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The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
We cannot comprehend what comprehends us.
— Wendell Berry
“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
I’ve been thinking about that Lewis Carroll quote from Alice in Wonderland quite a bit in recent days. December is an odd month for Christians who mark time with two calendars. This month is both the end of the secular year and the beginning of the Christian liturgical year, also called the “church year.” As the world ticks off the last numbered days on the calendar, Christians enter into a cycle of sacred stories that compose our lives.
Advent is the beginning. Again.
A full month before the rest of the world marks a new year, Christians have already begun their yearly journey into the heart of our faith — the unfolding encounter with God through Jesus the Christ.
Thus, we begin at the beginning with the birth of Jesus. Or, rather, with waiting for the beginning with the ancient promise to Israel for Immanuel, God With Us, to come and reside with humankind. Advent is the beginning, yes. But it is the beginning in the same way a prologue starts a book.
“I don’t read the introduction,” a friend once said to me. “I always skip prefaces and prologues and get right to the story.”
She couldn’t have said anything more heretical to a me, a writer! “Please don’t jump over the beginning,” I begged. “You can’t understand the whole unless you start with the first part! The entire story is there.”
The four gospels begin with four different prologues, each revealing the point of their narrative in the opening words.
Matthew starts with a genealogy of Jesus, “the son of David, the son of Abraham,” to tell a family story of Israel. Luke, probably the most familiar gospel preface, begins with political history: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the should be taxed.” He sets up a contest between the mundane and malevolent machinations of empire and the gestation and birthing of God’s dream.John opens with a vision of the cosmos — “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him.” — as he proclaims a sort of spiritual Big Bang.
Matthew, Luke, and John — a family narrative, a political thriller, and a speculative tale of divine recreation and a universe turned toward love and justice.
And what of Mark? “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness.”
Mark says an unhinged preacher draped in an animal hair torture garment is eating insects in the desert.
A wild man in a wild place.
That’s it — Mark’s “Christmas” prologue.
Most of the scholarly and polite interpretors of Mark’s gospel refer to it as the story of “The Suffering Servant.” It certainly is gloomy. It is hard to read and harder to preach. The suffering is real.
But what if the suffering isn’t really the point? What if the wilderness is the point?
Mark’s story is that of the Wild Christ.
Brian McLaren (who is a good friend) has turned much of his recent work toward ecological theology and spirituality, the “rewilding” of Christianity. In these three paragraphs, he explains:
Most theology in recent centuries, especially white Christian theology, has been the work of avid indoorsmen, scholars who typically work in square boxes called offices or classrooms or sanctuaries, surrounded by square books and, more recently, square screens, under square roofs in square buildings surrounded by other square buildings, laid out in square city blocks that stretch as far as the eye can see. If practitioners of this civilized indoor theology look out at the world, it is through square windows or in brief moments between the time they exit one square door and enter another. But those outdoor times are generally brief…
There is nothing inherently wrong about civilized, indoor theology. Except this: theology that arises in human-made, human-controlled architecture — of walls and mirrors, of doors and locks, of ninety-degree angles and monochrome painted surfaces, of thermostats and plumbing, of politics and prisons, of wars, racism, greed, and fear — will surely reflect the prejudices and limited imaginations of its makers.
….More and more of us are imagining a wild theology that arises under the stars and planets, along a thundering river or meandering stream, admiring a flock of pelicans or weaver finches, watching a lion stalk a wildebeest, gazing at a spider spinning her web, observing a single tree bud form, swell, burst, and bloom. We imagine a wild theology that doesn’t limit itself to Plato and Aquinas but also consults the wisdom of rainbow trout and sea turtles, seasons and tides. We imagine a wild theology whose horizons are measured not by thousands of years and miles but by billions of light years.
“In all likelihood, wild theology is the mother of civilized theology,” he concludes. “And in all likelihood, civilized theology is in the process of killing its mother and acting as if she never existed.”
Mark is the oldest gospel, written just before or after 70CE. And it is a source for both Matthew and Luke, its stories and events are the seed of the later books. Now, if the central message of Mark proclaims the wild Christ, reimagine Brian’s main point: “The Wild Christ is the mother of civilized Christ…In all likelihood, civilized Christ is in the process of killing its mother and acting as if she never existed.”
“Wilderness” is often depicted theologically as a place of danger. Western cultures have understood wilderness as something chaotic, a thing to be mastered, and that which must be ordered and overcome. You go through the wilderness.
But it is also a refuge where you can hide from your enemies and the evils of the “civilized” world. Mostly, it is a raw and unknowable place of encounter where we come face-to-face with ourselves, our environment, and our horrors, hallucinations, hungers, and hopes. We find ourselves — and God — in the wilderness. And everything is far more and far different than we imagined.
That’s where Mark begins — in the wilderness, that terrifying refuge beyond the reach of the squared world. The sun brutalizes the sand; the sirocco shifts the dunes. The landscape taunts and deceives. Caves provide shelter. Whether a winter flood or a dry season rivulet, the river refreshes, sustains, enlivens. The wild baptizer immerses his followers in its waters while promising another even Wilder One who is coming and will drench the world with the Spirit.
This is the place. The wilderness. Here, God burned like a brushfire and thundered Torah.
The scene is set, the story summarized in just few lines.
The wild gospel. A Wild Christ.
Don’t skip the prologue. Let us begin at the beginning.
