Lloyd Douglas is about to tell the story of Christ’s temptations in the wilderness. This is from a sermon entitled, “The Wilderness,” preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on February 15, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)
“One does not rightly understand the setting of this scene,” he says, “unless one is acquainted with another figure in the sacred drama: one John the Baptist. Owing to the fact that this rugged character is cut down in young manhood, paying with his life the costly price of speaking his mind candidly in the court of Herod Antipas, we see so little of him that he is likely to escape observation. Nobody can hope to become fully conversant with the mission of Jesus, however, unless he acquaints himself with this young hermit who plays a part so significant in the life of the Galilean.
“From his youth, John believed that the religion of his fathers faced a crisis and demanded a reform. He never thought of himself as a revolutionist or reformer. He was the forerunner of a reformer. His priestly father, Zacherias, had consecrated him in childhood to the Nazarite order, one of the most severely austere monastic sects ever established; and, in pursuance of that vow, the young Judean had left home at a tender age, to live the life of a recluse.
“Twenty miles east of Jerusalem, flanking the Dead Sea, there was and is an arid waste, in area about half the size of Washtenaw County [the county in which Douglas and his listeners are gathered], where such scraggy vegetation as survived the rigors of the climate only added to the unattractiveness of the sun-drenched, windswept waste of jagged rocks. There, John the Baptist spent most of his life, wandering up and down the parched ravines, shouting, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord’ — which any modern businessman would say was poor advertising, inasmuch as nobody ever went into the Jeshimon Wilderness except an occasional caravan en route from Engedi to Joppa.
“Be that as it may, the time came when thousands made the pilgrimage into the wilderness to hear the hermit preach, and vast numbers, infected by his contagious enthusiasm for a revival of the real spiritual interests of the Hebrew monotheism, believed his words and were baptized with water — a brand-new ceremony by which John welcomed his disciples into the rejuvenated kingdom of the heart. At length, as his influence increased and the crowds grew larger, he was persuaded to move northward, out of the dreary, bleak Jeshimon Wilderness into the more pleasant and accessible meadows along the Jordan River, where he continued his preaching and baptizing until one day a stranger appeared, a young man of quiet dignity and great personal charm, and when John saw him, he exclaimed:
“‘This is He!’
“Jesus was baptized that day in the presence of a mystified throng of thousands. They surveyed him with rapt interest; for John had said, ‘This is He of whom I spoke, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. Behold your prophet, priest, and king!’
“One expects Jesus to make an inaugural address. The time was ripe for it, and the audience was at hand. One expects him to go at once to the Holy City, the glint of whose towers and turrets shone resplendent in the afternoon sun.
“He does neither of these things. Without a word, he emerges from the river and strides rapidly southward toward the Jeshimon Wilderness. He wished to be alone. The great moment had arrived for the inception of his ministry. But he wanted to get away by himself to examine his credentials and take stock of his spiritual resources before beginning his work.
“Thus was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days, a period of self-search which we celebrate in the Lenten season, just now at hand.”
[All of this was merely an introduction to Douglas’s sermon. I’ll tell you about that in my next post.]
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