Jesus and John the Baptist

Jesus and John, the Baptist

Mark 1:1-11

Jesus grew up.  We left him heading home to Nazareth at age twelve after his time with the religious authorities at the temple.  Then, for the next 18 years, we can assume that he immersed himself right back into a pretty normal life.  He would have almost immediately started the process of education for his Bar Mitzvah—his passage into life as a man, both in the faith community and the larger society.  This would have meant more and more responsibilities in his father’s work as a carpenter and more and more contributions to the family’s well-being.  Childhood didn’t last long in that world.  Life, itself, didn’t last long either.  (We never hear of Joseph again, presumably because he dies, somewhere along the way.)

So, this young man grows into a man.  He was likely a man who loved his tools and his woodshed and the satisfaction that comes with creating something useful out of raw materials.  He was likely a man who had friends, many of whom had probably been his friends his whole life.  People didn’t move away from the village, after all.  Everyone knew everyone and everyone knew each other’s business.  He was certainly a frequent visitor to the local synagogue with his family.  If, like his family, you went every year to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival, sixty miles there and sixty miles back, chances are you went down the street to observe the Sabbath on plenty of occasions.  That family would have mattered a lot to him because this was a family centered society.  Finally, living in the country, we can assume that he had a love of nature.  He would later tell stories about mustard seeds and birds of the air and foxes.  I bet he saw his fair share of such things and delighted in them.

One open question that has intrigued a lot of people is whether Jesus ever married.  There is no suggestion that he did.  However, what we know is that almost all the men did.  This wasn’t so much a matter of finding some other who “completed” you, in that “Jerry McGuire” sense, as it was two families completing a deal.  Real estate and livestock and cold hard cash were exchanged in such transactions.  Although the evidence points to the conclusion that Jesus didn’t marry, if that’s true, then we can assume that was an issue.  That wasn’t normally an option.  So, there must have been real tension around his “not fitting in.”

In any event, the case that I want to make is that Jesus likely had a life that included work and family and fun and joy.  It had to be hard to wake up one day and leave that life.  If not getting married had been a disappointment to the people who loved him, imagine how those people felt when one day he just left.  He had people he was supposed to be caring for.  He had responsibilities.  The people who loved him expected him to come through for them and he was not going to fulfill those expectations.  No one left home in that world.  People would have seen him as totally irresponsible and a terrible example.  “If Jesus can just up and leave like that, what’s to keep my son from doing the same?”  His actions would have been a direct threat to their whole way of life.

I want you to really pause and consider this point.  Jesus’ family might have considered him a bad brother or son.  His community might have considered him an example not of lived faith but of selfish living.  And…if you believe that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine, then he himself might have really struggled with the fact that people whom he loved would think such things.  He might have even doubted himself.  (Most of the really good people I’ve known in this life doubt themselves on a regular basis!)

Why should you consider this?  Well, if you are ever called to do something (probably not to leave everything and everyone you’ve ever loved behind but called to something, nevertheless) then you were probably doubted and questioned.  Out of all my friends, I had one who told me that he thought going to seminary actually fit for me.  The rest of them pretty universally shook their heads and said, “What?” There were people at a distance from me who liked the idea that I was doing what my father did.  However, the people that mattered most did not cheer this sense of calling.

I just think we should be honest about this reality.  Whatever it is that we feel called to do, it probably involves real change in our lives and real change in who we are.  Those changes require the people who learned to love us for what we used to do and who we used to be to grow with us.  That’s real work that often people are not willing to undertake for the sake of someone else’s calling.  Instead, they look at us and think or even say out loud, “Why couldn’t you just ignore that calling and stay who you’ve been all along?  Why can’t things just stay the way they are?”

Then, Jesus leaves.  Somehow, I suspect things came rushing back for Mary, words spoken by an elderly man thirty years before:  “This child will break your heart.” It was happening, the thing she must have feared and dreaded all along.  Her son was taking up his Father’s business after all…

The question is where did Jesus go.  There are a number of scholars who believe that Jesus became a disciple of John the Baptist, either prior to his own baptism or following that baptism.  All four Gospels go out of their way to tell us about John’s ministry.  All four of them seem to be working out John’s place, with John testifying that he, himself, is not the one but is rather the one who is preparing the way for the one who will follow him:  “I baptize with water but the one who comes after me will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” They couldn’t tell the story of Jesus without first telling the story of John the Baptist, these two men who’s mothers had crossed paths and cared for one another while they were still in their mother’s wombs.

