Like yours, our mailbox at home is starting to fill up with beautiful Christmas cards. But I’ve noticed something! You don’t see very many John the Baptist Christmas cards! Do you? In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a John the Baptist Christmas card. Oh, there are plenty of Christmas cards with bells, or snowflakes, or manger scenes, or wise men, or candy canes, or angels, or Santa Claus, or reindeer…but when was the last time you opened the mail and were greeted by a card with a picture of John the Baptist? Long, shaggy hair that had probably never been cut. Scraggily beard still holding the crumbs from last night’s supper of grasshoppers and wild honey. Clothing made out of camel’s skin, and sopping wet by frequent baptismal dips into the waters of the Jordan River. Not very attractive!
You don’t see many John the Baptist cards in your Christmas mail.
And yet, Christmas would not be Christmas without John the Baptist.
You see, John is the one who injects some sober realism into the Christmas experience. Without John’s yearly appearance, we might begin to think that Christmas really is all about decking the halls with boughs of holly – fa-la-la-la, la-la-la-la. Without John, we might be left with the impression that Christmas is simply for happy family gatherings, and loving gift exchanges, and joyfully singing “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” Without John, we might construe Christmas to simply be about the birth of the baby Jesus in Bethlehem.
Some people are quick to say we ought to put Christ back into Christmas, but I’d go a step further. I think we need to put John the Baptist back into Christmas.
Because without John, Christmas would not be Christmas.
We might ask, “Who exactly IS John the Baptist?” and we would find it easy to answer that question without ever really coming to the most important thing about his identity. Yes, he is the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah. Yes, he is an older cousin to Jesus. Yes, he is the guy who gave the Baptists their name! But there is something even more important about John.
Mark tells us John is a voice.
The voice of someone calling to us… in the desert.
Now the Greek word used for desert is eraymon. And it means much more than just a desert. Over the years I’ve watched Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and a few others playing winter golf in the desert. But, believe me, they were not playing in the eraymon. Their version of the desert was a lush championship golf course near Palm Springs with green fairways, friendly crowds, and lots of money to be won.
John’s desert was not like that.
It was an eraymon.
You may remember how the Israelites escaped from Egypt and then spent the next forty years wandering in pain and misery through the eraymon! It was in the eraymon that they faced the most immense challenges and hardships of life. It was in the eraymon that they came face to face with their own human weaknesses and propensity for faithlessness. It was in the eraymon that they wept bitter tears.
The eraymon was the name given to the awful experience of exile suffered by Israel after its defeat by the Babylonian armies.
And it was into the eraymon that Jesus went after his baptism where he was tempted for forty days and nights as the Devil contended for his soul.
The eraymon is not Sun City, Arizona, or the Sahara desert, or the Australian outback. No, the eraymon is the place where death is larger than life, despair is greater than hope, hurt is deeper than healing, doubt is stronger than faith, and demons circle like buzzards over our souls to consume us.
It is the DESERT of life.
The eraymon is the place of suicide bombers, squalor-filled refugee camps, and incomprehensible acts of terror. It is Pearl Harbor the day of the attack eighty-two years ago last Thursday. It is Israel and Gaza a little more than a month after November 7th. The eraymon is what you enter when your child is seriously ill, or your loved one is taken from you, or the doctor speaks a word that will change your life forever.
That’s the eraymon.
A few years ago I was privileged to fly with my friend Dick W. on one of his “Angel Flights”. We were transporting a liver transplant patient from the Tri-Cities area in Tennessee over to Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina. When we took off from McMinn County Airport in the pre-dawn darkness, the world was a spectacularly beautiful place. We climbed toward the crescent moon, and watched the orange sun rise over the Smokies. It was smooth sailing all the way.
But on the way home, we flew into a snowstorm. Turbulence knocked Dick’s Cessna 182 around like a toy. There was zero visibility. And then the snow turned to ice.
The ice started creeping up the windshield and wings. I asked Dick if he was concerned about the ice.
He said, “No, it’ll probably melt in the post-crash fire!”
Dick had a sort of sick sense of humor. But he was also a very fine pilot, and did a superb job of flying us safely through the weather. But when I got home and had a chance to think about the whole experience, it just struck me how a beautiful Smoky Mountain sunrise can so quickly turn into a dangerous afternoon ice-storm.
One minute, life seems so good. But the next, you are out in the ERAYMON!
And the desert is not just those moments of life when crises come. We enter the eraymon in other ways, too. Sometimes without even knowing it. I have a friend who has tried to build his life without God. His own strength, his own ability, his own intelligence are what he relies upon. He thinks God is a silly idea, and that people need to depend on themselves. And so he does, never realizing for a moment how lost he truly is. Lost to all the wonder of what God would love to do through his life for the sake of the world. Lost to appreciating experiences of grace in which blessings come not because he’s earned them but simply because he is loved. Lost to the hope of life greater than this life. Lost to a living friendship with the one Friend who will never let him down. He is sort of like that very successful American businessman whose name I won’t mention who could do so much good for the world with his billions and billions of dollars. He does some good, but not as much as he could. He is famous for saying that God and the church are inefficient wastes of time. And yet the way he lives and doles out morsels from the resources God has entrusted to his care are the real examples of inefficiency. Like my friend, he is lost and doesn’t even know it.
