Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary
Once again, as is customary on the Second Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist strides into our December landscapes of twinkling, colored lights like an unwelcome guest at a party. He is dressed in the shaggy pelt of a camel. He prefers locusts to Christmas sweets (Mt 3:1-12). His voice slices across the giddy holiday soundtrack: “Prepare the way of the Lord!” God draws near; repent!
Many interpreters suggest that we punctuate John’s message in Mt 3:3a to align with the passage in Isaiah that he quotes: “A voice crying: in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord” (Is 40:3a). John summons us to a place most of us would rather avoid, now or ever: wilderness. In the biblical tradition, wilderness is a place of reckoning, the haunt of spirits, and yet at the same time, the landscape in which God first formed a community whose way of life would testify to divine compassion and justice. John summons us to the wilderness to repent and be re-formed.
Repentance needs to be more than an intellectual exercise. Briefly meditating on our shortcomings, flinching for a moment, and solemnly resolving to do better before reading the day’s email will not suffice. Metanoia, “turning around,” is action—a body in motion directed toward a new horizon. Our preaching will be most helpful if we speak in practical terms about how to undertake “turning.” In our internet-driven lives, it will almost certainly require shutting down, for a time, the phones and computers to which we respond with hair-trigger immediacy. (The impulse to restart them “for just a minute” will be, in itself, revealing.) Next, it will be wise to move to a spare, quiet space free of distractions, equipped with no more than paper and pencil. There we can begin the process of assessing who, and what, most powerfully claims our attention, time, and resources. In what ways do our habits of life promote the ways of God’s reign? In what ways do our lives contradict it?
Life is a weave of relationships and obligations. Time with spouses, partners, and children, work responsibilities and church responsibilities are all legitimate claims. Yet, digging deeper, we may discover patterns of consumption that border on addiction, or find we’ve fallen captive to a greed-based economy that feeds on our insecurities, emptying not only our pockets, but our souls.
Every preacher needs to keep in mind that, for some, Advent is already a stark wilderness. There are some who experience a steep, downward spiral into depression as shortened days fade into long hours of darkness. Others in our pews will find themselves wrestling this year with unstable finances, a frightening medical diagnosis, or the decline of an aging parent or spouse. We can summon members of the congregation who do not face these challenges to join the isolated and vulnerable in their particular wilderness places, bringing with us gifts of listening presence and needed resources.
Our preaching need not imitate the Baptist’s castigation of the Pharisees and Sadducees. We do not need to compare our congregants to little snakes, fleeing in droves from a grass fire. Our task is not to threaten or shame, but to show the way into the wilderness, that place to which God led the Hebrews, out of their captivity and into God-centered freedom. In the wilderness, God will meet us, turning us around, pruning and shaping us, that our lives may bear fruit for the welfare of others.
Insights into Biblical Greek Grammar and Syntax 