Going to the Edges

Beloved in Christ,

Jesus arrives on the margin. The Judean wilderness where this Sunday’s gospel reading is set, and where Jesus first appears in public in Matthew, is far away from the hub of power and influence that is Jerusalem. It’s rugged mountains, remote, very hot, and almost uninhabitable. This desolate landscape is the rich soil out of which God’s healing reign emerges. 

So if you want to meet Jesus, if you want to encounter the loving power of the living God, you have to move away from the center. You have to go to the small places, to the forgotten people, to the unwanted and the unimportant. 

Advent is an invitation to go to the edges. It’s a time when we sit with wild John, who like the prophets before him, exposes the hollow promise of worldly power and success by inaugurating the revolutionary kingdom of love. It’s a time when we regard the undesirable other through the eyes of God’s endless love. It’s a time when we stand closer to the immigrant who is scapegoated with vitriolic scorn and dehumanizing speech from those at the center. It’s a time when we befriend the harás deserts we all must walk through as an occasion to rely on God alone, and find a new life in doing so. 

Jesus always goes where the pain is. Jesus always dwells with those who are cast out. Whenever we draw a line, Jesus stands on the other side, inviting us to set down our frenetic and futile attempts to justify and save ourselves, and surrender to his healing and liberating embrace. So go into the desert - of your community, of your congregation, of your own heart. Eat some locusts with John for a time. Find Jesus in the small places, and join yourself fully to his reign of love, which has already triumphed, and which even now is coming into the world. 

Grace and Peace, 

The Right Rev. Craig Loya