A voice cries in the wilderness…
I was a freshman in college. He lived across the hall from me in the
dorm. One night, he told me he was
gay. He shared his struggles and fears
with me. I was one of the first people
he ever told.
A voice cries in the wilderness…
A few years later, an African Descent friend and I were
sitting together late one night in the Campus Ministry Center. We were studying and talking. He told me stories – painful stories -- about
what it is like to grow up black in America.
A voice cries in the wilderness…
On my first trip to Guatemala we spent ten days at an
orphanage. We heard the stories of
suffering and loss caused by years of civil war; of families torn apart by poverty and
violence, of parents willing to make the
awful choice of giving up their children in hopes they would find a better
life.
A voice cries in the wilderness…
“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!”
These experiences, and many others like them before and
since, opened my heart and my mind to the coming of Christ; to the coming of
the One who reached out to the poor and powerless, the outcast and rejected,
the hopeless and the lost sheep of this world.
They prepared the way for the One who reaches out with grace and mercy,
but also with a call to repentance and a change of heart.
In each of these encounters, I met Christ. I met God.
And it changed me.
That is why I continue to believe that the Church of Jesus
Christ must both repent our idolatry of possessions, privilege and power, and
also listen to the voices of the “least of these” in our world today. We must walk alongside immigrants and
refugees, people of color, LGBTQ people, Native peoples, peoples of other
faiths and others the world would put down, put out or simply run over. I firmly believe that it is in relationships
that we encounter God in one another. It
is in these relationships where we discover that God does not just call us to
celebrate what we have in common, but to rejoice in what makes us different and
unique. It is in relationships that we can overcome the
negative stereotypes that are borne on thirty-second sound bites, tweets and
Facebook posts.
The voice of John the Baptist is still reverberating in the
wilderness of our world. The voice of
John is still calling us to turn and look and see God. The voice of John is still preparing a way
into our hearts and lives, so that the love and grace of the Lord might take
root and grow among us.
A voice cries in the wilderness…
Are you listening?
Peace,
Bishop Mike
Thanks for reading!
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