God has strange ways as God’s word bypasses state power and the influence of established religion to trek into the wilderness and seize a strange and prophetic figures like John. If we think about it, it has always been this way as God searches for the ‘other’ - the alienated, the disenfranchised, and dispossessed. God seeks out the one the world bypasses. God does not show up in palaces or temples, or among the political and religious elite, but at the margins of life. God bypasses the game of thrones and disrupts trickle-down religion through a wild man in the middle of nowhere.

God still steps into our world, one that political leaders think is their domain, to show who we really are, to whom we belong and that our true name is ‘the peace of justice’. Appropriately, this week’s theme is peace. Peace is a welcome word for a world rife with violence, fear, oppression, terror. We lament the lengthening global catalogue of injustice and brutality. Peace includes ‘all flesh’ –human beings and all God’s creation. Pope Francis challenges us to look in places where our sisters and brothers and God’s precious Earth are devalued and exploited for short-term gain or profit. These powerful interests ignore the cry of the poor and the Earth.

The wilderness imagery often dominates our imagination as a treacherous context but it also exists independent of imperial power, market values, and religious hegemony. Wilderness is not just a geographical entity but is those terrible places we encounter. James Baldwin writes, ‘One must say Yes to life and embrace it wherever it is found—and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is.’ ‘Nowhere’ becomes ‘somewhere’ – sanctuary - whenever people anchor their passion for the possible. It is God saturated where radical freedom and other-centred service exists instead of the trappings of a society that poison our thinking and contaminate our spirits. Wherever we live we need to confront the wild beasts of war, aggression, violence against women, gay and lesbian people and Muslims, racism, homophobia, sexism, clericalism, competition, greed, and the lust for more property, privilege and power. We need to be signs that another way is possible hills, mountains, valleys or crooked roads cannot separate us from each other. We are invited to enter into the dynamism of conversion, to change. In Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, Ched Myers and others, write, “The experience of wilderness is common to the vast majority of people in the world. Their reality is at the margins of almost everything that is defined by the modern Western world as ‘the good life.’ This wilderness has not been created by accident. It is the result of a system stacked against many people and their communities, whose lives and resources are exploited to benefit a very small minority at the centers of power and privilege. It is created by lifestyles that deplete and pollute natural resources . . . Wilderness is the residue of war and greed and injustice.”  In other words, it results from social, political, economic and religious forces wielded by the privileged and the powerful in our communities. Henry David Thoreau uses wildness as an experiential and mental state, not a geographical phenomenon. John impels us to embrace wildness as a form of human freedom invested in the flourishing of the other. Rosemary-Claire Collard, a geographer writes, ‘A wild life is characterized by openness, possibility, a degree of choice, and self-determination, in which beings are understood to have their own familial, social, and ecological networks, their own lookouts, agendas, and needs.’

Whilst we await the birth of a child in squalid circumstances, the news is full of anger, animosity, violence, and exploitation. John works in the shadow of the powers such as Rome and the Temple classes that claim authority. But John heralds that these have a shelf life and a new life marked by peace and justice is possible.  As we heard, Luke drops the names of those in power and overturns our expectations when the word of God comes to an unlikely person in the wilderness who had no power. He did not follow in his father’s footsteps as a priest, to be a prophet and be on the margins and edges of his society, and the wilderness. He called for change to corrupt economies and systems as does Pope Francis in Laudato si’. It begins in our hearts and must extend outwards. This means building relationships with each other and creation rather than being enemies or rivals.

Pope Francis has taken his cues from the poor. His encounters acknowledge the wisdom found amongst the people who are poor and socially disenfranchised. Francis tells us ‘that the path of Jesus began on the peripheries …….It goes from the poor and with the poor, toward others.’ He knows the misery ringing cities in his own country, Argentina, with its corruption, unjust distribution of land, lack of education and health care for the poor. A world of hope is possible by attending to each other’s needs with our abundance, by removing the terrors of desperation and hatred among us.

What we do today – now - in our own land, our cities, our churches, and at our altars, is a preparation for what is to come. Voices among us speak of the war of necessity and an endless war on terror. Voices speak of the necessity to build more nuclear weapons. Voices promote the market and capitalism as the only realistic way to live in the world. Voices tell us that arms sales are more important than dealing with hunger and lack of health care. Voices speak of foreign aid only as a means to train foreign militaries that oppress and kill their own people with impunity. But, there are voices, like John, that speak of renewal and solidarity; of peace with justice, of kindness, generosity and service; of bigheartedness and hospitality; and of creating a ‘culture of encounter’.

What can we do? Do we demand that our governments, organisations, churches and parishes do what they are meant to do – to build relationships that serve all especially the most vulnerable? Do we confront religious and political leaders who talk about religious freedom as an excuse for discrimination? Do make choices in our consumption to avoid collaboration with human trafficking? Do our choices reflect behaviour where the necessities of the many come second to the wants of the privileged few? Do our consumption choices take into account the kind of world we will leave to our children? Do we dare put up a Christmas crib or Nativity scene yet justify ill-treatment and fail to raise our voices against the ill-treatment of asylum seeker and refugees? John’s voice continues its refrain across the stage of our privileged world: ‘Prepare the Way of the Lord.’

Let us open our eyes to the wonderful and new things God promises and makes present each day wherever we are. May this be a special opportunity to receive mercy, and to give mercy, to transform the heartache, misery, loneliness of this world. Baruch, Paul and Luke call for change. When Baruch says ‘change your clothes,’ he means ‘Get up, Jerusalem, Get up Israel, get up Australia,’ turn around and see. The powerful and privileged have their shelf life but the lowly, the marginal, the exile, the prisoner, the stranger will be lifted up in safety and equality.

Let us remember that before any social change has taken place, there have been years of groundwork by people who did not live to see the fruit of their labour. They worked for a generation yet to come. They were never sure that change would come, but even if the system was not changed, it would not be allowed to change them. They did their work because it was the right thing to do as do many justice movements engaging our world, seeking to make it a safer, compassionate, just home for everyone. They are part of the long liberation story of Jesus.