In the Wilderness

 

In the Wilderness

 

Homily by Lisa Wiens Heinsohn

 St. John’s Episcopal Church

The Nativity of St. John the Baptist, June 21, 2026:

Luke 1:57-80, Isaiah 40:1-11

 

The first time I did a service here at this park for St. John’s was October 2020. It was the first time we gathered together in person en masse after the pandemic. And I’ve had the immense privilege to baptize four St. John’s children right here in the park – Mathilda Otten, granddaughter of Michael Morrow and Kate MacKinnon; Samantha Whitney; and Ingrid and Oscar Kotila. In fact I hear that Mattie calls this her baptism park. On the feast day of our church’s namesake John the Baptizer, I love that memory and that way to honor who we are in the eyes of the Creator and one another and God’s first book of revelation, the sacred earth.

The sacred earth was the teacher who schooled our namesake John the Baptizer. I don’t know if you noticed those words in the gospel reading for today, the origin story of John the Baptist. The last sentence of the reading says, “And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel.” Elsewhere it says that John ate locusts and wild honey and wore a coat of camel’s hair. He was kind of a wild man. The wilderness raised him. And out of the vast heat of the Judean desert, or perhaps the more fertile plain around the Jordan River, John learned to listen to the Spirit, and he learned the ways of God.

And I’m focusing on this today because that is the theme of my sabbatical. Tonight at sunset my sabbath begins, and will continue for four months until I return to you October 19. And the theme of my sabbatical is this: deepening relationship with God’s first book of revelation, the Sacred Earth. There is in Christian tradition the idea that God has revealed Godself to us through two primary sources: the big book of nature and the little book of scripture. I submit to you that we have not taken seriously enough that the Big Book of Nature has much to teach us about the ways of God, especially in conversation with the Little Book of Scripture. And because we have inherited Jesus’ Way of Love after two thousand years of tradition, some of which has been beautiful and some of which has been colonial and violent, the Big Book of Nature can be an important corrective for the ways our thinking and assumptions and paradigms are distorted. Nature teaches us about rhythms of birth and death, of growing and declining, of day and night and seasons. Nature teaches us about the deep interconnection of all things, that each species has a unique genius that is desperately needed by the whole and that each individual also has a unique genius, a charism that is yours and no one else’s but that is not given to you for you—it is given to you for the common good. You are needed. We are all needed.

In today’s gospel reading, John the Baptist’s father Zechariah says something that touches me deeply: The dawn from on high will break upon us and upon all who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. Zechariah likens the coming of God to a dawn. Now I don’t know how often you’ve watched the sun rise, but there are three things that are always true about it: it is always beautiful; it is never exactly the same; and it is always gentle. It is respectful. The sun does not come crashing in like an oblivious person on her cell phone blundering about in the woods. The sun slowly rises, in its great majesty and beauty, gradually showing its face over the horizon, bringing hope and joy and light and color. This is what coming to know God the Creator through nature is like.

On Friday, I am heartbroken to tell you that I was at the funeral of a young woman named Talia. She had been my next door neighbor for years, and she passed away last Sunday only about nine days after she found out she had ovarian cancer. It was such a crushing shock and with her family I am grieving her loss. At the funeral they shared a poem Talia had written when she was twelve, which I would like to read to you now.

“What is a star?” asked a child, staring at the sky.

An adult, annoyed by his ignorance, did sigh,

“A star’s a big ball of gas that remains far away,

Up by the other planets, and past the Milky Way.

Stars are hot and complicated; they’re bigger than a dime.

Now spare me your naivety, child, I haven’t got the time.”

Then the child did grin, looking like the Cheshire cat,

For he knew that stars are much more than that!

Stars are not big balls of gas, good heavens! Bless my soul!

But when the creator was creating the earth, he accidentally left some holes

Soon these holes dotted across the whole sky of night

The creator was going to fix them, but they were such a pretty sight!

So instead, he used them as peepholes, to view the people on the ground

To watch over them, and make sure they’re safe and sound.

Those grown-ups always get things wrong (it’s one of their faults)

Ah, the strange things thought up by those silly adults!

 

Now of course stars are big balls of gas, and of course too they are many other things. The Lakota believe they came from the stars. The Ojibwe believe the Milky Way is where the soul ascends when it is released from its body. It is literally true that we are all made of stardust. My point is that the stars and the trees and the ants and the sunrise and the harvest and rocks have much to teach us if we only can learn to listen. Talia knew this at age twelve and expressed it so whimsically. John the Baptist was raised in and by the wilderness and prepared the way for Jesus, his cousin, who came to show us what a life guided by love can look like.

During my sabbatical, I will be going to Iceland, and the North Shore, and Ireland, and to Ely, to immerse myself in deepening my relationship with the Earth. I am inviting all of you on a parallel journey. There are three books I’m inviting St. John’s to read as part of this journey, and Rex McKee, John Bellaimey, and Dick Howard have this information: the books are Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul by John Philip Newell; Church of the Wild by Victoria Loorz; and Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in the our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller. But beyond anything we can discover in a book, I am hoping you will spend time bringing yourself into sync with the rhythms of nature and receiving the wisdom of the Earth.

So let’s honor this immensely sacred time, this time of transition for me and for St John’s as I embark on my sabbatical this evening, by having some silence and just open our hearts and bodies and minds to become aware of nature all around us. May God meet you there. May the dawn from on high break upon you with love and beauty, wild joy and delight. Amen.

10am Service