There are kings' palaces, and ordinary homes, crude by our standards where extended multigenerational families lived. A few of our fellow humans, possibly, have experienced each of these places. Most of us have experienced at least a number of them. But there is one state of mind that every one of us has visited, and some of us many times for long stretches. Wilderness, it seems to me, is the key word in today's gospel story, introducing that first century odd man out, John the Baptist.
Scripture takes an interesting attitude to wilderness.
Given the geography of most of the action, wilderness is often equated with desert, but the general definitions hold. The Hebrew people, newly liberated from slavery in Egypt but not yet in possession of their promised land in Canaan, wandered in the Sinai wilderness for forty years before they were able to claim, violently it seems, their promised land. At this time of year, with a chill in the air and the short days, I hear those voices railing at me. I'm beginning to count my conscious Advents in decades and my self-assessment is that I've drawn less than I could have and wanted to from this uncommonly rich time. I've arranged to entertain congregations and Sunday Schools, and I can hear his words immortalized in Handel's Messiah, or more recently, in the Advent introduction to our own Pageant of the Holy Nativity, with that lonely voice of Advent in its first scene.