{"id":996,"date":"2012-12-02T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T13:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/?p=996"},"modified":"2012-12-02T08:00:58","modified_gmt":"2012-12-02T13:00:58","slug":"wildmanjohn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/wildmanjohn\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildman John"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Advent 2<\/em><\/strong><\/h1>\n
\u00a0 $\"Replace$ <\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Ignorant of whatever angel<\/em><\/p>\n
may choose to flare suddenly at my elbow,<\/em><\/p>\n
I only know that a rook,<\/em><\/p>\n
ordering its black\u00a0feathers,<\/p>\n
can so shine as to seize my senses<\/em><\/p>\n
and grant a brief respite from fear.<\/em><\/p>\n
\u2013Sylvia Plath\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Wildman John leaps into Advent\u2019s second Sunday, taking my breath away with his matted black dreadlocks, that camel skin he wraps around his bony body, gnarled bare feet sticking out below.\u00a0 His eyes seize me the way his rough hands seize the locusts he eats, the honey he snatches from wild bees.\u00a0\u00a0 He roars warnings: dire times, dereliction of duty, the brink of doom.\u00a0 Advent seems too small a stage to hold him.<\/p>\n
He roars because the feathers he seeks to order are on plumed and manicured people in the city he has abandoned.\u00a0 The city, where life is contrived, where\u00a0truth is artifice; \u00a0the wilderness, where\u00a0godly design is discernible still.\u00a0\u00a0John is a wilderness man now.\u00a0 And John roars because the crowds that come out to hear him are immense, multi-national, multi-lingual, even multi-faithed, according to the Roman historian for the region.\u00a0 They come because the Wildman speaks the truth they long to hear.<\/p>\n
The Bible only records two conversations in which Jesus talks about his ministry.\u00a0 John\u2019s is the first and comes as the opening event.\u00a0 Pilate\u2019s is the second, and comes at the end.\u00a0 So John and Pilate bracket Jesus\u2019 work.\u00a0 And both of them ask Jesus to tell them the truth.<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
John the Baptist by Jan van Eyck\n
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
Jesus tells Pilate he has come into this world to speak the truth, and people of truth will respond to him.\u00a0 John, too, has this purpose.\u00a0 And Luke, as if to underline that purpose, places John in the context of very powerful leaders, secular and religious, whose reputations are for lying, distortions, scandal, greed.<\/p>\n
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas . . .<\/em> Luke writes that this is John\u2019s time.<\/p>\n
In this time, when these leaders lack courage, conviction, strength of will, vision, stamina with which to lead their people, Luke writes that John is as clear as a bell about the truth.\u00a0 The people are walking in deep darkness, and longing for light.<\/p>\n
The wilderness is\u00a0a world shaped by God\u2019s will, steeped in God\u2019s goodness,\u00a0felt in\u00a0rhythms that design life.\u00a0 Immersing himself in these, John begins to speak words formed from beyond the schooled, spun, media-shaped, mind-set of the human metropolis. \u00a0He will pay for\u00a0his voice\u00a0with his life.<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>To know God means to know what has to be done<\/em>, <\/em>wrote Emmanuel Levinas,\u00a0 French Jewish philosopher.\u00a0 I find myself wanting to qualify that definition because I\u2019ve had days, and more than a few, when Pilate\u2019s sense that truth is elusive and out of focus has been mine.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve also had moments like John\u2019s, when I\u2019ve known what I needed to do and how to proceed, come what may.\u00a0 \u00a0And who can say how such clarity comes into us, where it comes from within us or whether it comes from beyond us, and who can say when such moments will arrive?<\/p>\n
But that wilderness is a good place to look for such moments, many say.\u00a0\u00a0 Mary Oliver, the Cape Cod poet, writes\u00a0 Everyday I\u2019m still looking for God and I\u2019m still finding him everywhere, in the dust . . . .<\/em>\u00a0 Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer poet, writes:<\/p>\n
When despair for the world grows in me<\/em><\/p>\n
and I wake in the night at the least sound<\/p>\n
in fear of what my life and my children\u2019s lives may be,<\/p>\n
I go and lie down where the wood drake<\/p>\n
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.<\/p>\n
I come into the peace of wild things<\/p>\n
who do not tax their lives with forethought<\/p>\n
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.<\/p>\n
And I feel above me the day-blind stars<\/p>\n
waiting with their light. For a time<\/p>\n
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.<\/p>\n
That John found his truth in the wilderness, and that people heard and responded to $\"\"$ <\/a>the truth he spoke there, rings true.\u00a0 That the Child of Bethlehem will be born among animals, and that only shepherds who sleep in open fields among animals will get to see this Child, rings true.\u00a0 That Martin Luther\u00a0one night saw the word of God\u00a0in a fir tree with stars shining in its branches, and heard that word so\u00a0powerfully that he brought\u00a0a tree into his house and placed candles on it so his family could hear it too, rings true.\u00a0 That a rook, ordering its feathers, can seize our senses and grant a brief respite from fear, rings true.\u00a0 That all of this, the Wildman, the stable, the fields of Bethlehem, the telling of truth, is awash with angels, rings true to me, as true as\u00a0dawn hovering at the edge of darkness.<\/p>\n
Here, then, comes Wild John,\u00a0\u00a0his Voice\u00a0crying out: \u00a0Prepare the way of the Lord.<\/em>\u00a0 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n
______________________________________________________________Illustrations:<\/strong><\/p>\n
1. \u00a0Baptism of Christ,<\/strong> by El Greco. 1596-1600. Museo del Prado. Madrid, Spain. \u00a0Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.<\/em><\/p>\n
2. Altar of the Mystical Lamb- John the Baptist.<\/strong>\u00a0Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck. Ghent, Belgium. Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.<\/em><\/p>\n
3. Beheading of John the Baptist.<\/strong> \u00a0Icon. \u00a0Image from Wikiwand<\/strong>, free public images.<\/p>\n
4. \u00a0Greek Orthodox Icon of John the Baptist.<\/strong> <\/em>\u00a0Image on page of St. John Baptist Greek Orthodox Church, Pueblo, Colorado, in an article on understanding Greek icons.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Advent 2 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Ignorant of whatever angel may choose to flare suddenly at my elbow, I only know that a rook, ordering its black\u00a0feathers, can so shine as to seize my senses and grant a brief respite from fear. \u2013Sylvia Plath\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Wildman John leaps into Advent\u2019s second Sunday, taking my breath away with his matted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2483,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8,39,42,44,52,54,59,74,75,78,79],"class_list":["post-996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bites","tag-advent","tag-john-the-baptist","tag-lies","tag-luke","tag-peace","tag-pilate","tag-scandal","tag-truth","tag-urgency","tag-wilderness","tag-wildman-john"],"yoast_head":"\nWildman John<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Advent 2 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Ignorant of whatever angel may choose to flare suddenly at my elbow, I only know that a rook, ordering its\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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