Peace Will Not Fail
Like many good cradle Methodists, I grew up attending a United Methodist summer camp. Skye Farm Camp and Retreat Center in Warrensburg, New York, not far from Lake George. It was the same camp my dad grew up going to, the place my parents worked together as counselors, and where they volunteered as camp directors—even while juggling two small children. They stopped directing once my sister came along, which is fair. I spent a week at Skye Farm each Summer, from the time I started walking to the summer before I started high school. It was a special place for me, and I carry many of the memories and relationships from Skye Farm that shaped my faith and sense of call—common meals shared in the big old dining hall, always served family-style; sleeping out in the lean-to right by the lake; morning worship at the outdoor chapel; the Wednesday night dance party. I remember the challenge of stepping into the wilderness each year for just a week at a time and needing to jump right into being part of a community. There was no choice in it, no option to keep to yourself or do your own thing. You worshiped together, ate together, did activities together, shared bunk beds in small cabins that didn’t even have electric lights in them when I was there—things have changed some since I was a kid. Being dropped off in the wilderness on a Sunday afternoon meant that by the following Saturday you’d have formed a new community, most of whom you’d probably never see again—unless they happened to be your sibling or a member of your church.
We often give the term “wilderness” a less-than-desirable meaning. Wilderness is a place to be feared, it’s a place where you get lost. Wilderness is a place of exile, a place of isolation. When Sarah decides she can no longer stand to keep Hagar around, she casts her and her son into the wilderness. When the Israelites are led out of captivity, they are led into the wilderness—not directly into a place of safety and comfort. Wilderness, as we tend to use the word, is not something to be desired. It’s a place to be endured. It’s a place many of us and many in our world are intimately familiar with. The wilderness is a place on the margins. It’s not the center of culture or power or civilization. It’s a state of being inhabited by migrants in a new and unfamiliar place. It’s a place of exile for queer and trans folks who are forced to flee before the bread rises. It’s a place of liminality for the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, for those struggling with addiction and mental health challenges; for bodies and brains that don’t work with the ways the world is designed. It’s easy to get swept away in the tumult of the wilderness, to be overwhelmed by need and loss and the fear of isolation. But it’s important to remember that it is in the midst of the wilderness that God encounters their people. It’s in the wilderness, not in the presence of Abraham, that Hagar meets a divine messenger. It’s in the wilderness that the Israelites forge a more direct connection to God through the mishkan, the portable place of worship built from materials donated by those who had nothing.
For some, the wilderness is a transitional space. It is the barren road that hosts the exodus from slavery to a new way of being. It is a place to be endured, to be survived on the way to something else, something normative. For others, though, liberation is found in the wilderness. Because in the wilderness we find fellow travellers, fellow exiles. We might even encounter the spirit that chased Jesus into the wilderness right after his baptism. With time in the wilderness comes an opportunity to create. Not the kind of wilderness creation that brings bulldozers, parking lots, and pipelines. But the creation of community. Womanist theologian Delores Williams describes the wilderness setting not as a barren place, but as one that is pregnant with possibility. After all, the wilderness is, at times, a next step on the path to liberation. For Hagar, the wilderness became not a death sentence, but a refuge from a system of violence. She was able to find safety for herself and her son, free from the abuse and ownership she had endured. Likewise, the Israelites’ escape from captivity led them into the wilderness, and though they suffered at first, they would come to embody a community shaped by radical generosity and devotion to one another. Community formed in the wilderness can be a means of liberation. New ways of being shaped, by experiences of exile and compassion for others. In the wilderness, there is often no choice but to be transformed, to live differently, to live authentically. In a place by which we’re supposed to be frightened—beacuse it’s too disorderly, too dirty, doesn’t fit our standards, has too many plants and wild animals—God calls us through prophets not to be afraid, but to be amazed by what is possible.
There’s a colon in the third verse of this gospel passage, in the NRSVUE, at least. Other versions use quotation marks to distinguish one part of the verse from another. Either way, this verse is typically read as “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.” This prophetic call that echoes through the generations insists that we listen to those in the wilderness, even and especially when we are not there ourselves. It directs us to pay attention to the exiles and the wanderers, those we forget to listen to. But there’s another way to read this, which is the way it is written in the book of Isaiah: move the colon. Rather than saying that there is a “voice crying out in the wilderness ‘prepare the way of the Lord,’” this verse could, and maybe should, say “the voice of one crying out: ‘in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.’” It’s a subtle difference, but I think it is one of vital importance. It does not excuse us from our call to listen to those in the wilderness, but it does call us to go there ourselves. The preparation of the way of the Lord, the making of paths straight (though straightness is not the end all be all of liberation), and the coming of the kingdom of heaven are not tasks and prophecies centering the pre-existing structures of power and the high places of privilege. These are words spoken to the least of these, words that those with privilege were lucky enough to overhear.
But when those with privilege heed the call to the wilderness, how do we go? Do we go like the Pharisees and Sadducees, assured of our righteousness because of our lineage or the ways in which we believe? Do we go feeling self-righteous, patting ourselves on the back for taking the time to step outside and get close to those already in the wilderness? When we heed the call to the wilderness, we must go earnestly, seeking to listen and to become the community of Christ made real. We must go, not only to be baptized and to undergo a ritualistic change, but to undergo a circumcision of the heart, to be radically transformed as people of the wilderness. We must go seeking to bear the fruits of our repentance, showing signs of our verbal commitment to be a part of the community, to “resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.” This is a call to leave behind the old ways of doing things, the ways that perpetuate harm and that prevent justice, and therefore peace, from flourishing. This is a call to abandon the old ways of retribution, of vengeance and violence, and embrace the peace that comes when all are fed, when all have purpose, and when all belong in the Good Community. This is the vision of the prophet Isaiah, the vision of the Good Community not only free from violence, but free from hunger, as Creation grazes together.
The fruit of this wilderness call is this Good Community. The fruit is peace prevailing, new ways of being in the world. The fruit is the humility to be led by the young, by a little child. As we move through this Advent season, as we seek to prepare for the coming of the Christchild and the kingdom, we have already been called to the edge. We have been called to look out with eyes wide open at the world as it is and the world as it can be. Now we are called to step out into the wilderness, into the margins. Not to save, but to be saved. Peace will not fail—not in the wilderness and not in the kingdom. Peace will prevail—through the fruit borne out of repentance, reconciliation, and humility. This is the call of Advent. Let us step out together. Amen.