Imagine if you went out into a desert at night, no lights, no cameras, no action. Just dead silence, with a wolf’s howl or a snake’s hiss occasionally. So you go out to the dead silence in the pitch darkness, and you bring along with you a bullhorn. Press the “on” button, place the horn to your mouth – in the dead silence and the pitch black – and as loud as you can through the bullhorn you begin to recite the Our Father. How far will your voice carry over the extended plain, over flat land and sand? Will your voice be heard for miles? Would you get the attention of a walking creature, like a fox, the name Jesus called King Herod? Most likely your voice crying out in the desert, especially with a working bullhorn, would be heard through echoes for a handful of miles. That is one big-mouth! I know a few who need no bullhorn. John the Baptist had lots of practice at being a voice crying out in the desert. Living out there for years, having no one to talk to most of the time. Maybe he was present with some others once in a while. Some tourists on a bus may stop by here and there saying, “Who’s that weird-looking guy? Is he eating a grasshopper? Get your cameras out!” We know how tourists are. And from John’s angle; “Here comes another bus of nosy people again!” But most of his adulthood John was likely a hermit. A hermit with a big mouth, an oxymoron if there ever was one. The desert is the most perfect location on earth to have your voice travel for miles. The echoes continue on and on and on, until it fades into the darkness. The Baptist’s is the biggest voice, the biggest mouth that ever entered and left a desert, culminating at a River. From no water to holy water. He owned a crying voice that could be heard for miles in every direction. But John didn’t cry out just anything. It’s not like John told bad jokes through his bullhorn, wait for the silence of his bad joke to stop, then hear if a laughing hyena’s call would return his way. There were no bad jokes in the voice of John the Baptist. Rather, his voice was one of reason, of concern, a voice of holiness and conviction; a voice of truth and light; a voice that, yes, prepared the way of the Lord. John’s was the most excellent voice for conversion through the repentance of sins that carried throughout the desert of our world. His voice is still heard today for those who wish to pay attention. His was a good, godly voice crying out in the desert, all the way to the River. He carried his bullhorn with him. Tourists thought is was a jar of honey. It was his big mouth. We’re created not only for listening. Two ears; one mouth. Not just two ears, being a virtue to attentively hear the other, especially the cry of the poor. But also a big mouth. Now, when a person is a labeled a big mouth, it’s almost always an insult, is it not? When’s the last time “Hey, big mouth!” sounded like a compliment? But there’s at least one situation, one central part of our lives where a bullhorn is a very good tool for us saying to the world as Church, “Make straight the way of the Lord.” Those are words meant not only to be heard in the silence of our listening; they are meant to be spoken through a bullhorn to a word in dreadful need of hearing them. “Make straight the way of the Lord.” This straightness begins with each of us personally. We’re responsible for our straightness. We don’t blame any of our crookedness on others, like adults in a certain walk of life so easily and immaturely do (if you know who I mean). We cannot cry out in the desert, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” if our straightness is rather crooked. That would be a bad joke, where a sneering laugh echoes back our way from the pit below. It’s the holiness and faithfulness of John the Baptist that allowed his voice to penetrate the hearts and minds of the crowds awaiting a Messiah. “Who are you?” they ask. Are you Elijah or Moses, or Mary or Veronica? “No,” he answers. Honesty is a great virtue. Especially when confessing our sins. Then “What are you?” they ask him. What sort of creature are you John? What sort of creatures are we? As we close in on our Lord’s birth, may we draw closer to the sort of creatures who do not shy away from symbolically standing in the middle of the desert, with a bullhorn, with the “on” button lit up, a voice crying out, “Make straight the way of the Lord.” May these words never be a bad joke for us or others, but words that testify in our lives to the light of Christ.