Don Friesen
One of Charles Schultz's Peanuts comic strips pictures Lucy speaking with Linus at the base of a hill. She says, "Someday I'm going over that hill and find the answer to my dreams. Someday I'm going over that hill and find hope and fulfilment. I think, for me, all the answers to life lie ...over the grassy slopes of that hill!" In reply Linus removes his thumb from his mouth, points toward the hill, and says: "Perhaps there's another little kid on the other side of that hill who is looking this way and thinking that all the answers to life lie on this side of the hill." Lucy looks at Linus, then turns toward the hill and yells, "Forget it, kid!"
We all live with some measure of failed expectations. A man received a card from his wife, on the front of which were the words, "Sweetheart, you're the answer to my prayers". On the inside of the card it read, "You're not exactly what I prayed for, but apparently you're the answer!"
Where's the Pitchfork? The Flame-Thrower?
John, the Baptist, may have been thinking the same thing about Jesus, for in our gospel reading he sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him what for John is a very diplomatically-phrased question, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" (Matthew 11:2)
John, the Baptist was locked up tightly in the fortress of Machaerus, high on a stark promontory overlooking the Dead Sea. The Arabic name (Al-Mashnaqah) for this fortress means "The Gallows," and indeed, this is where John would meet his death. Sitting in his tiny cell in "The Gallows" John could only dream of his desert freedom. Cut off from his friends and his community, John may have remembered the days in the wilderness when every word he spoke exuded certainty and assurance, but in prison, awaiting death, his world was increasingly filled with uncertainty.
In the days of certainty John had announced that someone was coming after him who would bring fiery judgement, pitchfork in one hand and an axe in the other. As reports of Jesus' ministry filtered back to Machaerus, however, John may have begun to wonder, "Where's the pitchfork? Where's the axe? Where's the flame-thrower?" John may have noted the difference between his message and that of his cousin. There seemed to be far less focus on judgement in Jesus' words, and much more emphasis upon hope and renewal. John was expecting words of warning and judgement, but he was hearing something else — blessings for peacemakers and love for enemies!
When John's disciples went to check out the cause of John's disquiet, Jesus pointed to the evidence around them. "Go and tell John what you hear and see," said Jesus. "The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them." (Matthew 11:4-5)
An Appeal to Sacred Memory
It's true that in Jesus' presence many people were healed and the poor had found new reason to hope, but I don't think Jesus was pointing John's emissaries to the present moment as much as he was pointing them to the past. Yes, the observable results of Jesus' ministry were impressive, but as powerful, if not more powerful, was their evocative power, for they evoked sacred memory. Jesus' reply comes straight from our Old Testament reading — Isaiah 35 — an unforgettable series of images of hope.
Isaiah 35 begins with the desert and its diminished life (Isaiah 35:1), and is addressed to those who live there in their diminishment (35:5-6); it speaks to those to whom the metaphors of wilderness and desert, burning sand and thirsty ground (35:6-7) are more than literary images. Isaiah evokes a picture of deathly drought and of a humanity crushed, oppressed, disabled, filled with despair, and sapped of vitality. Into this deathly context comes Isaiah's vivid promise, for Isaiah believed that into any context, however deathly, disabled, or crushed, God brings life to what we thought was only arid desert land.
"The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad," prophesied Isaiah. "The desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing." (Isaiah 35:1-2) Weak hands will be strengthened, feeble knees made firm! (35:3) Blindness will give way to sight, deafness to clarity of sound! (35:5) Frozen limbs will give way to amazing agility and those who were mute — well, you won't be able to shut them up! (35:6) And places where you wouldn't even expect the hardiest of plants to survive will become incredibly lush gardens! (35:6-7)
Moderns are so immersed in immediacy that we may not have a good grasp on the power of memory, but the Scriptures place great importance upon memory and upon those things that evoke memory. When God gave Israel the Ten Commandments, God told them, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery...." (Exodus 20:2) The liberation from Egypt was indelibly imprinted upon the Hebrew psyche, and one had only to touch the slavery button or the salvation button to evoke a powerful response. The exodus memory was pregnant with meaning.
