In Part One, a lawyer (BARITONE SOLO), burned out on his work, came home to find the family out. Now, resolving to experience Advent in a hurry, he reads the Scripture assigned for the second week of Advent.
The chorus sings the text of Luke 3.1-6, the music starting with all the pomp and parade of that list of names -- Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, et. al. -- before flattening out into arid, elongated chant, to suggest the dry air of wilderness.
CHORUS:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Phillip, tetrarch of the region of Itrurea, and of Trachonitas, in the high priesthood of Annas, and of Caiaphas, the tetrarch of Abilene, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness, and he went into the region about the Jordan, and he went preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin, as it was written in the words of Isaiah the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness "Prepare a way for the Lord; make His paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, every mountain shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
"The word of God came to John in the wilderness."
Big deal.
Words fill my wilderness,
Abstract and dry as breath.
Routine and meaningless,
My life explained to death.
Words define, fix, analyze,
And take your faith apart.
What they mince, they minimize;
The mind scoffs at the heart.
What once was "justice"
Is just "litigation."
What once was "truth,"
"interpretation."
What's left of "God?"
"Personification"
of hopes that I no longer trust!
I know too much,
I see too clearly,
Nothing can touch
me, everything's "merely."
Creeds and ideals
I once held dearly...
Mirages that fade into dust --
My dry wilderness --
Arid, barren, prayerless.
I'm lost, abject, absurd.
Word, fill my wilderness,
but come without a word.
Part Three
1 comment:
Is it just that I am getting older or am I being worn down by the ugliness of the world? Christmas, the hope that Jesus brought to the world, seems lost in today's climate of all that I have held dearly being dismantled. Indeed, Scott, you have touched on very sad undercurrents in our world - and our need for Christ.
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