In the making of a film,” he said, “I have to be careful about creating a work that’s too polished. I have to leave in a little wildness, because that’s where the real vitality comes from. If a film is too polished and not wild enough, it will never feel alive.”
As I heard him say this, I thought, “There it is—something absolutely true about the spiritual life.” It needs wildness, or today on the second Sunday of Advent, maybe the word should be “wilderness.” The spiritual life needs wilderness.
This, of course, is part of what our gospel for today is saying to us as it brings us once again face to face with wild man John the Baptist, the one who, as Matthew says, “appeared in the wilderness” preaching repentance to all.
Repentance means to turn around, to go in a different direction, to return home from being in exile. And so the voice of repentance, of reorientation and return that clears the way for the new life that God would give to us and to the world, does not come from “in town,” the place where the empire rules or where religion is established, but comes out of the wilderness.
Why the wilderness?
The wilderness was a place of deep significance for the Jewish people. A region in which pasture and water was scarce, it was the place not of a settled God but of a holy and justice-loving God on the move, a God who called the people out into uncertain paths and whose presence went before them providing them with water and food in unlikely places.
Likewise, within the broader Judeo-Christian tradition, the wilderness was seen as a place of extremes--of both taunting demons and assisting angels, of both danger and personal encounter with God. In the wilderness the people discovered who they really were and what they were made of. In this sense, then the wilderness was a place transition and potential transformation. And so as the stories go, the people of God wander in the wilderness after their liberation from slavery but before going into the Promised Land; and Jesus goes into the wilderness after his baptism but before the beginning of his public ministry.
William Bridges, author of many books on change and transition in organizational life, wrote a book entitled The Way of Transition: Embracing Life’s Most Difficult Moments. In the book Bridges describes what he calls “the neutral zone,” the place many people find themselves in when they have had to let go of one way of being but before anything new has taken hold.
Bridges describes this neutral zone (which doesn’t feel neutral at all) as a kind of wilderness one must go into, a place of emptiness and confusion where what was true before is no longer true and what might come into being hasn’t come into being yet. In the neutral zone, he says, things can feel very chaotic, and so we might be tempted to try to force something new into being there. But it is in this very chaos that a kind of potential for creativity and vitality pops up often in raggedy, uneven ways. This neutral zone, Bridges says, must be entered into in order for the new direction, what we might call “the repentance” to emerge not merely as a function of the will but as a genuine change in orientation and direction.
But the neutral zone is never where any of us wants to go. We do not want to go into the neutral zone in our workplaces, in our personal lives, in our civic life or in the life of the church. (What is going on in our Episcopal Church right now might be described as a neutral zone). None of us, Bridges says, goes there willingly. We only go there because either we lose something or we’re made to face the fact that the old way of life just won’t work anymore.
I’ve reflected on this a great deal in terms of personal life, but I find it to be true in so many other realms as well—that after a certain point, the only way that something can be reoriented, can be turned around and reinvigorated is for it to be ushered into the wilderness where as another writer said “you quickly come to an end of what you have depended upon to give continuity and meaning to your life.”
And so, I’m wondering if there is some part of your life in which you’re beginning to feel a pull into the neutral zone, a wilderness where there are not a lot of structures and signs to point you in a direction, where what used to be has disappeared or collapsed and what might be has not appeared yet, where you might be tempted to try to force something to get you out of that place. I’m wondering what reorientation or return God may be calling you to as you enter and stay a while in that unmapped, pathless place.
And who is this God who asks us to go into the wild as a way to experience the fullness of our lives? Who is this God who asks the world to walk on the wild side as a way to be renewed? The God who created the wilderness, one who passed through it himself without abandoning his humanity and who witnessed to a realm called the kingdom of God, a kingdom not characterized by polish and control but by a kind of wild and uncontained love for humanity, and the one whose spirit opens for us the bracing and demanding path early Christians called “the way.”
Once again this Sunday I’ll close with a poem. It returns to the theme I started with: the theme of the connection between the creative process and the issues of spiritual life. Both, it seem, ask us to go into the wilderness without a map and to trust that in going there, we will be met by what we need, finding not only our way but a world there.
The poem is by the wild man of the poetry in the Northwest—William Stafford. He writes it based on his experience trying to teach a course in creative writing. “A Course in Creative Writing” by William Stafford:
They want a wilderness with a map
but how about errors that give a new start?
or leaves that are edging into the light?
or the many places a road can’t find?
Maybe there’s a land where you have to sing
to explain anything: you blow a little whistle
just right and the next tree you meet is itself.
(And many a tree is not there yet.)
Things come toward you when you walk.
You go along singing a song that says
where you are going becomes its own
because you start. You blow a little whistle
And a world begins under the map.
Sources Cited or Consulted
Experiencing God: Theology as Spirituality by Kenneth Leech
The Way of Transition: Embracing Life’s Most Difficult Moments by William Bridges
Belden Lane The Solace of Fierce Landscapes
You Must Revise Your Life by William Stafford
