The Baptist's Cry
On Jordan’s bank the
Baptist’s cry / Announces that the Lord is nigh.
One of the fun things about today’s Scriptures is that we
get to focus on perhaps the most fascinating yet overlooked character in the
New Testament: John the Baptist. John is the Forerunner of Jesus Christ.
Everything he says and does, everything that he is, from the moment of his
conception all the way to his untimely demise, serves as prelude and
preparation for the coming of God in the flesh. John is not so much a prophet
as he is himself a living prophecy.
This makes Advent the perfect season for John the Baptist,
doesn’t it? Advent is all about preparing for the King, waiting for the
Messiah, proclaiming that Jesus Christ is on His way, that the Kingdom of
Heaven is coming to earth even now. And that, brothers and sisters, is the
whole life’s work of John the Baptist.
John has fascinated generations of the Church because there’s
so much that we know about him and yet so much we don’t. We know, for example,
that he is part of Jesus’ family. John’s mother Elizabeth appears to be the closest
living kinswoman to Jesus’ mother Mary—her first cousin, according to one tradition.
John is born only six months before Jesus, and dies shortly before Him as well.
John’s birth is prophesied by angels; his conception is miraculous, as he is born
to a couple beyond their fertile years; he is filled with the Holy Spirit while
still in the womb; he runs off to the desert, preaching the imminent arrival of
God’s Kingdom and performing a baptism of repentance; he gathers around him an
inner cadre of disciples; and while still in his early 30s, John is unjustly executed
by the state simply for speaking truth to a corrupted authority. Sound
familiar? It should. These are all things that Jesus later does as well.
The difference, of course, is that John does not claim to be
the prophesied Messiah, the Christ Whom God promised of old. Rather, John claims
to be His forerunner, assigned by God to cry out in the wilderness, “make
straight the way of the Lord.” Every good Israelite who expected the coming of
the Messiah knew to expect a prophet before Him in order to prepare His way.
The prophets of Scripture had all attested to this, especially Isaiah more than
500 years before Christ.
Many expected the Forerunner to be Elijah, the wonderworking
prophet who had been taken by God up to heaven in a fiery chariot. The Gospels
all describe John in ways that match Elijah—the hair shirt, the leather belt. (But
don’t be thrown by his eating wild locusts and honey. Wild locust is actually an
edible tree with honey-like sap.) Jesus later confirms that while John is not
himself Elijah, as through reincarnation or something like that, John indeed is
gifted with the prophetic spirit of
Elijah, and so truly is the Elijah of his age.
Today’s Gospel reading makes all of this clear. John appears
in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has
come near!” Folks from all around the region travel out to the Jordan river in
order to hear John’s preaching, confess their sins, and receive a baptism of
repentance. And here’s where I think things get very interesting, for two
reasons. First off, we’re not entirely sure just who these people are who are
coming out to see John, and second, it’s not entirely clear what this baptism
means for them.
This isn’t Christian baptism, mind you—the once-and-forever
promise of God that you have been drowned in the waters of Christ’s Crucifixion
and raised up in Christ’s own eternal life. No, this is a Jewish baptism, a
baptism of repentance, and at the time of John and Jesus that meant different
things to different groups of Jews. We know, for example, that the Essenes were
a group of Jewish believers who founded monastic communities in the desert and
daily practiced ritual baptisms for their own spiritual purification. They
believed that the Jerusalem Temple had been hopelessly corrupted, and so
ignored the Temple rites. John sounds a lot like an Essene monk. Were the
people coming to him Essenes from the cities and towns of Judea? Were they Jews
looking for spiritual renewal?
Another group of Jews, the Pharisees, only ever engaged in
baptisms during major, life-changing events, such as conversion to Judaism. By
the First Century, as much as 10% of the Roman Empire’s population consisted of
people born Jewish, proselytes who converted fully to Judaism, and the
so-called “God-fearers” who worshipped the Jewish God while not becoming Jewish
themselves. 10% is a good chunk of the empire, and this explains why the Romans
were always so concerned about what was going on in tiny Judea. Were the people
coming out to John Gentiles—that is, were they people who weren’t born Jewish?
