Once again, we are in the run-up to a presidential election year. It seems like almost every time this season comes around, we find politicians saying, “No, I have no intention of running for president.” But still there is speculation. “Will this person run? Will that person run?” Then the person who denied that he or she was going to run for president calls a press conference and says something like: “Friends and supporters have asked me to consider the presidency and so I’ve changed my mind. I really am going to run for president.”
In the verses we are going to read from John’s Gospel today, we see a person attracting a lot of attention in the public arena. He gains a large following. But then he really does refuse to accept any of the offices people want him to run for. The person I am talking about is John the Baptist. Listen for God’s word to you from John chapter 1…
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”
They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”
Now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
“I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”
This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
Here begins the narrative section of John’s Gospel. In verses 1 through 18, John made his main point, that the Logos, the reasoning power behind the universe, took on human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. Now John shows us the first week in the public ministry of Jesus. The passage we are dealing with today, in verses 19 through 28, deals with the first of those seven amazing days.
The very first week of Jesus’ ministry begins with him in the background and John the Baptist in the foreground. A deputation comes to John to quiz him about his ministry. This group of religious leaders is made up of priests, Levites, and Pharisees. It was natural that the priests would want to know what John was up to because he was the son of a priest and therefore entitled to be a priest himself. However, this deputation did not like the fact that John was operating outside of official religious channels. They wanted to pin him down. They were asking in effect, “Just who do you think you are?”
What were some of the offices these religious leaders thought that John was running for? First, there was the office of Messiah. Some people perhaps thought that John was a good candidate for this office. “Messiah”, or in Greek, “Christ”, means “anointed one”. The title refers to the king from the house or line of David. The Jewish people were expecting or hoping for a king to come who would overthrow the Romans and at least run them out of Palestine. Many claimed to be the Messiah during this very exciting time. But John flatly denied that he was the Messiah.
Others perhaps thought that John was like Elijah the prophet come again. In Malachi 4:5-6 the Lord said, “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents.”
For centuries the Jewish people had expected someone like Elijah to appear on the scene. Part of this expectation was wrapped up in the whole story of Elijah not dying in an ordinary way but being whisked off in a chariot flying through a whirlwind. (See 2 Kings 2.) Many first century Jews believed that Elijah would return to usher in the Messiah and the Messianic Age. In fact, Jesus and many of the early Christians believed that John the Baptist was Elijah come again, but John didn’t think of himself that way. (See Mark 9:13.)
Still others thought that perhaps John the Baptist was the great prophet promised by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15-18. But again, John denied it.
“So, who the heck are you?” the priests and Levites asked. Those who function within the ordinary confines of organized religion always have trouble with those charismatic figures who stand outside the organization. They are afraid, I think, of anyone who might draw attention away from their show. These leaders wanted to put a label on John and sort of have him pegged, but they couldn’t pin him down, or find the right box for him, and it bugged them.
In answer to their question, John directed the priests and Levites to another passage of Hebrew Scripture in Isaiah 40. He said, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’” John indicates that he is a voice crying out, to clear the way for the Messiah to come. You can’t see a voice. You can only hear it. In the same way, we don’t pay much attention to someone dressed in orange, doing work by the roadside. We just want to get past the road construction and get on with our trip. But John wanted people to pay attention to his message. It was alright with him if people forgot him, so long as they were prepared to meet the coming King whose forerunner he was.
There are a couple of things to notice here. One is that in ancient times the roads of the East were not surfaced or paved in any way; they were simply like dirt trails. When a monarch was about to visit a certain area, the roads would be smoothed and straightened out. That’s what John the Baptist did for Jesus. He paved the way for his entrance on to the pages of human history.
But John was not simply a quiet worker, smoothing out the road for the Messiah. He was a loud voice telling people to get ready. John was like a siren clearing the road for an oncoming ambulance, police car, or fire engine.
