What do you Seek?

Gospel: John 1: 19-28

To go out into the desert is to seek for God and to be found by God.  This has been a constant theme in the life of Israel, so it is fitting that John leads a renewal movement urging people to come to the desert in search for God in their lives.  Many do come: they atone for their sins, are baptized, and resolve to lead new lives - even soldiers and tax collectors!  

To go out into the desert is also to be outside the confines of the city and its laws and power.  In the city is where people seek to control God: the message, the rules, the worship.  In the city religion is an institution of power in league with the powers of the state.  They cannot control what happens in the desert, but they seek to do so by coming out to question John the Baptist.  John is about something they cannot control; he is a threat as people are listening to him and not to them.  

It is a curious thing: John's message is leading people to moral change in their lives, a change that the religious leaders are neither preaching nor seeking for themselves.  In our search for God in our lives we ask ourselves: where are the voices calling us to be better people in our lives as opposed to the voices who only seek us out for their own advantage? Where is the path to the desert where God is found, and away from the city where God is killed?