The Awakening Of Desire

Michiel Peeters - In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…”

Here we see the precision of Luke, the evangelist who, after “many” had already “undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us”, also himself “decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you…, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received” (Luke 1:1–4). 

A specific moment in time and space. Christianity is an event, and events happen in precise moments, in determined places, which you can explore and name. 

In that specific moment of the history of the world, “the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.” 

John, Jesus’s cousin, was someone looking for authenticity. And in his search for it, he had gone to the solitude of the desert, a bit like the protagonist of the movie Into the Wild. While he was there, “a word of God happened upon him”, as the Greek text states: something true happened to him, something so true that he felt the need to communicate it, to say it to the others: the word of God that happened upon him made him go “throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of conversion,” spreading the sign of a new beginning, of something new that was happening, within the old, cleaning the old, changing the old. 

What did he proclaim? What was this “word of God,” this ῥῆμα θεοῦ ((rhēma theou- means "word of God" in Greek)that happened upon him? 

It was the fulfillment of the words of the old prophet Isaiah: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” 

First, an appeal: prepare yourself. Be on the outlook. Only those who are waiting, who are on the outlook, will intercept it when happens what they are waiting for. 

Second, a promise: all flesh shall see the salvation of God. 

“Flesh,” in the Bible, means what’s human: our created, fragile, weak, shared humanity. All what is truly human, for better or worse, with all its trimmings. 

All what is truly human shall see, experience the salvation of God. What is salvation? The awakening of our humanity, of our human desire; the education of it; and the fulfillment of it. 

Prepare yourself, be on the outlook, be expectant. For all that is profoundly human, desiring, expecting, shall experience the salvation of God, what we are made for. 

The author has not revised the text and its translation— Second Sunday of Advent - Homily by Michiel Peeters at Tilburg University Chaplaincy - The Netherlands.

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