He is in the eraymon where Satan seeks to possess us, and to pull us away from God and from life as God created it to be. Oh, the eraymon comes in many forms, and at various times. Maybe you are living somewhere in the desert today.
But here is the wonder of Advent. As you and I and all the world wander through the desert places of life, there comes a voice. The voice of someone crying in the eraymon.
And if you become really still, and listen very carefully, perhaps you can hear the voice of John the Baptist echoing over time and distance:
“Prepare the way of the Lord!”
In the face of your illness, prepare the way of the Lord! In the midst of your trouble, prepare the way of the Lord! As you go through the divorce, or face the painful loss, or are overcome by some great sin or some overwhelming doubt, prepare the way of the Lord! World leaders, as you ponder decisions about war and peace, prepare the way of the Lord! Business leaders, as you face difficult economic challenges, prepare the way of the Lord! Nations of the world, contending with poverty and injustice and terrible hunger, prepare the way of the Lord! Church leaders, wrestling with what to do about church scandals, prepare the way of the Lord!
You see, Christmas has a voice. The voice of one crying in the eraymon!
“Prepare the way of the Lord!”
Now, what do you suppose the voice means by that?
Well, Mark’s account of how John the Baptist prepared the way is instructive.
First, he called on the people to acknowledge their own flawed humanity.
I remember how thoroughly my wife and I enjoyed watching our son Peter and his wife Melissa raise their little boy – our first grandchild – Ryan. One day, Peter called Sandy on the phone to tell her he’s shipping Ryan down to us because he’s had it “up to here” with the little guy. Pete was only kidding, of course. Well, sort of. You know how it is. Ryan required constant watching. If you turned away for a second, he’d be into something he shouldn’t be. He loved pulling things down, tearing things apart, putting things in his mouth, and he was highly skilled at using various bodily functions at will to ruin any nice piece of clothing his parents put on him. Even at ten-months of age, Ryan knew exactly how to push his parents’ buttons. He knew that if it comes down to a battle between his will and the will of his parents, it is only a matter of time…before he would prevail!
And we – the grandparents – enjoyed watching all this because we’ve been there, done that, got the tee-shirt. Do you know what I’m saying? Nothing in life prepares you for parenthood.
But one of the most difficult challenges all parents face is owning up to that sad fact. That we don’t have what it takes. That we don’t know all the answers. That we are not clairvoyant. That we are lacking in patience, and vigilance, and wisdom. That we are not, and never will be all that our children need us to be. And the parent who honestly comes to the place where they can truthfully say, “Lord, I can’t do it by myself. I need your help!” is the parent who has begun to prepare the way of the Lord.
And not just parents. Husbands and wives. Neighbors. Church members. Citizens of the world. None of us is all that we need to be.
It is amazing to me, as I look out at my own life – overflowing as it is with weakness, bad decisions, grievous sins, irresponsible choices, genetic flaws, and all the guilt surrounding my boyhood adventures with best friend Dennis A. – that God would still look at me with eyes of love, and want to come into my eraymon to walk with me, and show me the way.
But the first thing I have to do is own up to it. Life is too big for me. I can’t pull it off on my own. That confession is the first part of PREPARING the way. Can you make that confession today?
The second part of preparing the way is accepting that there is a missing component in our lives. And it is a component that only God can bring. John put it this way: “After me comes one mightier than I…I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
One of the great wonders of the world was the Space Shuttle. Someone once told me about being able to be present for a night Shuttle launch, and how the darkness suddenly became daylight as the engines fired off. The whole earth shook under the power of the rockets, and it was like the world came roaring to life in that moment of ignition, and lift-off. Oh, I would have loved to experience that!
But here’s what I marvel at. The explosive thrust of the main engines of the Shuttle is made possible by two very ordinary substances. Liquid hydrogen is stored in one part of that giant external fuel tank, and liquid oxygen is stored in another part of it. Kept apart, the two elements are unable to produce much of anything, BUT WHEN BROUGHT TOGETHER in the combustion chambers – at a rate of about 47,000 gallons per minute of hydrogen and 17,000 gallons per minute of oxygen – they produce 488,000 pounds of thrust that hurls the Shuttle into orbit!
Now a lot of us here today have been trying to live our lives on the strength of just our own hydrogen, our own human water, if you will. But this One who is coming possesses a life-substance that, when combined with your water, gives birth to a power that can bring life even to the desert!
And so, preparing the way of the Lord means not only to recognize your need, but also to acknowledge God’s power as a necessary ingredient for living your life every day! Can you acknowledge that today?
And then there’s one more part of preparing the way.
Accepting His way.
“Show me your way through my illness. Show me your way through my loss. Show me your way through this poverty. Show me your way through this conflict. Show me your way through this doubt. Show me your way through this sin. Show me your way for my family. Show us your way for our church. Show us your way of outreach. Show me your way in my employment. Show me your way for my marriage. Show me your way of parenting. Show me your way for dealing with my problem. Show me your way through my depression. Show me your way through my fear. Show me your way through my weakness. Show me your way through my anger. Show me your way through my alcoholism. Show me your way through life, and I will follow.”
Get the picture?
Can you find yourself somewhere in that list?
So there we have it: Confessing your need. Acknowledging His power. Seeking Christ’s way.
That’s what it will mean for you to prepare the way of the Lord.
And then, dear friends, the rest is up to God!
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