John the Baptist
John the Baptist
Luke 3:1-20
Last week, I pointed out that Luke is an amazing story teller. We are there at Jesus’ birth. We are with Joseph and Mary and the baby eight days later at the Temple. Then, the screen goes blank and the next time we see Jesus is when he is 12 years old and back at the temple again. Then, we don’t see Jesus for another 18 years. Ask yourself this…how much did you change between 12 and 30? What stayed the same about you?
Before we get to see Jesus again, Luke throws another plot twist our way. If you roll back to the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, before he tells us a thing about Jesus or Joseph or Mary, he tells us a lot about Zechariah and Elizabeth and John. John the Baptist’s birth is foretold before Jesus is mentioned. Elizabeth, the lovely, faithful older woman who had never been able to get pregnant, becomes pregnant before Mary. The focus, prior to John’s birth, is on Zechariah, his father, who is rendered mute after he argued with the angel who foretold his son’s birth. Zechariah and Elizabeth are portrayed in a way that would have made everyone think of Abraham and Sarah, the father and mother of faith.
Just pause and think about that. You’re writing a book about Jesus of Nazareth. You’re trying to make the case that he was the Messiah, even though not all that many people paid attention to him, even though he ended up dying at the hands of the religious leaders of the very people whom the Messiah was supposed to save. Presumably, you want people to take another look at Jesus. So, what you choose to do is start your book by talking about John the Baptist’s amazing origins? What? His mother and father were faithful people who were blessed by God and they remind you of the two most important people in the beginning of the shared history of the people of Israel. Hold it…I thought this was about Jesus?
You get my drift, right? For someone who wants to tell us about Jesus, Luke spends a lot of time building up John. Why would he do that? What can asking that question teach us—about John and about Jesus? Why are these two men paired together so closely? When John leaps in his mother’s womb when the pregnant Mary walks into the room, Luke is saying to us, “These guys were paired before they were even born!”
So, after showing us Jesus at 12, what’s next? The screen goes blank. When it turns on again, the next thing we see is…John the Baptist. At this point, any reader who is paying attention should be smiling. When the screen went blank after seeing the 8 day old Jesus, who would have ever thought that the next vision would be of Jesus at 12. Then, when the screen went blank again, for sure, we expect to see Jesus— just older. Instead, we’re back to John.
Suddenly, we are on the banks of the Jordan River. 18 years have passed. (Luke tells us that this time has passed by telling us all sorts of information about who the rulers are now in the world—all those hard to pronounce names at the outset of the text.) The first thing that Luke tells us about John is that the word of the Lord came to him in the wilderness, which would have made everyone think about Moses and the burning bush. God spoke to Moses in the wilderness and told him to go and set the people free. Is John the new Moses? Before we can even process that thought, John speaks and what he speaks are the words of one of the great prophets, Isaiah: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord!” First, John’s folks were like Abraham and Sarah. Now, he’s the new Moses or maybe, just maybe, he’s the new Isaiah. Holy Cow! Just to seal the deal, Luke tells us that the crowds who came to hear John were huge. John is like the best of Israel’s history all rolled up into one person and he’s a huge success, too!
Things look super promising until the moment John quits quoting Isaiah. That’s when John stops reminding everyone of someone else and starts reminding them of what a pain a prophet really is. A prophet is a person who speaks God’s truth whether you want to hear it or not. A prophet is God’s messenger. He’s not there to foretell the future. He’s there to deliver the truth about what’s going on right now. Almost always, that truth is about how the powers that be or the people who think they’re faithful or the society as a whole are falling short of God’s calling.
John certainly wasn’t going to win friends and influence people with his opening remarks. Every good speaker knows that you have to establish a connection to your audience. John demonstrates his handle on this truth when he eyes up the crowd and calls them a “brood of vipers!” Maybe each individual in the crowd looked around and thought, “Oh, he must be talking about them, not me!” Just to drive the point home, though, he says that no one in that crowd ought to think they are special just because they claim to be descendants of Abraham (which would have been everyone in the crowd.) “That’s not going to matter!” he says—which is really fascinating after Luke has spent so much energy making John look the a descendant, himself of the “second Abraham.”
John says, essentially, “I’m not here to talk about history. I’m not here to talk about your family tree. I’m here to tell you that you need to change and I’m here to tell you what that change would look like.” Really, this message is firmly grounded in the prophetic tradition. Prophets never wanted to talk about the past or about privilege. They wanted to get people to live differently. John is not channeling Isaiah. Rather, John the Baptist is being the prophet, John. He’s not there to remind people of anyone. He’s there to remind people that faith is actually supposed to be lived.
