Advent in the Wilderness

Desert Skies in Texas by Scott Sanford licensed under CC BY/ Cropped from original, filters applied

I entered the wilderness a long time ago, really. Sometimes I think it is my natural home; I emerge for months or years at a time, but it’s always still there, just a few steps away. The wilderness. Waiting.

I was brought up to know Christmas. Not the commercial, Santa Claus and tinsel-filled season, but Christmas as a celebration of the birth of Jesus. We never had a tree, except for that one year my mother created the giant cardboard box tree covered with green wrapping paper. Every day we stuck cut-out ‘ornaments’ on it bearing the names of Christ. I think that we also put money in it to donate. Lots of families find meaning in an Advent Jesse tree, my mother was just ahead of her time.

I do not feel one bit of regret over my Santa-less Christmas. He hasn’t been a part of my children’s lives either. No portraits on Santa’s lap, no leaving milk and cookies on the table. But as a creative, imaginative person I missed some of the whimsy of Christmas. My favorite holidays were when we got to have a Christmas dinner at Aunt Marie’s. Aunt Marie didn’t do Christmas small. There were trees and lights and tinsel and beauty. Christmas sparkled with joy at her house, in the lights and in her smile.

But along the way I grew up, because the Baby Jesus grew up. And it is one thing to feel wonder at angels and stars and magi and shepherds, to grow weary with Mary as she trudges from door to door, to try to picture what this exotic ‘manger’ thing looked like. Then the Baby Jesus grows up and things get complicated.

We can all pretty much agree on the basics of the Nativity story. Sure, you’ve got your Catholics with their Immaculate Conception, and you’ve got your disagreements over what kind of building Jesus was REALLY birthed in, and you’ve got the Nativity sets that put the Magi into the story far too soon, and in entirely unsubstantiated numbers. (Don’t get me started on the white Holy Family.) But among orthodox Christianity, the basics all stand.

That’s about the last time in the story of the Incarnation that things were really simple. Because then Jesus grew up and he started saying things, and his followers started interpreting those things, and in the confusion of it all some of us ended up in the wilderness.

We ended up in the wilderness for so many reasons.

Maybe we ended up here because we looked at the night sky and wondered why we couldn’t feel that whole ‘Peace on Earth’ thing any more. The stars are silent, and the angels have fled, leaving no trace of the music of heaven.

Maybe we ended up here because Baby Jesus grew up to be kind of a tyrant. We had to figure out exactly what he meant or he would roast us. It’s easier to wander in the wilderness than risk the ire of a mercurial God. Oh, we know the flames will probably catch us eventually, it’s what they say about those of us who wander. But better that certainty than living with the day to day uncertainty that we might get some crucial part of doctrine wrong and pay anyway.

Sometimes we ended up here because it was really the only place for us. We swallowed the lines we were fed about right and wrong, good and evil, and then we woke up to find evil romping among the pews and goodness lurking in the places we’d been told it couldn’t exist. The wilderness was a refuge.

However we got here, here we are, and Advent is ringing hollow bells again this year. They don’t sound like hope, they sound like a death-knell, the probability of hopes and dreams being born again, only to be crushed. We are weary. We haven’t seen much in the way of the promised Advent peace. Year after year we’ve unwrapped its gifts, only to see them crumble to ash. The joy tastes false and sticky, the peace has turned stale. “Comfort my people?” That cloak has been ripped from our shoulders, leaving us cold.

We’ve wandered out into the wilderness. Misfits, questioners, weary. We bear scars in many sizes. Some are new and fresh, some are the thin white lines that only those who dare to look closely enough can see. And from the wilderness we watch. We watch the glow of the cities, the safety that they promise. It’s lonely here, and cold. We wish that we could step back into the city, back into the certainty when we thought we knew all there was to know. We’ve seen too much.

Look around the wilderness though. It’s getting a little crowded out here. There are campfires of those who have been here for years, and lanterns wandering towards them, the newly departed from the city.

Step into the glow of this one. There is community here (it does not matter what the city dwellers say, where there is more than one, community exists). There is sadness here. We miss the camaraderie of the city, the certainty that we belonged. But there is hope as we consider the possibility of something new. We tell our stories, we pass the bread and the wine. We’ve learned that sometimes what you hold is all you have, and if you hold the bread and the wine, it is enough.

This is Advent in the wilderness; huddled in the cold, waiting for a promise and a peace that will hold true. Hands around the campfire, faces in the dark, a taste of wine that lingers on our lips. The knowledge that joy and sorrow intertwine, and that sometimes we find God closest in the quiet of the wilderness.