Desert Rescue
His small white rental car was stuck in a deep mound of sand and dirt. He was frustrated and alone on what may, or may not, have been a road. Printed maps did not chart that high desert valley. Mobile phone service was not found there, at least not back then. It was a sweltering summer day in a country not his own. How would this Isaian text look and feel on that road, in that desert? I wonder sometimes, about what he thought when the dark SUV pulled up beside him.
From today’s prophetic lesson we hear that “A highway will be there. It will be called The Holy Way….Even fools won’t get lost on it.” The prophetic collection of Isaiah is ours and not ours. It is the product of love and of suffering, of neighbors who were broken in the terror of exile, whose holy backs carry these generative texts era after era of dispersion and violence. The original setting, the map if you will, of this Isaian offering, is a landscape of imperial warfare, yet mixed with the strange paradox that life goes on, sometimes beautifully, and we know the Living God to be present in our lostness. Blindness and deafness in artwork of ancient Israel is usually metaphor. We are being called ignorant and stubborn…poetically. The commanding directive of the Hebrew Scriptures is to love the Lord your God with all your mind and body and soul. Yet less explicitly, that core it is followed closely by another dominant truism from God’s lips: y’all have a map, but you don’t use it, this is why you keep getting lost!
These texts throw down our self sufficiency and self confidence. We are hopeful where we should be cautious, and greedy when we should be humble. Isaiah tells us that only the redeemed and ransomed will walk on the Holy Way. The Hebrew here is from family law. It refers to releasing someone from slavery. This kind of redemption and rescue is a word commonly used in the Exodus and Exile traditions. The release, the new life, the flowering is God’s will and action, it does not play by our rules or maps or logic. Exodus and Exile emphasis in the Hebrew Scriptures are the library of ideas and hopes and truths that the Magnificat is cut and pasted from. Yet these are shared texts, that tell of more than just one kind of liberation. The Living God frees us by drawing forth compassion and just action. Leads us in walking together on the long arc of this way, into freedom, for all, for real. I have to wonder about that tourist. He kept driving for miles along a barely drivable road was not on his map. Did he believe that if he just kept driving it would get better? Who hasn’t? Sometimes the right way, is to know when to turn around. Yet there he was.
Most deserts are not the Sahara. The desert is harsh, yet across the planet deserts are the home of some of the most incredible biodiversity anywhere. To live in a harsh landscape, adaptation is required, adaptation is a holy way, the road and rescue that is of God. Staying still, not changing, not trying: that is the way of a rock in space. We proclaim and trust that the Living God, in the most curious and undignified adaptation, chooses to be born of a vulnerable young woman, in a war-torn corner of a brutal empire. The willingness of this young woman to say yes and be the God Bearer, should always be a source of rejoicing should always ask us generative, seed sprouting, meaning making questions for we who follow her son – in every landscape.
The church I served in New Mexico had at the time, an annual mission trip to the area near Monument Valley, a site visited this summer by some of our friends on the Navajoland Pilgrimage. I had spent several summers serving with a congregation in the diocese of Navajoland, and each previous year I had wondered how necessary our large rental SUV’s were, because, well, the residents drive plenty of typical cars. But that summer, I learned why ‘all terrain’ was important. Because even the usually passable ‘main drag’ was awash with thick drifts of sand (An experience rather like driving in snow and ice). After a long week of Vacation Bible School we were almost done with our journey, and I decided that I could risk trying the shortcut I had not taken all week long. A path I suspected to be more dry river bed than road. I turned onto the shortcut, and we could immediately see him from a half mile away. When we came near, I slowed the dark SUV. I could tell from his clothes that he was probably European. He turned out to be German – and he was standing ankle deep in sand. It must have come as a surprise, how could it not as we emerged from the vehicle. Seven people, all white, mostly female, and mostly teenagers. I could see on his face the question: could they be any help at all?
We went back to the church (which we could see from where he was stuck) (He was stuck right above the head of the boy on the left in the photo) and found shovels and boards. But it wasn’t enough. The good news is that we knew the neighborhood, we knew who to ask for help, and rejoice! This lost and stuck sojourners little car was pulled out of the sand (and followed back to the paved roads). The prophetic works of the book of Isaiah declare era after era, how even in the face of brutal heat and sun and even our creating our own disasters through division and complacency, God rejoices in us, makes a new way. God sprouts seeds in strangers and people who thought they knew where they were going. God is calling not someone else but us, pushing, whispering, rescuing you into the mission of the no-exceptions love of Jesus right now. Rejoice! – Give thanks! Say, here I am, send me! If you have been figuratively stuck like that German neighbor in Navajoland: what drew you out, what released you? Maybe it was a stranger, maybe it was a shovel. Or maybe, it grew from the humility of a brave young woman, who said yes, and loved with her whole body, mind and soul.