When I am reading a book, sometimes I like a very simple character to follow – no major surprises. Maybe that’s why I like St. Mark’s portrayal of John the Baptizer. He’s simple; there’s nothing complex about him. “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” Mark says, and then there’s a conflation of Malachi and Isaiah from the Old Testament to show the foreshadowing of John’s ministry, and then – Bam! - Mark just drops John into the story and out we go with John, out into the desert him preaching and baptizing. Even his ruggedness is a little less complex, I guess you would say, only getting a quick nod to his rustic appearance and paleo diet. St. Mark’s sermon notes of John’s preaching are simple, also, as he describes John’s sermons: “There is one coming after me who is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.”
Yes…that’s the kind of Baptizer
that I like: rugged enough on the outside, but kind of soft and cuddly down
deep. Simple: not too challenging; not too edgy. None of that “Brood of vipers”
preaching as recorded by St. Matthew. None of that discussion about how Jesus
can raise up sons of Abraham from stones as St. Luke notes. No, Mark gives us a
John who is safe. I like him – we like him – because he seems, well…safe.
And, that’s how we like God’s
Word, too – isn’t it? We like the 23rd Psalm, and the Lord’s Prayer,
and the Beatitudes. We like Jesus’ baptism, and we like His miracles. We like
Peter preaching at Pentecost and Paul converting the Corinthians. We love the
romance of the Christmas narrative, and our hearts pound on Easter morning with
the cries of “Christ is risen, He is risen indeed, Alleluia!” We like taking
our Scriptures a sentence at a time for Portals of Prayer, and we like a quick
recollection of a Sunday school story we heard – it’s fuzzy in our memory, but
we remember the simple color cartoon-like picture of Jesus laying his hands on
the children. To paraphrase a Sears commercial from 20 years ago, we like the
softer side of the Word. Don’t push me, don’t challenge me, and no matter what
you do, don’t correct me and call out what I want to do. Don’t call my freedom
into question, don’t dare declare my choice a sin and everything is going to be
A-OK.
A safe John the Baptizer,
delivering a safe and fuzzy word of God…Easy-peasy, Advent squeezy.
Or is he? Is John safe? Is he
going to just let us be, leave us alone, to do what we want to do while he sits
idly back and watches? If that’s your idea of John the Baptizer and his
preaching, then be prepared.
That’s exactly what John came to
do: prepare. John was anything but safe, soft, and gentle. He was the last of
the Old Testament prophets who spoke into the wilderness, declaring “Thus
sayeth the Lord!” He was big and bold, even for a prophet, preaching the way
Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah preached. There was thunder in his voice and
fire in his words. He saw the lives of his contemporary Israelites – both
people and leaders – and it wasn’t a life of faith, but a life of farce. It was
no longer about trusting in the promises of God given to the prophets of old;
it was about trusting that they were doing all of the “right” things to please
God. It was about living their lives as sons of Abraham, instead of living as
children of God.
John saw it and he called the
people out – out of their sins, out of their comfort, out of their daily
routines – and he called them out to the wilderness. The wilderness. There’s a
stark reality to wilderness. Get down to deep, deep south Texas or west, west
Texas and get off the main roads. There, you get a sense of wilderness. There
is nothing there – no one, nothing to trust except God’s mercy and grace. And,
there in the wilderness John preaches, thundering, calling God’s people back to
faith, back to trust, away from their self-centered lives of contentedness and back
to what God has declared will come.
His message was harsh to soft
ears; the words hard on his tongue, cutting deeply into the hearts of the
people. Repent. Return to the Lord your God. Turn away from your sinfulness.
Turn away from your soft-serve reading of the Prophets. Turn away from your
selfishness. Turn away and turn to God’s grace and mercy. He is faithful; He is
always willing to receive those who repent, in faith, and return to Him.
As a sign of God’s faithfulness
and His mercy, John baptized those who came out to him. A washing of
repentance, it was more than just a symbolic gesture. It was delivery of God’s
grace – the same grace that had poured out abundantly on the ancient Israel in
the wilderness at the rock of Moriah, when water rushed forth to quench thirsty
mouths, John stood in the Jordan river, baptizing to quench the aching hearts,
souls and consciences troubled at His preaching.
This gift is for you, John was
saying. God’s mercy is for you – all of you who know, believe, and trust that
God has your eternal welfare at heart; who trust the promises of God in Messiah
who is to come; who believe that God will rescue and redeem in His marvelous
way; who wait for His arrival – God’s mercy is for you who realize how
desperately you need a Savior. He is coming…He is coming soon.
That was John. He was not safe,
nor was he soft. But He was God’s faithful servant of the Word. John was the
last of the breed – the final Old Testament prophet who would preach a Messiah
to come. He was foretelling how God would act in time in sending the one
long-ago promised to Adam and Eve, Moses, David, Isaiah and Malachi.
In our modern day and age, there
are too many who are content to follow after the soft-and-fuzzy John the
Baptists, with sugary sweet speeches of encouragement that are far, far removed
from the John of the Jordan. John will not let us do this. John will not let us
be lackadaisical in our lives of faith. He calls us back to the wilderness –
back to God’s Word – and John speaks to us with the same message for today:
Repent. It’s a word we don’t like to hear. Our itching ears lead to believe
that our freedoms, our choices, our opinions, our feelings are paramount. The
world tells us it’s all about the unholy trinity – me, myself and I. Our own
sinful flesh bites and believes, hook line and sinker, that whatever that
trinity wants, it should get. John calls us and says “Repent. Turn away from
your selfish desires. Turn away from your wants. Turn away from your greed.
Turn away from your arrogance. It’s not about you; it’s about Jesus. Stop pretending you can save yourself. Stop
pretending that you can be your own Messiah. Repent. Return to the Lord your
God for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast
love.”
We hear that word “repent,” and
we think that means we have to be sad all the time to show how sorry we are.
That’s not it at all. Repent means turning away from our sinfulness and, by the
grace of God’s Spirit, be returned to following
His Word. It means trusting that we live in God’s grace and we are fully
and freely forgiven – not because we demonstrate how sorry we are with hang-dog
looks, but because Jesus died for you. His death covers all of your sins. Your
greed, your arrogance, your self-trust…in faith, trust that Jesus died and
carried all of that to the cross.
There was nothing “soft” about
that moment. It was the harsh, hard, reality of God’s justice: the perfect
payment of an innocent man for the sins of the unfaithful, sin-stained world.
Jesus, taking into Himself the sins of the entire world, dying the condemned
death of the damned so that you and I would not have to.
Repentance turns to the cross
where Jesus died and says, “I believe that cross is where Jesus paid my price.
And because He did that, I am forgiven.”
That’s the John the Baptizer that
St. Mark gives us. Simple, yes, but not simplistic; neither soft nor fuzzy. He
keeps John as a simple character so he doesn’t get in the way of Jesus.
Is John safe? Of course, not. But
he is good. He’s the Prophet, the baptizer, the forerunner who calls us back to
the coming King.
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