readoldthings

Spiritual reading is an important part of Lenten practice, so let's resume our journey through the Gospel of Matthew. When we left off, Jesus had given the major body of his teaching that fills the 5th through the 10th chapters of the Gospel. Matthew 11 begins thusly:

1 And it came to pass, when Jesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities.

2 Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples,

3 And said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?

4 Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see:

5 The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

6 And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.

7 And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind?

8 But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses.

9 But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.

10 For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

John, Again

In this chapter we see the return of that very strange figure, John the Baptist. If you remember, John made his first appearance in Matthew 3. It's always seemed strange to me that whenever John turns up in the Gospels, he does so with relatively little introduction. Mathew 3 reads:

1 In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,

2 And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

The Gospel of Mark opens with a discussion of John:

2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,

“Behold, I send my messenger before thy face,

who shall prepare thy way;

3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness:

Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight—”

4 John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey. 7 And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

This is a longer discussion than you find in Matthew, but you still get the impression that John could have had a whole book all of his own. Matthew almost seems to assume you already know who John is; it's like reading a Superman comic book and someone references Batman. It's not Batman's story, so he only puts in a brief appearance, but you know that he has a whole series of his own.

There is a link between John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, and Johannine sects revering either or both of the Johns have endured from ancient times down to the present day. Both Saints John are celebrated by freemasons; the Sethian Gnostic school revered Saint John the Evangelist, and attributed one of their most important books to him; a tradition of Johannine or Johannite Christianity has many modern expressions, of which the best known is probably the Apostolic Johannite Church; and the ancient Mandaean sect continues to exist to this day, seeing themselves as the true followers of John the Baptist. What the truth in all these traditions is, I don't claim to know. I think it's clear, though, that both Johns were possessed of Gnosis, the unique experiential knowledge of the Divine.

Signs of a Prophet

Notice what Jesus tells us about John-- he's not a reed shaken by the wind; he does not wear soft clothing like those who live in king's houses. John lived in the desert; he wore a shirt of camel's hair and ate that wild food that was most readily available. The type of John the Baptist in modern times is the mountain man or woodsman, of which the American tradition has been blessed with many examples-- far more so than the wealthy pastor, or bishop.

A Story

Some years ago, I spent 5 weeks in the back country, working for a trail crew. Prior to this my life had reached a low ebb. I'd spent the previous year working as an AmeriCorps volunteer at a small nonprofit in Oregon, a job for which I was uniquely unqualified. Out of desperation, I'd googled "conservation corps pacific northwest" and discovered an organization in Eugene which was looking for members. The experience was miserable-- initially. We were sent to a wilderness area outside of Tucson, Arizona. Because I knew that Arizona was a desert, I packed no coat and only a light sleeping bag. But it turns out that there are mountains in Arizona, and the tops of the mountains are covered in snow, as are mountains everywhere in the northern hemisphere February. While our intended campsite was over the mountaintop and down into the high desert, the first day we failed to reach our camp before nightfall, and had to sleep on the snow. That night was the coldest I have ever been in my entire life, and I spent it shivering in my sleeping bag and wondering how I could possibly get out of this.

But something changed over the course of the weeks that followed. I'd spent the previous several years drunk most of the time and glued to a computer much of the rest; I won't tell you how I spent the remainder of my time, but I'll note that in the AmeriCorps organizations I worked for the gender-balance was skewed heavily in my favor. I was, in other words, a creature driven entirely by passion and vice. Now I find myself sleeping on the ground on a mountainside, working 9-10 hours a day digging trails. I had no access to bars or booze or even coffee, or to any computer or even a cell phone. (This took place during those last glorious years before smartphones became ubiquitous; my cell phone's battery died on the first day and I had no opportunity to charge it for a month and a half.)

And in that time, I found that I was slowly stitching myself back together. I reconnected to my body, which I'd become totally detached from during the preceding years. And I reconnected to my spirituality, which had always been nature-oriented-- I grew up in a rural area and spent my childhood roaming the woods, nor did I ever believe the absurdity that the Sun, the sky, the winds and the waters were dead and lifeless. Finally, at the end of 5 weeks, I spent 24 hours alone in the wilderness with just a small bag of food, a book of matches, a pen and a notebook.

The place I found to make my camp was in a dried creek bed in a canyon between two mountains. The first thing I did was to draw a circle in the sand and pray to the spirits of the four directions, explaining that my purpose was to learn from the place and to do no harm, and asking permission to be there. (I had yet made no formal study of magic or spirituality of any kind, but it seemed like a good idea.) Then I felt the need to climb the mountain. I started running up, and as the way became steeper I fell onto all fours, climbing. As I climbed I began to speak, not to anyone else yet, but to myself-- I talked to my body, and I gave thanks to my legs for carrying me up the mountain, my heart for beating, my lungs for breathing. Then I found myself sitting on a walk waving a reed about, shouting a wild, rambling sermon to the trees and the rocks and the mountain goats. Then I got up and ran back down the side of the mountain, paying no heed whatever to where I was going but arriving nevertheless exactly back at my camp.

I grabbed my pen and my notebook, and wrote down everything I had thought and said and all the words of my mountainside sermon. The mountain said, "Write down these words on the book of your heart," and I wanted to make sure I remembered it all. What did I write? Why, I won't tell you, of course; the sermon was for me and the message was for me, as I was, at that time. I am nothing resembling a prophet and it wouldn't help you anything. I will tell you, though, that my life changed after that, dramatically in every way. Where I'd been pale and hunched and depressed, now I was straight and tall and fearless. And, far more importantly, he more important thing was that I had stitched my soul back together-- or begun to. After that I didn't go about afraid anymore, and everything interesting that has ever happened in my life happened after then.

But why do I tell you about all this?

For this reason--

The Gnosis of John the Baptist is still available to everyone who is willing to go into the wilderness, wear a camel hair shirt and eat locusts and honey and cry out "Make straight the way of the Lord!"

Try it some time.

Lent and the Wilderness Within

But what if you don't have a spare 4 days to go wandering about the desert? Well, neither do I, because I have a wife two kids a job and a mortgage and all the things that I didn't have when I was 25. But we aren't meant to go to the wilderness to stay there, but to learn its lessons and bring them back with us. But more than that-- Consider that this is what Lent is for. If you can't go to the wilderness, you can bring the wilderness to you. You do this by consciously disconnecting from the distractions of society and technology and reconnecting to the world as it was created by God. That includes the little world of your own body and soul.

Just remember that when we encounter John in this chapter, he is imprisoned; the Herods of this world don't like anything they can't control.

And remember, too, that John is the forerunner: the messenger, meant to prepare the way, not the Way itself.