Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Today’s text

Luke 3:1-3

In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar's reign, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of the territories of Ituraea and Trachonitis, Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, and while the high-priesthood was held by Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah, in the desert. He went through the whole Jordan area proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins ... .

Reflection

So it is, Holy One, while important people go about essential business of state, fulfilling the tedious demands of office, demanding due reverence to their position while making the rest of us aware of their significance to the social order, you come.

You come where and when you will, paying little attention to those to whom the population looks for assurance about what the markets will do or what bill will soon be enacted into law for the benefit, mostly, of those with power.

You pay no attention to power as we know it. You come in the desert places where human power is at its limit, where significance of place and position doesn’t matter, where nature reveals that we are nothing but flesh and blood and need.

You come where we have nothing of which to boast, nothing that lifts us above the common run of humanity, where our mortality is undeniable.

You come where we are most likely to listen, to hear and hunger for a voice beyond the cry of advertisers drumming up false needs and spurious wants. You come where we know our souls are far from the home, where our dis-ease moves us to seek a place, a word, a Presence for which we have longed, but seldom, if ever, entered.

You draw us to desert places where who we think we are and what we have done doesn’t matter, where we can acknowledge that the clothes in which we wrap ourselves, hiding our real faces, are illusory.

There your word comes to us, as to John, revealing again what (on some level) we already knew: that we need, and our need cries from depths we cannot deny.

We need the love you are, if we are ever to be free and full, if ever we are to be our truest selves. So lead us into desert places, and speak to us.

We hunger for your voice to touch the places we hide.

Pr. David L. Miller