An Alien Harbinger of Joy (Mark 1:1-8)

I spend a lot of my life dashing from place to place - blasting for here to there at the maximum speed possible, but when I walked the Camino de Santiago, across the north of Spain, I had to take in the world at walking pace. In doing that, you see the landscape slowly shift. Mountains give way to hills that in turn give way to plains. Plains rise up to hills that eventually become mountains again. Also, you don’t so much arrive in a city as watch the city slowly cut itself in the countryside.

The Camino has a goal. You want to arrive in Santiago de Compostella. The first time that I went, I gave myself an additional, arbitrary goal. I wanted to arrive in Santiago specifically on my 20th birthday. In my late teens, the idea of living to 20 felt like an unachievable goal. Depression, anxiety, stress, et al. felt all but certain to prevent me from reaching the beginning of a third decade of life. I didn’t set out on my pilgrimage with any particular goal, but at some point on my journey, I decided that getting to Santiago would mark a turning point in my life and that got tied to the idea of having, remarkably, lived to 20.

By week four of walking every day and living out of a backpack, physically, I only had a few dozen miles to go, but psychologically, I felt like the trees and mountains would never end. Even as I woke for my theoretical last day on the trail to the sight of a large German man’s bear rear end uncomfortably close to my face, I couldn’t wrap my head around actually arriving. I sang “Happy Birthday” to myself, packed up my gear for the 30th time, and set out to another hike through a misty, mountain forest.

A few hours in, a strange and austere sight greeted me. I emerged from a forest to a highway and rows of huge lights on poles, a couple of dozen feet tall. The structures baffled me. There were a lot of lights, and they were very tall. What were they? Why were they so huge? Why were there so many lights? Had I stumbled upon something secret or alien? Days and days of mountains and trees had perhaps warped my mind a little bit. The approaching aircraft brought me so clarity. It was the Santiago airport. The lights marked the approach to the runway. They needed the tall poles because the airport, like everything else, was on a rise in the land. Once I had clawed my mind back from Area 51 fantasies, hope flooded my system. I finally felt close to Santiago, close to meeting my arbitrary and deeply important goal.

The traditional spot where pilgrims are supposed to feel like they’ve almost arrived is the town of Lavacolla. Its name comes from the fact that pilgrims would prepare themselves for their arrival and the end of their trek, by cleaning themselves. The literal translation is a mildly rude way of saying, “washing your bottom.” The airport got built, many centuries later and even further out, so my harbinger of joy was not the opportunity to lava my…rear but the utterly alien landscape of airport landing lights.

I see these landing lights in Mark’s description of John the Baptist. He too is a strange prophet of tremendous joy. Mark highlights John’s other worldly nature. “Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.” (Mark 1:6 NRSV) John lived out of step with his own society. Normal first century Judeans didn’t wear rough clothes and live off desert insects. He placed himself deliberately on the fringe.

Yet, from this outsider came a message of joy after over 500 years of waiting. God’s people returned from exile in 539 BC. Nehemiah and team rebuild the Temple some 80 to 90 years later. From that point on, a kind of stasis sets in. They live in the promised land. They worship at the Temple. They live under the rule of various different empires. Persians, Greeks, and Romans, each got a turn. They live without any sign of a Messiah from the House of David. By the time John gets into the baptizing and proclaiming business, centuries have passed with no sign of change. They live in an endless tunnel of oppressive empires and only a promise that God will do something bigger.

John stepped out onto that particular stage and broke through that particular cycle. He became the messenger heralded by Isaiah. “He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’” (Mark 1:7-8 NRSV) He was not exactly the expected vehicle for this message, and one can easily imagine that few folks expected to hear anything at all. Instead, all of a sudden, an unusual man proclaimed his words of hope.

Both my strange Camino encounter and John the Baptist are highly specific occurrences, but I think that they speak to something broader about God’s hope. We never know when and from where our hope will come. We never know how it will show up. We might have expectation of timing and messenger, but we should probably throw those out the window. We expect smooth, clear, linear processes, but sometimes, hope breaks through in surprising ways. Pain, hopeless, and suffering can all seem like impenetrable tunnels, but the harbinger of hope that might break you out could be just around the corner, just beyond the next break in the trees, or already proclaiming good news in your nearest wilderness.