Our gospel reading for today is Matthew, chapter 3, verses 1 through 12. Matthew gives us this story of a familiar and perhaps troubling figure, John the Baptist. You remember John, dressed in weird clothing, eating insects, and shouting out in the desert. Every Advent we hear from John, because since the early days of Christianity, his proclamation about the promised Messiah, was understood to be about Jesus. Listen again to what Matthew tells us about John, in the wilderness.