Imagine people taking buses out of town to hear some wild guy in the desert rail about sin, lining up to get dunked in a river as a sign of repentance. Imagine people lining up to get into a church. Oh, wait, that does happen, some places… religion can still draw crowds, but it’s unusual. What was it that drew throngs out to the wilderness to see John? I’m sure he was some spectacle… but what was it about him that caused them to respond?
“John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” (This week's gospel passage is here.)
Later in Luke’s Gospel, after John has languished in Herod’s prison for years, he sends some of his followers to ask Jesus if he was the one they'd been waiting for; doubts must have crept in to John's mind. Jesus cites the miraculous healings and transformations that people around him were experiencing as evidence… and then he takes the crowd to task about John. “Who did you go out there to see?” he asks. “A reed swaying in the wind? A man dressed in fine clothes?”
What did they go out there to see? Was it John’s fierceness? In Mark’s version of the story, John is pretty mild; in Matthew and Luke he appears more like a wild man, raging about judgment and fire. “The ax is already laid at the root of the trees,” he thunders. “The one who is coming after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” And the fire doesn’t sound like the cozy kind. And still they came, still they repented, still they were baptized. Scared straight? Maybe… Or perhaps they responded to his holiness.
John appears to have had a remarkable clarity about his mission, and a single-mindedness about fulfilling it. He never seemed to forget who he was, the advance man for a bigger show. His mission was to prepare a people to receive their Lord. He had amazing integrity along with his blazing intensity. People came, they wept, they repented, they received his baptism, they went home and told their friends to come. Maybe they came for the show and stayed for the reality. Maybe they stayed because they wanted connection to God, and he was the closest thing they’d seen in ages.
What would draw us to John the Baptist?
How does his call to repent, prepare the way of the Lord, land in our spirits 2000 years later?
Are there aspects of his mission we would like to share?
Are there ways we might call the powers of our world to repentance and transformation?
Are there ways we might call people we know to repentance and transformation?
Are there ways we might call ourselves to repentance and transformation?
I believe we want to connect to God too, deep in our spirits. I believe we want to make more space for God in our lives, and John’s call resonates through the ages to us. Repentance creates space, space that God can fill. Repent, prepare the way. Your God is coming to you!
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