John’s “calling” would have been very different, though, from the start.  Although John’s father was a common priest at the temple, at a young age, John became an Essene, a group of faithful people who removed themselves from society and the temple and lived lives of self-denial and self-discipline.  They wore uncomfortable, simple clothing.  They ate locusts and honey and other primitive foods, foods which were certainly considered “unclean” by the authorities.  They never cut their hair or beards.  I imagine that John’s parents would have felt like they had lost their son years before to a cult.

John’s practices were about as “anti-temple” as they could get.  People depended on priests and rabbis and other designated religious people to oversee their faith and practices.  Those people were trained in the proper way to do such things.  John was never trained by anyone and no one told him what to do.  John was a rogue figure who screamed until people listened and then sometimes screamed at them when they showed up.

John’s main practice—baptism—a rite of purification that was intended to change lives—was a direct descendant of temple practices.  In the temple, though, the water would have been blessed and made holy.  It would have been held in cisterns that had been blessed and made holy.  The only people given access would have been folks who had previously been blessed and made holy.  Everything would have been controlled.  John’s baptism ritual is wildly out of control.  This isn’t holy water in a holy cistern in a holy ritual shared by a holy man with anyone who was sufficiently holy.  No!  This was the River Jordan. This was John, the guy with the terrible hair and beard and the locust wing stuck to his mustache. This was a ritual that was open to anyone who chose to come, but be careful, this guy might just be crazy and you might just drown!  This guy doesn’t bow to the Pharisees and the Sadducees when he sees them.  He calls them a bunch of snakes.

This man is a marketing night mare…and yet this is who Jesus seeks out.  Why? Think about this.  For as crazy as John may seem, there is some real common ground with Jesus.  Like John, Jesus is completely untrained by the “powers that be.”  Like John, he has not been given a title to show off or anyone’s seal of approval.  One of the major things that he and John share is that they are both outsiders.  They both will pay a terrible price for that.

Another thing that they both share is the conviction that people need to change how they live.  Both of them will talk about the need to repent, literally to change directions.  Both of them will understand God to be at the heart of that change.  However, it is hard not to contrast the harshness of John’s message with the radical love that Jesus preaches and teaches and lives.  While John is calling those who oppose him vipers and demanding that people bear fruit or else, Jesus is telling us to love our enemies and trying desperately to teach us how to be a source of grace.  

Of course, this is what happens always between mentors and those whom they mentor:  we go our separate ways.  We agree to disagree but even as we do, we likely agree that neither of us would be who we are without the other.  In this sense, though there may well have been a rivalry between the followers of John and the followers of Jesus, I doubt there was between the two of them.  They both had answered callings at a real cost to themselves.  They both had the hard task of trying to get people to live differently.  They both grounded their work as being on God’s behalf even when their work put them at odds with God’s official representatives.  I think they must have found solace in knowing the other was out there.  And clearly, on the day when Jesus learned of John’s death at the hands of the authorities, Jesus’ heart broke.

But first there is that moment of power when John the Baptizer baptized Jesus, the Christ or Jesus, the guy who ran from his responsibilities back home, depending on who you ask… In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is baptized, sees the Holy Sprit descend on him and hears the voice of God speak to him, saying, “You are my son, the beloved.”  In the Gospel of Matthew, John tries to refuse to baptize Jesus, then baptizes him.  John sees the heavens open and John hears the voice of God, saying, “This is my Son, the beloved.” In the Gospel of Luke, after everyone else is baptized, Jesus is baptized and the whole crowd sees the Holy Spirit descend and hears God speak to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved.”  Finally, in the Gospel of John, John the Baptist goes out of his way to say that he is not the one but that Jesus is and that he saw this for himself when he baptized Jesus.

We could take all those differences and delight in exploring them.  It’s a fun project but that’s not today’s point.  Rather, the point is that there was a day on which Jesus responded to his calling at what had to have been a terrible cost.  Then, there was a crystalizing moment at the very beginning of that ministry when Jesus was baptized by John, when the wild eyed prophet of change and repentance had a direct experience of a God who was present and loving and a Christ who was above all else humble and loving, himself.  For one shining moment, Jesus’ calling was validated and John’s essential place in Jesus' work was made clear.  And in that instant, everything and everyone began to change.