A reading from the Revelation of Saint John the Divine, chapter twelve.
And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
And a few verses on, we hear this. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.
Here ends the reading.
Look at her first, before anything happens to her. She is clothed with the sun. The moon is under her feet. There are stars on her head. And she is crying out in pain. The text does not make us choose. It does not say she was glorious once and then she suffered. It does not say she suffered and was later made glorious. Both are true in the same verse, in the same body, at the same moment.
Some of you have been told that if God were pleased with you, you would not be hurting. You have been told that the hospital bed, the eviction notice, the closed border, the closed church door, is a verdict. This text does not say that. The woman with the sun on her shoulders is in agony, and heaven calls her a great wonder.
Then the dragon comes. The text tells us it is great and red, and that it stands in front of her, waiting to devour her child the moment it is born. The child is caught up to God. And the woman runs.
Notice that. She runs. She is not told to stand and fight the dragon. She is not told that a woman of real faith would have stayed. Nobody in the chapter rebukes her for leaving. Sometimes leaving is the faithful thing. Sometimes you get out of the house, out of the country, out of the congregation, because something there was standing over you with its mouth open. If that is your story, hear it plainly: the text is on the side of the one who fled.
And where does she go? Into the wilderness.
We have been taught to hear that word as punishment. The wilderness is where you are sent when you have failed. It is the far edge, the place with no name on the map. But listen to what the verse says. She has a place there. A place prepared of God.
Prepared means somebody was there before she arrived. Somebody went ahead. While she was still crying out, while the dragon was still waiting, a place was already being made ready in the one direction she would be able to run.
In the Gospel according to John, chapter fourteen, Jesus says, I go to prepare a place for you. We usually save those words for funerals. We put the prepared place at the very end, after everything is over. But here in Revelation the prepared place is in the middle of the story. It is in the wilderness. It is for someone still alive, still hunted, still tired. God does not only prepare a place at the finish. God prepares a place on the way.
Now, who is she? We should be honest. The text does not give her a name. Over many centuries readers have seen in her the people of Israel, or the church, or Mary the mother of Jesus. Those are old and serious readings. In this church we read Revelation with an eye for people who were handed the wrong name. It is our reading, and only our reading, that the scarlet woman of the later chapters is Mary Magdalene, and that the scarlet beast is Jesus Christ, each one misnamed by a frightened age, each still looking for the other. The plain sense of the page does not say that, and we will not pretend it does.
But set our reading to one side for a moment and the chapter still says this much. A woman is in pain. She is hunted. And God's answer is not to question her. God's answer is to make room.
Then comes a small word that is easy to miss. That they should feed her there. They. Who are they?
The text does not say. They have no names and no faces. They are simply the ones who bring the food.
Scripture is full of them. The text tells us that when Elijah hid by the brook, ravens brought him bread and meat, and that later a widow with almost nothing shared her last handful of meal with him. When Israel walked through the desert, there was manna on the ground in the morning, enough for that day.
So look around your own wilderness for them. If you are in a hospital tonight, they are the one who carries the tray, the one who checks on you at three in the morning, the one who explains the treatment a second time because you were too frightened to hear it the first time. Let them feed you. Taking the care that is offered is not weakness. It is what the woman clothed with the sun did.
If you are without a home, they are the one with the soup, the one who remembers your name, the one who lets you sit a while without asking you to move. If you are far from your own country, they are the one who helps you with the form, the one who speaks slowly, the one who does not laugh.
They may not know they are in the Bible. But they are in this verse.
And notice what she does to deserve it. Nothing. She is not fed because she is useful out there. She is not fed because she has repented of running. She is fed because she is there, and she is hungry, and God arranged it.
Now the number. A thousand two hundred and threescore days.
People have spent lifetimes trying to turn that number into a calendar, and many have been hurt by it. We will not do that here. We cannot tell you the date your wilderness ends. We cannot promise you how your illness will go, or when the papers will come through, or when the door will open. We do not know, and we will not flatter you by pretending.
But hear what a number is. The text does not say she was there forever. It does not say she was there for a long time, with a shrug. It says the days were counted. Somebody is counting them. And it is not the dragon. The dragon does not get to decide how long this lasts.
A thing that is counted has a last day. That is what the number means.
Verse fourteen tells it again, and adds something. To the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place. Her place. Not a place. Hers. Many of you have been told, in a hundred ways, that there is no place for you. The text says there is one with your name already on it, and that when your own legs give out, you are carried there.
And the text tells us she is nourished there, away from the face of the serpent. That is what shelter is. For a while, the thing that hunted you cannot see you. You are allowed to be hidden. You are allowed to rest where it cannot look.
The one we follow knew this ground. The text tells us he was in the wilderness forty days, and that angels ministered to him there. He said of himself, the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. So when we speak of a place prepared, we are not speaking down to you from a warm house. We are speaking of one who has slept outside.
There is a later text outside the Bible, called the Gospel of Mary, which pictures Mary Magdalene among the disciples when they were afraid, telling them not to weep, because his grace would be with them and shelter them. It is not Scripture. But it sounds like someone who has been to the wilderness and come back with something to say.
So here is what we ask of you this Sabbath. If you are in the wilderness, eat what is brought. Count only the day you are in. Let yourself be found by the ones who are sent.
And if you are not in the wilderness today, then you are one of them. Somebody near you is being fed by God, and God intends to use your hands.
Let us pray.
God of the prepared place, you went ahead of us into the wilderness. Be near to the ones in hospital beds tonight, the ones with no door to lock, the ones far from home, and the ones who are simply waiting. Feed them. Hide them from what hunts them. Count their days, and bring those days to an end. And make us willing to carry the bread. Amen.