So, one way to draw a crowd is to tell people what they want to hear. We’ve all seen people do this. You do the market research or you lick your finger and put it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing or, you just have good instincts. You compliment everyone on their good looks and their sound values. You make a reference to their favorite sports team. Then, one way or another, you tell them that they are right and that they should just keep doing what they’re doing. People love that stuff!
Or, you can go the John the Baptist route, the prophetic route. You tell the people the truth, whether they want to hear it or not. You tell that truth because it is the truth that you were born, or at least called, to tell. You tell that truth because the one thing you won’t do is lie to those people. And somehow, the crowd recognizes that truth. They trust you. And because they trust you and are a bit shocked at what you are saying so far, they take the next step. They ask you, “What then shall we do?”
First, the crowds ask John this question: “You tell us we need to change. What should we do?” John looks them straight in the eye. Then, he tells them the truth that they already know but that they have just been avoiding: you need to care about more than just yourself and your stuff. Caring about yourself and your stuff is not what it means to “bear fruit” in this life. It would be good for you to share your stuff and to worry about someone else. Just as importantly, imagine the difference it would make for someone who has no coat to have someone walk up and say, “Here, try this on.” Or, imagine that you’re desperately hungry and someone walks up to you and says, “Hey…let’s eat.” That would totally change them, right? At the same time, imagine how that might change you?
Next up to ask the question are the tax collectors. Everyone hated them! They were collecting taxes for Rome to pay off the occupiers. They were skimming those taxes in order to make as much money as they could for themselves. They ask, “Teacher, what should we do?” The answer isn’t shocking: “Collect no more than the amount prescribed to you.” Stop cheating people!
Finally, the soldiers rise to the moment: “And we, what should we do?” The soldiers were in cahoots with the Romans, not unlike the tax collectors. They enforced Rome's laws and Rome’s rules and what they got was the chance to rip off their fellow citizens. They just robbed people at the point of their spears or extorted them with the not so veiled threat of the sword in its sheath on their belts: “Do not extort money.” Stop ripping people off!
Here’s the thing: John is absolutely a prophet in this moment. The moral instruction that he is giving is straight from the very best of the Hebrew Scriptures. If you are a person of faith, then you will live in a certain way. You will treat people as if they matter rather than as if they are a means to some end. You will be a moral person. Your faith will shape the choices that you make. There is nothing new and nothing wrong with John’s message.
What’s wrong is that knowing the right thing to do has never been enough to get people to do it. Sometimes, we know what the right thing to do is but we do something else, instead. Other times, we learn how to live in a way where we don’t see the needs of others. Still other times, we find a way to forget faith altogether and just decide to act like everyone else. John speaks the truth in a really compelling way but speaking the truth has never been enough. This is the heartbreaking story of human beings. We need help!
I think everyone in that crowd listening to John knew this. Sure, we might feed someone for a while. We might share a coat or two. The tax collectors might take a day or two off from skimming. The soldiers might take a break from extorting the crowds. However, who really thought that would last? No one. Instead, Luke tells us that people hoped that maybe John was the Messiah. In fact, I think one of the reasons Luke spent so much time telling us about John is that there were probably still people thinking maybe John had been the Messiah and Luke wanted to acknowledge them.
Here’s the thing though. John’s parents may have reminded everyone of the founders of faith. John may have provoked memories of Moses and Isaiah. John may have spoken as a prophet and spoken the God’s truth to the people. The crowds may have been mesmerized by him. However, Luke wants us to know that John wasn’t the Messiah. John was the one who got things ready for the Messiah. When asked if he was the Messiah, John was humble enough to point to the “one who would come after him,” “the one who is more powerful,” “the one before whom I am not worthy.” The good news was not that people were about to finally figure things out and change. The good news was that God was about to fundamentally re-order the world.
Ultimately, Herod would hear all this noise about John and a Messiah and decide that enough was enough. He would throw John in a prison cell and throw away the key. In the end, John, who had been the first born, who had been the first to embark on a ministry, who had been the first to proclaim that the grown up Jesus was in fact the one, John the Baptist would be the first to die, for the amusement of Herod’s wife.
Linked from before their birth, John and Jesus would be linked in their ministries, with John proclaiming the need for change, and with Jesus embodying that change in the world. I think this was Luke’s way to say to John’s followers, “Come and join the movement!”