ADVENT II - B -- December 4, 2006

Years ago I made one of the most nerve-wracking trips I ever took by driving across the deserts of northern New Mexico and Arizona in the middle of the summer on my way to Southern California. For the most part, that stretch of country is a barren wasteland: desert. What was so nerve-wracking, what was, in fact, so frightening, was the possibility of having my car break down somewhere out there in the middle of nowhere.

The desert is an inhospitable place. It always has been. It always will be. Scripture certainly describes it as such. It was the testing place of the Children of Israel as they made their way from Egypt to the Promised Land. It is where both John the Baptist and Jesus went to prepare for their ministries. It is where the early church fathers often went to test their faith. If lost or stranded in the desert, one might very easily be tempted to sell one's soul to the devil for a glass of water or a loaf of bread. Ask Jesus. Ask Moses. Ask anyone who has ever been stranded in the desert. The desert is a lonely, desolate and terrifying place.

Yet it seems that is only when we are out there in the desert that we can ever discover what is truly worthwhile and valuable in our lives. It is only in the desert that we are able to get our priorities straight. It is only in the desert that we can separate the important from the trivial, the necessary from the fluff. While we are living in the oasis, where you and I in this country normally live, where most everything is plush and green and vibrant, we have little time and little inclination to experience hardship. The further away from the desert we are, the better.

That the desert is an Advent theme is quite evident from today's Old Testament and Gospel readings. To live in the desert implies that there will be, that there is, suffering. Yet it is in the desert that salvation arises. It is when we are in the desert that we can hear the voice of salvation, the voice of God. For the desert, if it is nothing else, is a place for listening.

When we think of the desert in the biblical sense, in the spiritual sense, we must think of it as a place for testing our faith. It is in those desert times in our lives when we are tempted to doubt God, but we can also meet God there and be renewed. When we are going through a desert experience in our lives, and we all do, we can either draw closer to God or move further away. The choice, of course, is always ours. God never moves. We are the ones who do.

Again, we all have had desert experiences in our lives. The death of a child in the bloom of life; the almost never-ending illness of a parent who hangs on when death is what he and everyone else wishes; a divorce that breaks apart the family and scars everyone in its wake forever; the loss of one's job in mid-life, when one is too old to start a new career and too young to retire; a broken love; a broken heart; family abuse; family alcoholism. The list is endless. The desert experiences come to all of us. There is no escape.

No one of us ever looks forward to being caught in the desert. We honestly hope to avoid most desert experiences and usually do all that we can to do so. Nevertheless, when the inevitable trip through our personal Sahara or Sinai arrives and arises, we need to resist the temptation to get out of the desert as quickly as we can. If we succumb to that temptation, we will not be able to listen to the voice of God in that desert situation. And we will not learn the lessons the desert experience has to teach.

That was the constant problem the Israelites had. While in the desert, it was one continual whine and complaint after another. There was no water. There was no food. Their enemies were all around. It was too hot. It was too dangerous. And on and on. And every time the people complained, God listened, and God made the situation better. But did the people listen to what God was trying to say to them? Did they learn anything from their experiences? It doesn't seem so.

Read the prophets sometime. What is so fascinating and so interesting and, at the same time, so humorous and, sadly, quite frightening, is that the basic message of each prophet is the same for all the prophets. It was that the people never seemed to learn from their mistakes, from their desert experiences. Yes, they suffered. But somehow in some way they always reached an oasis – usually through God's help.

Once they were there, once God once again bailed them out, they suddenly had amnesia. They forgot everything God was trying to teach them and everything they should have learned from their experiences. There was a comedian whose standard line, after getting into and out of a real mess was, "This sure has been a lesson for me." Only it wasn't. The next time the opportunity arose, he found himself once again in a heap of trouble. He never really learned his lesson. And neither did the Israelites.

And often, neither do you nor I. As Isaiah reminds us, as Mark reiterates, there is a voice, there is always a voice that cries out in the desert. That voice is saying, "Prepare the way of the Lord." But what does that mean? And is that all that the voice says? The answer to the second question is "Yes" that is all that the voice says: Prepare the way of the Lord.

What does that mean? What it means is that if we want to get out of the desert we sometimes find ourselves in, the Lord is the only way out. And the only way the Lord can get us out is if we stop in our tracks and listen to what he is saying to us and what he is telling us to do and not what the devil or anyone else may be saying or tempting us to do.

All too often in our desert experiences, because we are lost and hurt and frightened and scared, we don't listen. We do everything but listen. We talk and cry and scream; but we don't listen. We complain and lament and bemoan our condition; but we don't listen. We blame God or the devil or ourselves for our condition; but we don't listen. We don't listen to the still, often small and quite voice of God, trying to get through to us in our condition.

If we would listen, we would hear. As the Psalmist says, "Be still, and know that I am God." Be still. Shut up. Quit crying and complaining. And listen. For it is only in the desert that we really hear the voice of God. It is only in listening to that voice that we learn the lesson of the desert. What is that lesson? I don’t know. Each desert experience is different. Each has its own lesson to teach us. Not all desert experiences are traumatic or even life changing. But they are real nevertheless.

And so when we find ourselves in the desert, wherever that desert is and whatever it looks like, our first, last and only priority should be to be still and listen to what God is trying to say to us at that moment in time, that moment in our journey to God. If, and only if, we do, will we make it safely through the desert to the next oasis in our life where we will be refreshed and renewed and thus prepared for our next trip into the desert -- which will be upon us sooner or later. Such is our life as a Christian.