Imagine people taking buses out of town to hear some wild guy in the desert rail about sin, and lining up to get dunked in a river. Imagine people lining up to get into a church. Oh, wait, that does happen in some parts of the world. Religious spectacles can still draw crowds, but it’s rare. What was it that drew throngs out to the wilderness to see John? What was it about him, or the moment, 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.
We read in Luke’s Gospel that later, after John has languished in Herod’s dungeon 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 as evidence the miraculous healings and transformations that people around him were experiencing. And then he chides the crowd 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? As Mark tells the story, John is fairly mild; in Matthew and Luke he appears wilder, 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.” That fire does not sound like the cozy kind. Yet still they came, still they repented, still they were baptized. Scared straight? Maybe… Or maybe 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 forgot 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 alongside a 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 to connect with God, and John was the closest they’d come 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, to prepare hearts to receive Christ?
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. 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, make some space. Your God is coming to you, and God wants to hang out.
No comments:
Post a Comment