When the people of Israel complained — complained so bitterly that the place of their complaint was named in honour of their ability to complain (17:7) — God, through Moses, called upon the people to remember. (17:14) Time and time again Moses called his people to remember:
Like the people of Israel, we can also think of reasons to complain. Sometimes our lives feel like a desert, dried up, burnt and brown. After the death of a loved one — a husband, a wife, a child — life becomes sapped of all vitality. After years of marriage, the love between a man and a woman can dry up if not renewed. An illness can sap our lives of vitality. The loss of employment can diminish us and parch our spirit. Periods of loneliness and depression can rob us of all joy, rob life of all interest and challenge. We are no strangers to desert experiences.
The very worst desert experience, however, is loss of hope, loss of those memories that evoke hope. One of the earliest of the sixty short stories penned by Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) is the sad story of Jacob Brodzky, a shy man who managed a bookstore and who married Lila, his childhood sweetheart — a French girl as effusive, vital, and ambitious as he was contemplative and retiring. ("Something by Tolstoi," 1931)
The life of books fit Jacob perfectly, but it cramped Lila. She wanted more adventure — and she found it, she thought, when an agent praised her beautiful voice and enticed her to tour Europe with a vaudeville company. Brodzky was devastated. At their parting, he reached into his pocket and handed her the key to the front door of the bookstore. "You had better keep this," he told her. "Your love is not so much less than mine that you can get away from it. You will come back sometime, and I will be waiting."
Brodzky withdrew deep into his bookstore and took to reading as someone else might take to drink. He spoke little, did little, and immersed himself in his books while he waited for his love to return. Return she did, fifteen years later, but when Brodzky rose from the reading desk he thought she was just another customer. His failure to recognize her startled her, but she gained possession of herself and replied, "I want a book, but I've forgotten the name of it," and then proceeded to tell him a story of childhood sweethearts. A story of a newly married couple who lived in an apartment above a bookstore. A story of a young, ambitious wife who left to seek a career and who enjoyed great success but.... She told him the story she thought would bring him to himself, but his face showed no recognition. Gradually she realized that he had lost touch with his heart's desire, that he no longer knew the purpose of his waiting and grieving and that all he remembered was the waiting and grieving itself.
It's a sad story, a story about a man who was unaware that the love he waited for had come and gone. We may have had all manner of desert experiences, but the worst desert experience is loss of hope, the loss of those memories that evoke hope.
Roses in December
Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937), best known as the creator of Peter Pan, said, in an address to a group of Canadian students, "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." ("To the Red Gowns of St. Andrews," 1922) The dismal months, the desert experiences will come, and it is our memory of God's love and graciousness that will see us through. In December garden roses have faded and withered, but the memory of what they once were is the pledge that they will be so again.
There is a wonderful children's story by Leo Lioni about a family of mice preparing for winter. One mouse — Frederick — prepares for the dull and dreary days of winter by gathering sunrays, colours, and words. His approach is not appreciated by the more pragmatic mice in the family, but in the depth of winter the other mice come to appreciate Frederick's ability to appeal to their imagination. Food is important, but so is hope. When the food eventually runs out, it is Frederick's vivid memories of the colours of spring that awaken hope in his fellow mice.
The Hebrews understood that our future is shaped according to the way in which we remember and recount the stories of our faith. Roses may have faded and withered by December, but our memory of their beauty and smell and texture inevitably brightens a grey December day.
The Advent promise of peace and goodwill on earth may seem impractical in a world awash with greed and war. The King James Version of our Isaiah text reads, "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose." Isaiah's vision may seem as impossible as roses blooming in December, but Isaiah appeals to our imagination and faith, and therein lies our hope. Amen
The Desert of Doubt and Disillusionment
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.