Holy Wild

We are given a text today that stands sharply against what has become of Advent in our western world. We have taken the concept of “preparation” to mean making a way for a Christmas of comfort, cookies, and chocolate-calendar countdowns. A brood of vipers, a baptism of fire, a winnowing fork, chaff that will be burned with an unquenchable fire, a call to repent, an unruly man wearing camel’s hair, a leather belt with locust and wild honey dripping from his beard in the middle of the wilderness. A scene that doesn’t exactly scream “the cute and cuddly baby Jesus” we’re expecting in just a few weeks. A scene you and I would probably go out of our ways to avoid being confronted by ourselves. But a scene we need more of in our church and in our lives, particularly as we wait and watch for the absurdity of a God who takes on flesh and fire. For it is a story we have become too used to, a story we have, literally, romanticized the hell out of. But it’s a story that is meant to shake us awake, or rather, turn our world upside down. Because, as we’ll see over the coming weeks, there is nothing cute or cuddly about this baby. And it’s a story that needs the wilderness.

All good stories do. In Star Wars, the wilderness becomes Luke’s proving ground—the place where he’s stripped of certainty so he can learn to trust a power beyond himself. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is led through the wilderness toward Mordor, carrying the burden that will ultimately save the world. But the wilderness isn’t just necessary to create an interesting character arc—there’s something at the heart of all these stories that taps into the human longing. Something that tastes, smells, hears, looks, and feels like new life—not just in Hollywood, but in our own lives.

I can’t help but think of my own Mordor story—literally, climbing the same mountain Frodo did in New Zealand. I mean, my motivation was slightly different… But going to the wilderness on the other side of the world seemed like the kick in the ass I needed. At that point in my life, what I thought my future would be and how I thought God worked was crumbling beneath my feet: questions, dreams, and yearnings that were quietly silenced by my Christian community of the day. What once was my “comfort zone” was starting to suffocate me and had begun to feel more like a façade—with those in my circle more concerned about keeping up appearances while my heart was yearning for real answers and the truth about who God really was.

So, logically, I quit my job, packed up my bicycle, and caught the plane to a country I knew nothing about but where I thought God might meet me in my anguish. Cycling through rain, wind, heat, sleeping on strangers’ couches as my resources dwindled—I didn’t find what I thought I was looking for, nor did I uncover any answers to the questions that seemed to be burning me alive. But what I did find was new life. Or rather, new life kept finding me… in the elements, in the unknown, in the kindness of strangers, in the rawness of being utterly outside my comfort zone and shaken awake to my own complicity in maintaining the status quo. So by the time I came home, something had been released—my spiraling thoughts, my anxious questions, the Christian community I finally had the courage to leave, and the tight grip on life I didn’t know I could let go of. God met me in the wilderness. And it changed me.

For this is exactly the rhythm that happens throughout all the stories in the Bible. From Abraham to Moses, from Esther to Ruth, from Mary to Paul. The wilderness has the power to change us—if we let it. For it’s the place where the old can pass away and where we can begin to hear the voice of the one who is begging to birth something wildly impossible and wondrously new.

Which is where we find ourselves today. Our scripture opens with the words “In those days…”—words the prophets of old used whenever God was about to turn the world upside down. The author of Matthew wastes no time doing exactly that: re-centering the status quo. You see, people were used to travelling to the centre-square if they needed something done. And yet, our text subverts this notion; the people go against the grain, against the flow of traffic, to witness what they believed to be the biggest thing that will ever be done. Because they hear in John’s voice echoes of the prophets past that were preparing the way for the long-anticipated promises to be fulfilled.

And if this wasn’t enough, John’s appearance seals it: the camel’s hair, the leather belt, the wild diet—he is dressed exactly like Elijah, the prophet who confronted complacency head-on. The prophet who never died and was, therefore, expected to appear before the Messiah was to arrive. And so, John doesn’t just echo Elijah; he stands as the rough, disruptive embodiment of him—the ultimate sign that God was preparing something new by sending this messenger who refused to play by the rules of polite and politically correct religion.

And the people are onto it. They can taste, smell, hear, see, and feel in John’s words, his battered appearance, and questionable diet that this is the moment their ancestors and they themselves have been waiting for. So they join John by subverting the status quo, going against the grain of the center of power, to meet him and what he signaled was coming in the wilderness. For they knew the wilderness was where God had always stripped away the old and initiated the new. And they knew the wilderness had the power to change everything.

Which is why John preaches “repentance.” A word that has more recently been used to keep people locked into shame, self-hatred, and oppression in order to retain control by the religious powers that be. But a word in desperate need of reclamation. For it literally has the power to birth new worlds, bring heaven to earth, and is meant to liberate us from any notion of shame, self-hatred, and oppression. The Greek verb metanoeō means to turn around or to change heart: a verb that, when done honestly, is meant to lead us into forgiveness, healing, and freedom from the harm we receive and the harm we cause ourselves and others.

But I think the church historian Ronald Allen says it best: “to repent is to take a clear-minded look at the ways in which one’s life colludes with the assumptions and behaviors of the old age. To turn away from such complicity and to turn towards God liberates us into the attitudes and actions of the realm of heaven.” Which is perhaps why John the Baptist in our reading pairs repentance with the kingdom of heaven that has come near.

I don’t know about you, but for me, I need this kind of repentance at least 100 times a day. Because it’s much easier to keep with the status quo. To stick with old beliefs, old patterns, and old ways of doing things. To submit to the systems that often benefit us and allow us to coast until our last days. To harbor old perspectives and clouded vision because it’s comfortable. And yet, this coming of Christ disrupts the old in every way, shape, and form.

For if there’s one thing God does time and time again, it’s revealing salvation through a subversion of the way we think things work and the way we think God works. A revelation that, unfortunately, doesn’t happen when we’re comfortable but when we journey to the wilderness—the only place where we can truly allow and even yearn for the discomfort of a winnowing fork to burn the chaff, that is, the parts of us that do not bear the fruit of new life.

And it is not an easy journey. It requires us to step outside our comfort zones—to listen deeply to the unruly voices of our time—to let go of our old ways of being—and to see where God is being birthed just on the edges of our imaginations, our beliefs, and our status quos. Sometimes this might mean physically going to the wilderness—in which case I highly recommend New Zealand. But most of the time, the invitation is spiritual—just as it was (or, rather, wasn’t) for the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They made the physical journey—but their hearts were still clinging onto old ways of being, old systems that benefited them, and were either too afraid or too doubtful of the kind of new life John’s baptisms were a foretaste of.

And so John calls them a brood of vipers—harsh words that a Canadian like myself can barely utter, but necessary because of how imminent and urgent true salvation was—and continues to be.

So here, in this Advent season, God is calling us back to the wilderness, particularly as we’re surrounded by the comforts of nostalgia, cookies, and chocolate-calendar countdowns—not to shame us, but to free us. Not to deprive us, but to strip away the stories that keep us numb. Not to scare us, but to turn us around so we can see the new thing God is already birthing at the edges of our lives. Because the wilderness has the power to change us—if we let it.

So the question this Advent is not, “Are you prepared for Christmas?” but rather, “Are you prepared to go to the wilderness to meet the God who will change you?” Because we are meant to become a people who are shaken awake, turned around, set ablaze, released of the chaff in our souls so we might embody a life more wild than we could ever imagine.

Because, in just a few weeks, the baby we’re waiting for will be birthed—not a cute and cuddly infant, but the absurd embodiment of a God who takes on flesh and fire to remake, renew, and revive the world. And Advent is its spark. So repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near—and it’s about to change everything.