The voice of one crying out in the wilderness.
In Mark’s Gospel, the beginning of Jesus’ story actually begins with John the baptizer, as foretold in the book of Isaiah, in the Hebrew Scripture. John was sent ahead of Jesus to prepare the way, to point people to Jesus. One of my favorite underused words is used to describe John, a harbinger or a person that announces the approach of another.
John’s described as a man with fiery words and opinions, wearing rough clothing, eating locusts and honey. Icons of John show him with wild hair, and a wild look in his eye. He is an icon for me of what it means to be a deacon. Deacons are to point people to Jesus, to work for justice and truth, and to speak hard truths to power, particularly when people are being hurt. As a deacon, I have felt like I was a voice crying in the wilderness, wanting others to feel the loneliness of the orphan, to stop the abuse of the victimized, to comfort the homeless. Deacons are called to be prophets – not fortune tellers, but people who can paint a picture of God’s kingdom here on earth, and help bring people to that truth.
And it’s such a short distance between being the impassioned prophet, and the maniac. Take John the Baptist. If I encountered John in downtown Portland, I would probably chalk it up to deinstitutionalization, that horrible and incomplete social policy experiment where institutions were closed, turning nearly 500,000 significantly mentally ill people out onto the streets. Community mental health institutions were to pick up the slack, but that system was never funded nor implemented. Now these people make up the majority of our nation’s unhoused population.
In any case, there is a fine balance between prophetic voice, and madness. My loved one, for example, sees a future that I cannot see. They talk about things that I do not understand, and their sense of reality is different from my understanding. To be clear, I’m not suggesting John had a mental illness. But I’m suspecting it might be difficult to tell the difference between Holy people through history, and people experiencing mental illness. Not sure what that means, but it is interesting.
Update – Our loved one took the train to Seattle to visit biological family, with plans of staying there for two months. I’ve heard it’s not perfect, but we stand prepared to help support them in their journey, and meanwhile will enjoy the peace in our house that remains.
No comments:
Post a Comment