The Second Week Of Advent Brings Us To A WIlderness

(By Fr Dexter Brereton, CSSp)

Luke 3: 1 – 6

The Word appears in a chaotic world

This famous passage from Luke’s Gospel, chosen for the Second Sunday of Advent begins with a list of what I would call the “News-makers” of Jesus’ time which situates the coming of the Word of God in a specific period in history: In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar’s reign, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, Herod, tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Phillip tetrarch of the lands of Ituraea and Trachonitis, Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the pontificate of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness… If CNN had existed at the time of Jesus, these persons would have been at the centre of its ‘Breaking News’ just like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or Angela Merkel in our own time. Why is this necessary?

This list of figures outlines a particular history and links the story of John and of Jesus to this history. It is theologically extremely important to insist on the historical reality of Jesus, who is at the centre of the Church’s faith. If we do not, Christians run the risk of the story of Jesus being dismissed as a ‘nancy story’ or a kind of ideology having nothing to do with ‘real’ life.

We begin by acknowledging that our primary access to the mystery of Jesus the Christ, is the church, through its Scriptures, its creeds, its faith experienced, proclaimed, and handed on through the centuries. This Jesus, whom we encounter through the reading of scripture, in personal prayer and in the sacraments, is a REAL historical person who lived and died two thousand years ago. Luke, by giving this elaborate list of powerful figures who lived around the time of Jesus, is painting for us, a picture of the world that Jesus impacted directly in his humanity, and by this fact, also insists that Jesus was a real historical person.

The world of Jesus, as in our own time, was a world of wheeling and dealing and huge displays of power. One can imagine the tumult and the confusion as great figures succeeded one another as one man after the other, rose or fell due to his personal ambitions. It was into such a messy world that the Word of God came to John, as the bible says ‘…in the wilderness.’  The story of John, the forerunner of Jesus begins in the ‘wilderness’ which is a very powerful symbol in the spiritual and theological tradition. The wilderness or ‘desert’ designates a time or place when the struggle with evil, is most keenly felt and reduced to its barest elements. In the wilderness, there are no distractions and our vulnerabilities are most apparent. The desert can be wild or uncomfortable, but it can also serve as a place of testing, purification of one’s motives and a place where one gains great clarity. We can think of many examples of the ‘desert’ or ‘wilderness’ in life: we lose our job, we face a health crisis, we are waiting for news of a new job, we experience great jealousy after losing someone we love, we fail an exam, we go through a time of boredom or disillusionment with school or with our job.

In my own experience and, I imagine, in the experience of others, we see this desert as a place to travel through as quickly as we can. As I get older, I am coming to the realization that perhaps the desert is an inescapable dimension of life. We are always, in one way or another, journeying through the desert, always in the midst of struggle, always on a journey of purification. To make peace with this reality, I think, is to become more patient and more peaceful. If we learn to take our time in the desert, perhaps we become much more wise and insightful. We come to learn that even in the desert, there are gifts and blessings waiting for us. There in the desert is where the Word came to John the son of Zechariah.

Here in Trinidad and Tobago, our long and painful struggle with high levels of violent crime seems to many of us like a kind of ‘desert.’ Yet, this desert in which we find ourselves provides a golden opportunity for us to clarify the way we understand ourselves and our society. It is an opportunity to truly understand the real roots of crime, through a process of patient determined, research and experimentation. For us here in the oil-belt, the desert we find ourselves in due to the drastic restructuring of the State Oil Company is providing us with an opportunity to see  different possibilities for the development of our communities, pathways which have been long neglected due to the power of the Energy sector.

Lord, we thank you for the lives that we live and for all those times and places that your wisdom and insight come to us. Lord sometimes they come at restful periods in our lives, in quiet beautiful places. But Lord, your word also comes to us in the midst of the storm. It can come to us in the midst of our personal struggles. And because of this Lord, we thank you for each and every aspect of our lives. Lord, we see every mountain and plain every hill and valley in life as a place of encounter. We bless you for it all and we love you. Amen.