Matthew tells us that John the Baptist “appeared in the wilderness (Matthew 3:1).” Like most prophets we meet in the Bible, he needs no introduction or pedigree. He simply appears with a word from God. And that word is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near (3:2).” Jesus desires to be near to us; how might we respond to that nearness? In spite of his inconvenient locale, his strange appearance, and his off-putting eating habits, “Jerusalem and all Judea” (3:5) are eager to get out of the city and meet him, listen to him, confess their sins to him and be baptized by him. The life of repentance he speaks of, a life completely reoriented around Jesus, it is touching a place deep in their hearts that no one in the big city is touching. Perhaps they don’t come to John in spite of his strange location and persona, but because of them.
The New Testament’s two most prominent characters, Jesus and Paul, have quite different approaches to the mission field. Paul conducts his missionary work in the big cities. Ephesus, Rome, Corinth, etc. Meanwhile, Jesus sticks to the small towns and the villages of Galilee. The New Testament never offers up any assessment as to which of these two approaches is better or worse. It simply is. Paul in the city and Jesus in the hill country. When the announcement of God’s nearness is spoken and heard, lives rapidly begin changing.
But in reading the Gospels, I can’t help but feel some excitement about living in the kind of place that Jesus liked to hang out. Jesus in the Gospels spends a lot more time in the Bertrams than he spends in the Austins. Whatever Jesus is doing in the world, he’s doing it in places like Bertram, Oatmeal, and Mahomet. And so where else should Jesus’ hype man locate his ministry but the wilderness? John just wouldn’t be John if he wore a suit and tie and did his preaching and baptizing in important Jerusalem buildings. No, the one who prepares us to meet Jesus shares Jesus’ love of quiet, wide-open locales.
Nothing forms us the way wilderness forms us. The silence and solitude of wilderness isn’t just something to be enjoyed when the schedule happens to allow for it. Silence and solitude are purifiers, a furnace of transformation. It’s not extra credit. Wilderness is how God forms us. Even if wilderness is not conveniently close to all of us, wilderness is more so a state of the heart. Even when Jesus goes to the big city Jerusalem, he takes the desert with him. When he’s questioned, he answers with the fewest possible words. He maintains his normal rhythm of work and rest. He sneaks away in the middle of the night to go pray on a mountain. In the absence of a literal wilderness, we create our own like Jesus does; we bring silence and solitude everywhere we go.
When God does a new thing, he starts in the wilderness. He starts quietly. And if we think we’re going to follow Jesus closely and be taught and formed by him – in the midst of constant noise, distractions, crowds, screens, billboards, traffic, meetings, workaholic behavior, and yes, even sermons – we are mistaken, and our walk with Jesus will pay the price. If God wants to get our attention with a billboard, he can. But far more likely, he going to do something much quieter, something we won’t hear or notice unless we stop, listen, and join John in the desert.
Here’s what Jesus and John know – to be the church is to not run from silence and solitude, but toward them. And toward the baptized life of repentance we discover there.