Could they have been proselytes converting to Judaism?
At one point soldiers come to be baptized by John and to ask
him how they should behave ethically as military men. Alas, we don’t know what
sort of soldiers these are! Are they Roman soldiers, part of the Gentile army
occupying the Holy Land? Or are they Natzoreans, the Persian-Jewish horse
soldiers of John and Jesus’ clan who settled in the Galilee? My point is that
we don’t know whether John is only baptizing God’s chosen people, the Jews, or
whether he is in fact baptizing everyone who comes to him—Jew and Gentile,
proselyte and God-fearer.
Either way, he’s certainly not happy when the Pharisees and
Sadducees show up. These are “super Jews,” if you will, holier-than-thou folks
associated with the Temple and the strictures of the Oral Law. John straight-up
calls them a “brood of vipers” and wonders who warned them to come and repent
before the Messiah arrives. But again, is John upset with the Pharisees and
Sadducees because he’s an Essene outraged at the corruption of the Temple—or is
John upset because these people think that ancestry will save them, simply by being in the right group, when John knows that God is now opening salvation to
all peoples through Jesus Christ?
I suspect that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I
think that plenty of decent, godly Israelites came out to the Jordan seeking
renewal, and John gave it to them. I also suspect that there were plenty of
Gentiles seeking conversion, seeking repentance, before the coming of the
Messiah, and John gave that to them as well. The cry of John the Baptist echoes
out not simply to the chosen few, not simply to the cradle religious, but to
all peoples regardless of history or ancestry. What matters is true repentance,
true conversion of body, mind and soul—not that we have to earn the Messiah, but simply that we love the Messiah and seek out
His mercy.
This week I had the privilege of attending a 24-hour retreat
with the Holy Trinity Society, a group dedicated to helping Lutheran pastors
stay true to their callings and ordination vows, true to the Gospel of Jesus
Christ and the orthodoxy of the great Church Catholic. It was wonderful, very
much a mountaintop sort of experience. And it taught me, or at least reminded
me, of something vitally important to every Christian vocation, be we pastors,
teachers, bakers, salesmen, or what-have-you. And that lesson is this: Christian is as Christian does.
Often I get myself wrapped up in concerns over doctrines,
ideologies, specific practices. Often I focus on denominational identities—Catholic,
Lutheran, Baptist. And I won’t say that sort of thing isn’t important. But the
place we truly encounter Jesus is never in having the right answer. We never
find Him in identifying ourselves with the correct political party or ideology
or community of tradition. We find Jesus at the altar. We find Him in prayer.
We find Him when we bend our knees and lift our voice and love our neighbor. Those
are the moments—in worship, in charity, in prayer—when you can feel Him, when
you sense Him coming, powerful and loving and mighty. Those are the moments when
the Baptist cries, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven draws near to you.”
We cannot presume to say to ourselves, “We have Abraham as
our ancestor”—let alone Luther or Calvin or Wesley or Aquinas or even
Augustine. We do not place our trust in the communities in which we were born,
or even those we have chosen. Rather, we are to bear fruit worthy of repentance—which
is to say repent. Pray. Worship. Serve.
And Christ will draw near! Indeed, He is always near. It is we who distance
ourselves from Him. In Him is our true community, the one true Church.
Christ is coming into our world this Christmas. And it doesn’t
matter if we’re Jewish or Gentile, male or female, convert or cradle. It doesn’t
matter if we have the right answers or adhere to the right doctrines or belong
to the right community. We are not saved by right theology. We are saved by
grace through faith. Repent, therefore, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
And no matter who you are or whence you come or what you’ve done, the Kingdom in
Christ draws near to you.
On Jordan’s bank the
Baptist’s cry / Announces that the Lord is nigh.
Awake and hearken, for
he brings / Glad tidings of the King of Kings.
Thanks be to Christ, Who comes for all—and just for you. In
Jesus’ Name. AMEN.
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