Well, it wasn’t enough for the priests and Levites to hear John’s siren call. They wanted to know: “Why are you baptizing if you aren’t the Messiah, or Elijah, or the Prophet? What right do you have to baptize anyone?” Religious leaders today still get uncomfortable with anyone outside official channels doing stuff they think is their prerogative alone.
It is interesting to note that at least three Hebrew Scriptures seemed to associate the Messiah with baptism. Isaiah 52:15 said of the Suffering Servant, “So shall he sprinkle many nations.” In Ezekiel 36:25 the Lord talks about baptizing his people after bringing them out of Exile: “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean.” And Zechariah 13:1 talks about a fountain being opened “for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.”
One thing that may have complicated the Pharisees’ understanding of John’s baptism was the practice of proselyte baptism. We do not know for sure when the Jewish people began baptizing converts to their religion. It may have happened as early as this. If proselytes were baptized in the early first century, then the Pharisees would have wondered why John was baptizing people who were already Jews.
Another place where ritual washings took place in the first century, in addition to John’s desert baptism, was in the Qumran community. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the late 1940s, that discovery brought about considerable speculation about whether John the Baptist might have been an Essene. John came from a priestly family, and priests led the Qumran community. John’s parents were old when he was born so he may have lived as an orphan for some time. The Essenes at Qumran were known for raising orphan children. Furthermore, John’s ministry in the desert took place not far from Qumran and his ministry was based upon Isaiah 40:3, a text revered by the Qumran community. John practiced baptism, a ritual that was important to the Essenes; both the Essenes and John required life-change before baptism. However, there were also key differences between John and the Essenes, so in the end, we do not know if the two were connected in any way.
We do not know precisely where John got the idea of baptizing people in the way he did, though there is the precedent of ritual washings in the Hebrew Scriptures. John’s explanation to the Pharisees ran something like this: “Look, I’m just baptizing with water. No big deal. But there is someone standing among you, and you do not know him. He is going to come after me and I’m not worthy to untie his shoelaces. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”
When John mentioned untying the straps of Jesus’ sandals, he could not have cited a more menial office. Such was the work of a slave. The Rabbis said that a disciple might do anything for his master that a slave might do except for untying his sandals. That act was too low even for a disciple to perform. Thus, John was saying that he wasn’t even fit to be Jesus’ slave.
When I was growing up in the early 70s, there was a phrase common among Christians. My brother even had this phrase on a bumper sticker stuck up on his bedroom wall. The statement was simple: “I’m third.”
The phrase was a cryptic way of saying: “I am trying to put Jesus first in my life, others second and myself last.” In fact, as many other Christians have noted, that’s the way to spell JOY:
· Jesus first.
· Others second.
· Yourself last.
That’s how John the Baptist tried to live his life. I believe great good can be unleashed in the world when we try to follow John’s example.
I think I have shared with you before the story of the Isenheim Altarpiece from Germany. It was painted in the early 1500s, during the time of the plague.
The crucified Christ in the painting is pitted with plague-like sores, a reminder that Jesus bore our infirmities, as Isaiah prophesied about the suffering servant.
What is most interesting to me is how John the Baptist, in the painting, is pointing his bony figure at the crucified Christ. Though John was not present at the crucifixion, he did say on at least one occasion, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the world’s sins.” In fact, that is what John says in John 1:29…
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”
Pointing others to Jesus—that was John’s calling. And it is ours too. We may think that we are unworthy of such a calling. We may feel too unholy, too imperfect. But that’s when we must remember that even a crooked finger can point others to Jesus.
The famous twentieth century Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, kept a postcard of the Isenheim Altarpiece before him in his study as a reminder that this was his calling too—to point others to Jesus.
The works of Karl Barth take up a whole shelf or more in most theological libraries around the world today. On one occasion Barth was asked to summarize his theology, which he did so in this way: “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
That is the simple yet profound message we have, that we get to share with the world. In fact, that is why Jesus came into our world, to show us the love of God. As it says in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
Power is unleashed when we put Jesus first, others second, and ourselves last. There is a life-altering, world-changing sense of purpose when we see our vocation in life as that of pointing others to the love of Jesus.
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