Isaiah 35.1-10, Matthew 11.2-11
“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad. The desert shall rejoice and blossom,” said Isaiah in our Old Testament Reading. Deserts sometimes blossom, exactly as he describes, and it’s clear that he has that in his mind. Flower seeds lie dormant in the dry dusty ground, sometimes for years, until a sudden rainstorm drenches them. They spring up, flower, set seed and die all in a few weeks, and the land returns to its usual parched appearance. It is a wonderful spectacle, , and to ancient people it must have seemed like a miracle. How could so much life be hidden in such an apparently dead landscape?
Stories of the saints often featured miraculous flowering too. Flowers were said to spring up in the footsteps of the Irish Saint Brigid, for example , though the “deserts” in her case were the cold landscapes of Ireland not the burning sands of the desert. Joseph of Arimathea on his legendary visit to Glastonbury after the resurrection was said to have stuck his wooden staff into the ground where it promptly blossomed; what are said to be its descendants still do. I did much of my training for ministry in Glastonbury, and there are varieties of hawthorn there which do indeed bloom in the winter.
The springs and wells which fed this flowering often litter the stories of saints too. Wells have an almost boringly predictable habit of springing up where saints are martyred, and we find stories in the Bible too, like that of Moses, who struck a rock in the desert, as God commanded, and water poured from it. In Jewish legend, a well of water appeared everywhere the people camped, following Miriam, Moses’ big sister, who had watched over him in his rush basket in the waters of the Nile when he was a baby, and rejoiced with him when he parted the waters of the Red Sea. Where Miriam went, the well went too, and on one occasion when she was banished from the camp, the people soon realised that they were now waterless and insisted that she be brought back in. When she died, the well disappeared, and, the Bible says “the people had no water”. (Numbers 20.2) That little phrase is what gave rise to the legend.
Whether we put any credence in these stories or not, the message is obvious. There are times when we are confronted with situations that seem lifeless, hopeless, but what you see is not necessarily what you get. There is more to life than meets the eye. There is more life that meets the eye. God can be at work even when we don’t see him. We can flourish and bear fruit in the most arid and unlikely situations, and the reason for that is that it isn’t down to us. It is the work of God, who is as much at home in a desert as he is in a fertile pasture.
In our Old Testament reading today, that’s what’s promised. The people of Israel are in exile in Babylon, and have been for many decades, long past the point where hope of return seemed sensible. And yet, says Isaiah, God will lead them home, and not only that, as they travel together with him, flowers will spring up in their path, pools of water will appear. Whether or not the journey was actually like that, they did return and rebuild, just as Isaiah said, so perhaps that’s how it felt.
In the Gospel reading Jesus isn’t promising a flourishing desert in the future. He is pointing to miraculous flowers in the present. John the Baptist has sent word to him as he languishes in Herod’s prison, knowing that he is likely never to get out alive. Has it all been worth it? Does his sacrifice mean anything? It’s easy to see how he might question himself, facing a squalid and terrible end, and want to know that his suffering wasn’t in vain.
Jesus’ response is tender, consoling, but very, very definite. “Go and tell John what you hear and see; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them”. It’s almost as if each of these things is a flower from the desert, a miraculous bloom, which he is sending to John. “See! Here is God at work! Nothing you did, nothing that will happen to you is a waste, because love is never wasted.”
All of us need to hear that at some point in our lives. We look back and wonder what we have achieved, what good we have done, what we will be remembered for. What is there to show for our lives? We look forward and wonder how we will cope with the future, how we will cross the trackless deserts that might confront us – illness, aging, the uncertainties that we all face. Most of us are not called to the sacrificial life of John the Baptist, but we are all called to share in God’s work of bringing healing to the sick, good news to the poor. It’s no surprise that that feels like a challenge. It is a challenge. But ultimately, these stories remind us, it isn’t our challenge; it’s God’s.
All we need to do is put one foot in front of another in his love. God says to us “look! I have been at work, here, and here, and here, in the love you have given and received, and if I have been there in the past, why should I not be there in the future to bless and enrich you? It’s not about you, and your strength – you of the feeble knees and the fearful hearts – it is about me, the limitless creator of the universe. I spoke the light into being with a word. Flowers in the desert? Water in the wilderness? Hope in despair? Love out of bitterness? Life out of death? Why should they be impossible for me? Watch, wait, and rejoice!”
Amen
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