You Can't Get There from Here
But God comes here from there. Part One of a John the Baptist Series
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Okay, now for today’s reflection:
You Can’t Get There from Here
A stillness comes over me when I gaze at the night sky. The universe is vast. I can see thousands of stars. Billions of others lie beyond the limit of my sight. Even the very closest one is impossibly distant.
That’s Proxima Centauri, and it is 25,300,000,000,000 miles away. That’s 25 trillion miles. We can’t get there from here. It’s visible to us only because its light has come to us.
John the Baptist knew something about distances. Spiritual distances. He understood the vast existential distance between the Being who made all the stars, framed each grain of desert sand, and created frail, finite creatures like you and me.
He also perceived our deep, sometimes unrecognized yearning for union with that God and the dilemma that we all face as a result. We can’t get there from here. John also had an improbable message for us. God is coming to us. Because God wants to be with us.
Our work is to be ready to receive the God who chooses to dwell in our midst. As John says, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” (Luke 3:4)
This is the first in a two-part series on John the Baptist. In the second part we will think together about what John says about repentance. But this week we’re going to focus on the coming of God into our everyday life. And to do that we’re going to take a look at the prophet Isaiah. That’s because John is actually quoting him.
Isaiah was trying to inspire hope in the people of his day in the midst of what seemed like a hopeless situation. They were being held captive within the borders of the Babylonian Empire. The Babylonians had conquered the Southern Kingdom of Judah. They had toppled Jerusalem’s walls, razed the Temple, and transported the leading citizens, scholars, and skilled laborers to their own land.
Babylon laid roughly 500 miles from Jerusalem. And while this was a substantial distance in those non-motorized days, the kind of distance the Israelites faced between them and God, between them and their neighbor, was far greater.
Strictly speaking, 500 miles could be covered given enough time. The distance that Isaiah talks about is spiritual and relational.
For example, when I say that I am close to my wife, I mean that even when I am in Baltimore and she is in Alexandria, she is closer to me than the glasses resting on the bridge of my nose. Conversely, I was very distant from my father even when he sat across the dinner table from me.
The distance between infinite Maker and finite creature is already insurmountable by humans. Multiply this distance by God’s perfection and the jagged mess we frequently make of our own lives and of our relationships with each other, and you can see that we’re talking spiritual light years.
The magnitude of these spiritual distances is what makes Isaiah’s claim at once so outlandish and so encouraging. No distance is too great for God to overcome. God straightens the crooked path, fills in the yawning abyss, and levels the most daunting peaks. All to reach us, to braid our lives into the divine life, and to reconnect us to one another.
And sure enough, within fifty years the people returned to Jerusalem. God didn’t wave a magic wand. God worked through the people.
God walked them through the wilderness from Babylon to Jerusalem. Working through their hands God restored Jerusalem’s wall and rebuilt the Temple. Surrounded by enemies, the people took heart and lived as the people of God. Not as conquering warriors but as a kingdom of priests.
John the Baptist cites Isaiah’s words with a renewed sense of urgency and expectation. Salvation is near. God is showing up to reweave and to renew the tattered universe.
At this point, John didn’t realize that God shows up in Jesus. He just knows that the Messiah is on the horizon. God is closing the gap. The gap between us and God. The gap between us and us.
The Baptist’s message had to have seemed as outlandish and inspiring in his day as it had in Isaiah’s. John ‘s contemporaries were in captivity, only not on some foreign soil. The Romans cruelly occupied their own country with overwhelming military might.
Jesus came as neither a political leader nor as a military conqueror who would use the Romans’ own coercive means against them. Worldly empires like Rome still use violent force to impose a fearful, unstable conformity on the masses. This is what empires call peace.
Jesus brings justice and unflinching love. Perpetual peace will flow in their wake. In Jesus, God dwells in our midst. In him, we know ourselves as the beloved child of God. Through him, we recognize a child of God in everyone we meet. And by him, others can greet us as the child of God we most truly are.
Let’s face it. This kind of justice and love seems impossibly far away. Light years. This world looks so very different from the ideal I’ve just described.
The early Christians embodied their hope for restoration and reconciliation in their lives. Even amid persecutions, they lived in such a way that forced their detractors to admit, “Look how those Christians love.”
They set the standard to which we are still held by Christ himself. Jesus calls us to love with such abandon and with such courage that we stop the world in its tracks.
Most people will reflexively feel sympathy for the victims of wanton violence and recoil at blatant injustice. There is nothing especially noteworthy about this. But a commitment to stop violence without resorting to violence, to fight injustice with the weapons of love, turns heads.
More shocking still on this fractured planet is the willingness to love even the murderers, the exploiters, and the persecutors. To hold them accountable with mercy. To forgive them even while steadfastly resisting their wickedness. To make room in our responses for God’s restoration of their souls, for their genuine contrition, and thus for the possibility of heartfelt reconciliation with them.
Justice and love are risky business. They make us vulnerable to betrayal and injury and sorrow. But they are Christ’s way to peace. The only way to eternal peace. Guns won't finally end gun violence. War won’t give us lasting peace.
Personally speaking, I do not find this kind of vulnerability especially easy. God has a long way to go to get me there. Spiritual light years. But no distance is too great for God.
But now I’m getting a little ahead of myself. I’m giving you a glimpse of what John the Baptist meant when he said, “Bear fruits worthy of repentance.” (Luke 3:8) That’s our theme for the second and final part of this series.
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The Rev. Pamela Dolan on her book Contemplative Gardening
An Advent/Christmas Series
Bishop Rob Hirschfeld on spirituality, wellness, and mental health (in 2025)
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What do you think — was John the Baptist Jesus’ teacher, ie was Jesus a follower of John? I’ve been on a kick lately that they were both extra-Temple reformers, but where John’s forgiveness-for-free happened via baptism, Jesus’ was via meals.
Tina from Little Rock
Dear Bishop Jake,
I recently made a decision to contact our rector concerning a friend who lives alone without family support. She is in chronic pain and should not be driving or living alone.
No medical interventions have helped.
The rector has made an appointment to speak with her next week.
This may cost our friendship if she figures out I contacted him.
However, I feel it is the just thing to do, out of love.