How Did He Know? [3rd Installment]

How Did He Know?

A Story of Jesus and the Desert (continued)

Editor's Note:  for those who have not seen the first 2 installments, they are reprinted here in italics above this week's entry.  Scroll down to [3rd Installment] for this week's part of the story.  The final installment, God-willing, will be here in 7 days, and I will offer a convenient way to print the entire story in its original format for those interested.

How Did He Know?

A Story of Jesus and the Desert [Parts 1 & 2]

After it was over, he didn't remember 40 days - what came to mind were moments when he heard, or remembered, or lived out the words of God.  He entered the desert because he had been driven there.  When he made his way out of the desert, he had come to understand that in living out the words of God, he had become God's Word.

 Few go into a desert willingly, and only the foolish go there alone.  He had entered the desert late on that first day as a kind of surrender - he had surrendered to a bird.

* * * * * * *

That day the Sun had been a friend.  It warmed the edges of the chilly Jordan, where once again a crowd had gathered.  They came to see the Wild One - the Baptizer.  Those in the crowd had been raised on children's stories about the Prophets - the ones who were so filled with God's voice that they would burst forth SHOUTING the pronouncements of the Most High.  On countless evenings they heard tales of Moses, who knew God face to face and who yet - for a time - lived to tell the tale.

 They had heard the stories of Elijah who, reckless of the power of Kings and Queens, had called down fire from Heaven - and had even ridden a chariot of that fire back to the gates of Glory.

 For those in the crowd such stories had the safety of distance.  They were stories of a Time Before.  The stories could thrill the imagination without making them feel the unsettling fear their forefathers had experienced when encountering the ones who had just seen the Holy up close.  They had grown up with the stories about the Prophets without for one minute expecting that they would ever see one.

And then John had appeared.  He preached in the wild places, and people came to know how their ancestors must have felt.  In the Times Before people had suspected that the Prophets were half-crazed by their time in the presence of the Almighty.  When John came preaching and baptizing and living in the wild, his people watched, and wondered - and after a time they came down to the Jordan to be baptized.

When Jesus came to the Jordan he, too, watched and listened.  He could hear John's voice carrying over the water and the rocks from afar.  "The axe is laid to the very root of the tree!  Every tree that does not bear fruit befitting repentance will be slashed down and cast into the fire that never dies!"

He saw children run and cling to their mothers at John's approach, and he saw grown men step back when the Baptizer looked their way.  But he also watched John when he would move towards those who were ready to enter the River.  He would meet them by the rocks, and with the gentleness possessed only by the truly strong he would bend and unlace their sandals, then lead them out to the deeper places.  There his powerful hands would grasp them as Baptizer and penitent plunged beneath the water together - then burst up wet and shaking in the warm air as John's voice would echo, "Clean!  Clean!"

Into this roisterous scene Jesus plunged, and when they came face to face even John was silent for a moment - his face full of surprise and recognition.  Jesus had smiled, and nodded - and then there came the dive into the waters of baptism.

There was one quiet moment when the Jordan closed over them - one moment when the noise of the multitude was replaced with the muffling sound of the river.  Dark coolness replaced the piercing sun.  One moment - and then came rush back up into the air.  Flashes of light surrounded them as drops of water, flung from hair and beard and robes were caught by the sun.

Then came a more intense light - a rare orb of summer lightning shone brief but bright as sunlight - and then the thunder roared - and as it echoed Jesus heard a voice in the midst of the roar saying, "Beloved!" 

It was a moment that could fill a man for a lifetime.  Questions and dreams were answered together, and the road ahead seemed to open before him.  Then came the Sign.

Out of the sun's glare the men became aware of wings.  A dove came lower, then settled on Jesus' shoulder.  John's eyes grew wide, and his mighty voice was stilled again.  The river rilled past, the water tugging at the robes of the two men.  As they walked towards the river's bank, the bird remained - fluttering and stepping to maintain a perch as Jesus moved.

The crowd had grown silent and watched as the men stepped onto dry ground.  The only movement was the rush of the smallest children to see the bird now resting serenely on Jesus' shoulder.  They crowded in reaching and laughing.  When the dove burst suddenly into flight tiny hands stretched higher tracing after - then the bird wheeled back in a flash of white feathers and a chorus of delighted shrieks arose as the little ones scattered.

As it turned out, there would be no chance to talk with the Baptizer - or anyone else.  There was much to discuss on such a momentous day, but the dove kept wheeling and diving at Jesus.

At first he laughed - as did his followers and the crowd - at the sight of a grown man being harried by this flurry of white wings.  There was a single moment of respite - when he stopped to regain the sandals he had left on a rock - then the bird flew at him again and again.  With a final laugh he lifted his strong arms in surrender.  He walked in the direction that, it seemed, he was meant to go.  The dove was now leading, setting out a path.  Jesus walked away from the River - away from friends and familiar voices - and into the silence of the desert places.

[3rd Installment ]

For a brief moment, the voices of the friends and strangers back by the river with John were within reach.  He could have turned back from this strange journey with ease.  A glance back would have shown him John - standing - watching - wondering - as Jesus and his unlikely Guide continued off into the distance.  There had been no moment when John could tell him that he had watched and waited for the Sign of the dove.  In any event, no words could have described John's state of mind when his vision of a hoped for Messiah was shaken from Idea into Incarnation - when the thoughts of someday crystallized into the awe-filled realization that This is the Day.

Behind John the river stilled flowed and tumbled.  The children turned to new diversions.  Their parents gazed at the retreating figure of Jesus, then back at John.  As the Baptizer stepped again into the cold and familiar waters of the Jordan, his Prophet-voice began to rise again.  "I have told you that One is coming who is mightier than I."  He plunged a sun-browned hand into the current and threw an arc of water towards the sky.  "I have baptized you with water," - his arm fell to point at the figure of Jesus disappearing into the desert places - "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit fire!"

In the distance John's voice faded as Jesus continued to walk.  The sun began to fall towards the evening, and from time to time the dove would flutter back.  Soon only the occasional wing-sounds and the gentle crunch of steady steps on stone and sand and the flutter of a robe's sleeve could be heard.

Long before this day, Jesus had learned to see more than just what the world put before him. 

When sprouts would shoot up where the sowers had sowed, he did not see just the beginning of a crop, he saw a thousand individual miracles.  When he looked at the wildflowers covering the hills around his home, he saw evidence of the Creator's care for beauty.  So when the dove appeared at his baptism and seemed to want to lead - or drive - him into the desert, he was willing to go.  He followed with expectation that the Spirit of God - as familiar to him as his own breath - would be waiting for him there.

It was not the first time that he had gone apart, by himself, to a lonely place.  It would not be the last time.  This day was different, though, from mornings when he would go out before the break of day and greet the rising sun with prayers he had known since his childhood.  This journey would last for days and weeks and go on through all of their long night-times, too.

He watched the moon begin the night's journey across the open sky.  Before he left the desert he would see the moon's face wax and wane until he knew that a month had passed - and he would watch it for more than a week after that.

He would know days of both weariness and worship.  He would feel the pangs of loneliness, as well as the trepidation of realizing that he was not in the desert alone - there was an Enemy there, coaxing him between despair and rash action.  But, as he had expected, the Spirit was there, too - still leading him.

He would be gone so long that family and friends would begin to worry.  Many who walked into deserts were never seen again.

He would be seen again, though, and heard.  Before he walked out of the desert he would come to see clearly who he was, and the path he was going to take - and the assurance would come to him in a way that a boy growing up in Nazareth could never have imagined.

[End of Part 3 - final installment next week]