SERMON FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT
December 12, 2004
The Rev. Andrew J. Walmisley

"The City of Saba
There is a glut of wealth in the city of Saba. Everyone
has more than enough. Even

the bath stokers wear gold belts. Huge grape clusters hang
down on every street and

brush the faces of the citizens. No one has to do
anything. You can balance

a basket on your head and walk through an orchard, and it
will fill by itself with

overripe fruit dropping into it. Stray dogs stray in
lanes full of thrown-out

scraps with barely a notice. The lean desert wolf gets
indigestion from the rich

food. Everyone is fat and satiated with all the
extra. There are no

robbers. There is no energy for crime, or for gratitude,
and no one wonders about

the unseen world. The people of Saba feel bored with
just the mention of prophecy.

They have no desire of any kind. Maybe some idle curiosity
about miracles, but that’s

it. This overrichness is a subtle disease. Those
who have it are blind

to what’s wrong and deaf to anyone who points it out.
The City of Saba cannot be

understood from within itself! But there is a cure, an
individual medicine, not

a social remedy: sit quietly, and listen for a voice
Within that will say, Be

more silent. As that happens, your soul starts to revive.
Give up talking and

your positions of power. Give up the excessive money.
Turn toward teachers and

prophets who don’t live in Saba. They can help you
grow sweet again and fragrant

and wild and fresh and thankful for any small event."
Rumi

• There is no energy for crime, or for gratitude
• No one wonders about the unseen world. The people of Saba feel bored with just the mention of prophecy.
• This overrichness is a subtle disease. Those who have it are blind to what’s wrong and deaf to anyone who points it out.
• ...sit quietly and listen for a voice within that will say, Be more silent...
• As that happens, your soul starts to revive. Give up talking and your positions of power. Give up the excessive money. Turn toward teachers and prophets who don’t live in Saba. They can help you grow sweet again and fragrant and wild and fresh and thankful for any small event.

Just over the mountains from the suburban sprawl of Southern California is a desert, vast and wild. The view from the ridges below Palomar is of a hazy, dreamlike wilderness of barren mountains, canyons, salt lakes and playas extending infinitely into the purple horizon. From Los Angeles to Anza Borrego is a three-hour journey from desert to desert. Last spring our family made that journey to see the desert bloom. Sheets of purple verbena, golden poppies and creamy desert lilies stretched endlessly across the sandy waste. Desert lavender, chuparosa, barrel-cactus, and crimson ocotillo bloomed in abundance and the air was fragrant with lavender and sage. Those who live in the watered suburbs on the other side of the mountains in LALA Land are oblivious to the glory of Anza Borrego, yet they cling to the imagination that they, in say, Anaheim, live in true paradise. It is, in any case, the fruition of the American Dream.

If Lent is the sandy waste that doesn’t bloom, Advent, as the season of hope, is the one that flowers in outrageous, almost garish abundance. The trouble is that, in our blindness, we cannot see the desert bloom. We are the citizens of Saba (or perhaps Anaheim) who are so preoccupied with what we think is our abundance that we don’t “wonder about the unseen world” which is the desert blooming. And in our “overrichness we are blind to what’s wrong and deaf to anyone who points it out.”

Isaiah, so long ago, was prophet to a blind and deaf people, a people frightened and threatened by enemies without; tormented by injustice and oppression within. He spoke of a blooming desert and a magnificent highway through it to their true home in God. And God himself would carry them. Their tragedy is that they never saw that blooming desert, nor the way through it. They were just too pre-occupied. And so are we...

And John the Baptist voices the longing of all humankind when he asks from his prison cell who Jesus is: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” And Jesus responds, “Yes, the desert is blooming: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them...” The desert bloomed around Jesus and most of the world was blind to it, so blind that they put him to death. But the desert wouldn’t stop blooming and never shall till this world comes to an end.

Without the eyes of Faith, this world of war, injustice, religious bigotry, ethnic hatred, social inequity and sexual violence can seem to be an intolerable desert, a wasteland of despair and meaninglessness. Sadly, many of us perceive the world to be just such a desert. But, like the inhabitants of Saba, we need to stop our insanity and listen for that voice that will say, “Be more silent.” We need to listen to teachers and prophets who don’t live in Saba to “help us grow sweet again.”

John the Baptist was such a prophet who cried out in the desert, preparing the way for the One who would make that desert bloom. His call to “repentance” was a challenge to turn around, to enter a whole new way of being, to live for others as a means of living for God. And this is, of course, the lives we are called to in Christ. We shall not only hear the voice of ancient teachers and prophets, but shall become teachers and prophets to one another. We shall see the desert bloom; but more than that, we shall become the blooming desert – sweet and fragrant and wild and fresh – for the healing of this world.