when the wilderness

turns to paradise

 

The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew the 3rd (1-12) chapter!

Shall we have a story?
 

A friend had told me I needed to hear this prophet of God preaching...

Now, I've never been much for these prophets;
and when I found out this prophet was carrying on the wilderness, well, I just didn't have the patience to go all that way just to hear some crying about how mad God was.

My friend wouldn't stop, though, she kept going on and on about this John guy.

Finally I just gave in; to get her to be quiet if nothing else.
 

After a journey of a few hours we were finally there
right, exactly, in the middle of nowhere;
and when I saw the prophet I couldn't believe my eyes,
this guy didn't even have the sense to pretend to be respectable;
he was wearing clothes made of camels hair, and when I leaned over and told my friend this guy looked crazy enough to eat bugs;
well, she just looked at me...

Apparently that's what this prophet did, ate locust and honey.
Jeez.
As if getting dragged to the wilderness wasn't enough, I was going to have to listen to some obviously crazy fellow drone on and on.

I remember thinking, "Why are people always suckers for this stuff."


Well, this prophet was also baptizing folks;
and he was preaching that the heavenly kingdom was near.

When he said that I nearly burst out laughing!
I wanted to shout, "look around folks; here we are in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by desert!"

Could those people really believe that in the middle of desolation, the heavenly kingdom was near?!?


So I looked around impatiently, wondering how long it would take until my friend would be ready to head back; but she looked completely captivated by this obviously crazy fellow

Then I tried to see if there were any other people who could tell that this baptizer was nutso; but they all seemed as taken as my friend.

So I hung in the back, listened and waited for this prophet to wrap things up;


Then my friend did it, she leaned over and whispered, "I'm going up."


"No! Don't do that," I thought.

Now this John was going to want to talk to us afterward, he was going to have more fodder for this sermon.


I tried to look shocked, to try to get my friend to reconsider;
but she seemed to be looking past me, to where we had come from.

Then, she turned quickly, and went up to the prophet.

She did the whole thing;
confessed,
got dunked and everything.

That was it for me,
I didn't want to have to talk with this Baptizer afterward,
and I didn't want to have my friend nagging me the whole trip back;
so when she was underwater I headed back to Jerusalem...


Something had changed, though...

The whole walk back, though, things seemed,
well I don't have the right words, but everything just seemed a little different...

That night I had odd dreams,
and the next day everything still seemed, well, just off.

In fact, I remember this one moment especially, I was going to the temple, but suddenly the temple didn't seem as wonderful as it always had.

Maybe it had all been building for a while; but suddenly I couldn't take it anymore.

All the terrible things of life just seemed to be too much,
how unpeaceful the peace of Rome was,
how more and more families had to sell their land just to have enough food
all of it.


Suddenly Jerusalem didn't look like such an amazing city,
it looked more like the wilderness I had been in the day before listening to that John.


Like a flash of lightening a thought darted into my head,

I didn't have any control over it, and before I could make the thought disappear, it was spreading all over me.

I had the thought that I wished the heavenly kingdom John was preaching about was near after all, that maybe it was there, somewhere in the wilderness.


Now, I've never been one for wishing;
you only get your hopes up to have them dashed.


And I didn't have any desire to get caught up with a group that, when their preacher wasn't eating bugs, was upsetting Herod,
so I tried to shrug the thought and go about my day.


It had infected me, though...
For the rest of the week, though, I found myself thinking of John.
For the rest of the week, though, I wondered about God's heavenly kingdom.
For the rest of the week, though, I couldn't help but feeling I was the one in the wilderness, lost and surrounded by death...

It finally got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore.

I went and found my friend who had been baptized...

She looked same as she always did,
but something was different.

I asked her why she was baptized,
what it was like,
if anything happened;
but she wasn't interested in talking about any of that.

Instead she told me how recently some religious leaders came and John wouldn't baptize them.
"Something is happening," she said.

"At first I just felt this man was right, that things were off and I needed to return to God," she said.

"But something bigger is going on, John keeps talking about someone else. Come with me, hear about the one John says he is preparing us for."


So I went with her,
a little disappointed that she wasn't talking more of her baptism.

Along the way I tried to tell her how I got this terrible feeling that all of life felt like the wilderness, and that the desert John was preaching in seemed like the real heavenly kingdom.

She just said, "prepare ye the way of The Lord."


When we got out there John preaching, and he was going on about that heavenly city, and those words sounded so good that before I knew it I was walking toward John.

I swear, right behind John I saw that real heavenly kingdom getting closer and closer.

I went up and confessed that I had been living my whole life in the desert, in the wilderness; and that I needed someone to take me to the heavenly kingdom, that I was lost on my own and couldn't find the way.
I said that I didn't think I could take this wilderness any longer...


Then John stopped, and looked at me,
this man with so much fire in him seemed, suddenly, gentle.

He looked me right in the eye and said something...

He said he had a promise, that there was someone coming after him who was more powerful than him.
He said that while he was just baptizing for repentance, but this one who was coming would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Before I could ask him what he meant water was up my nose because I was under the water;
down and I went and then back up again...

I was the same person as before, just like my friend,
but while I was under that water something had changed too.

On our way back I tried to put my finger on what had happened, but I couldn't...

All I could figure was that something had happened,
that I couldn't pretend the wilderness of life wasn't a wilderness anymore, that I needed the heavenly kingdom,
that things needed to change.

Since that day I've met other people who went out to this baptizer, John.

They've all said similar things, that somehow they came to see they needed this kingdom of heaven.


The more I've thought of it, the more I've realized that it's always in our wilderness where the prophets of god appear.

The good news, though, is that even in the wilderness the kingdom of heaven can come, even there the wilderness can become paradise.


I'm telling you it's true;
I've seen it happen too many times.


This one John was preparing for; he's preached and healed;
and he's started communities.
Day by day it's coming,
the heavenly kingdom comes a little closer daily.

Amen