The wilderness is a region of great importance in the Bible.  The desert wilderness of Judea was a rough and dangerous place, a place of hunger and thirst, of loneliness and isolation, of great testing, trial, and struggle.  The Hebrew people sojourned in the wilderness for forty years, not because the Promised Land was so far away, but because for them the wilderness represented a time of necessary preparation before they could inherit their homeland.  The many difficulties and hardships they endured taught them to trust in the Lord God and in His power and might rather than relying on their own ideas and their own strength.  The wilderness has a way of teaching us this.

     The Gospel of St. Mark begins in the wilderness.  Away from the towns and cities, away from the hustle and bustle of life, away from all commerce and all civilization, a solitary voice is heard, the voice of one crying in the wilderness.  John the Baptist calls his people to repent.  He calls them to wash away their old life, their old habits and attitudes, and to prepare for the coming of the Lord.

     The message of John the Baptist is very much the message of Advent.  In this holy season, as a new church year begins, we are to come away from the routine and busyness which is such a part of our lives, and focus upon those things which are most important.  We are to turn around – which is what the Greek word “repent” means – and move with purpose and resolve toward God’s word, focusing anew on the promises of God and on our faith in Him.  Each Advent candle we light illumines the darkness and shows us the way towards that greater light, towards that greater purpose, towards the real reason we are here; the real reason for our existence.  We were created in God’s image to know God and to love him.  This is who we really are.  Sometimes, it takes a wilderness to remind us of this.

     John the Baptist did not go to where the people were in order to preach.  He did not preach in the streets and in the market places.  Instead, the people who went to hear his message had to leave where they were and come to him. They had to travel to the wilderness.  There, they found little food to sustain them and little water to slake their thirst.  There, they found no shade against the hot sun.  It was a rocky, barren, desolate place far removed from all that preoccupied them in the comfort of their own homes.  In today’s world, we might say that they had to leave their offices and their homes.  They had to leave their in-the-middle-of Advent Christmas parties.  They even had to put down the remote controls and leave their TVs.  They had to come away.  They had to go apart.  In a way, their journey to hear John the Baptist was the first step in their turning around, in their repentance.

     I am not going to suggest to you that as an Advent discipline we all make our way into the Oklahoma wilderness.  I’ll refrain from requesting such a thing not because I’m afraid you won’t do it, but because most of us from time to time discover that we already are in a wilderness.  Most of us from time to time find ourselves in the midst of trials and hardships, being tested by what life brings our way.  Such times can prove to be hard and rocky ground.  We can find ourselves feeling terribly isolated and alone.  We can find ourselves fearful and stranded by anxiety.  It is all a wilderness of sorts.  In this wilderness, we can be spiritually hungry and spiritually thirsty and not know where to turn.  In such times, we must be like God’s ancient people and learn to trust in God and to rely on God’s strength – God’s grace – to carry us along and show us the way.

     In the wilderness, we hear the voice of John the Baptist.  He calls us to turn around and to come away and attend to the word of God.  John points us to our Lord Jesus.  He points us to the one whose life shows us what real life is all about.  He points us to the one whose death – the death upon the cross – shows us the nature of sacrificial love and which redeems us and reconciles us with the God of love.  John points us to the one whose resurrection conquers death and promises us a similar victory.  He points to our Lord Jesus and to a love which shall never, ever let us go.  In the wilderness, John calls us to repent, to turn around and stop focusing on what we’ve done or failed to do, on where we think we should be by now, on our own successes or failures.  Instead, we are to turn around and move in a new direction.  And, we are never too young or too old to do this.

     The Messiah – or, Christ – to whom John brings us is one who came to fulfill the law.  He did not come to abolish all that came before His earthly life.  He came to make all things new.  In a similar way, when we repent and turn around to follow Christ, we discover that our Lord Jesus is able to take all that we have experienced in life, every hardship and struggle, every bit of every wilderness, and use it and redeem it.  The people of God who spent forty years in the wilderness did not look back and regard that as wasted time once they got to the Promised Land.  Instead, they knew that God used that time and those experiences to shape them and teach them and equip them for the Promised Land.  Not one fragment of their lives was wasted.  It was redeemed.  It was made new.  It was fulfilled.

     This Advent season, let it be our care and delight, to turn around and to focus anew upon our Lord Jesus.  Let us follow anew the one who makes all things new.