There’s some weird characters in the Bible. I’m not sure what it is, but some of God’s followers had some strange grooming habits and even stranger idiosyncrasies. There’s Samson who never cut his hair. Can you imagine never cutting your hair? What a mess he must have been. Some of the Old Testament prophets had it bad as well. Some of them sat around for days or even months in old sacks and covered with ash. Then there’s the man whose friends put a hole in a roof to get him a chance to see Jesus. And these friends are rewarded for their act of vandalism. And these also are all people who are following the direction that God leads them in. There are others throughout the Bible, who are not following God, and who find their own crazy ways to deal with what life has to offer them. One example of this would be Balaam, a prophet who ended up having a conversation with a donkey because he didn’t listen to what God told him to do. It’s not every day you get to read about someone talking with a donkey. There’s also the demon possessed man that Jesus heals, who lives out in a graveyard, and is completely incomprehensible until Jesus casts out the demons.
The point is that there are a number of different people found throughout the Bible with their own unique traits. This makes sense. As you look around, you discover that we all are unique, with our own interests and idiosyncrasies. But one of the most idiosyncratic people of the New Testament was John the Baptist. Here was a man who lived in the wilderness, wore strange clothes, ate bugs to keep alive, and yet he preached repentance to the people of Israel and actually had people who would come from the cities and towns to hear him preach and to be baptized by him. So today we are going to look at the idiosyncratic John the Baptist and see what he can teach us, and see that even with our own issues to deal with, God is also able to use us to spread his word and his truth to those around us.
Let us open in prayer.
John the Baptist had an important job. Now normally when you hear of John the Baptist and you think about what it is that John the Baptist did, somehow baptism seems to enter the picture. This makes sense. After all, it is in his name. Not only is it in his name, it is also the main thing we see him doing. John the Baptist is known for hanging out down by the Jordan River and baptizing people as he convinced them to repent from their evil ways and follow God. So, perhaps John the Baptist’s important job was baptism. And then again, perhaps not. You see, there was something else that John did that was even more important than baptizing people. There was something else that John did that was above his call for people to repent from their sinful ways and follow God. What could this be? What possibly could John the Baptist have to offer this world that was more important than a call to repentance from sins and new life following God? We’ll get back to the answer to this a little later.
John the Baptist lived an interesting life. He was a son of a high priest. His father had served in the temple, his father had served in the Holy of Holies. This is something that was only done by a few people. And the priesthood of the day was something that was quite often hereditary. Sons of priests often became priests themselves, it was the natural order of things. But not for John. John seemed to reject the priestly order of things. Instead, John lived out in the wilderness, away from the temple and the religious practices of his people. And he was a bit of a wild man. He wore camel’s hair clothes and a leather belt and he ate insects and honey. His message was controversial, also. In his call for the people of Israel to repent, he was saying that just going to Synagogue and sacrificing at the temple was not enough. He was saying that something more was needed. He was saying that you had to live a righteous life. He was saying you needed to consciously turn from the evil in your life and repent. He was saying that the status quo wasn’t good enough. If you want to be a follower of God, it needs to be followed by a life of holiness and obedience to God. It’s a message that maybe we need to hear today occasionally. Oh, the details have changed a bit, but the message is much the same. There are still those of us who want to believe that we can just go to church and that is all we need to be called believers or Christians. The company I worked for in Chicago with developmentally disabled adults was run by a man who pretty much thought this way. He was on his church board and he was heavily involved in church activities, he even had me come in and bless the office building when we moved into our own building. But when you talked with him about what the purpose of church, what the purpose of religion was, he basically said that the reason for it was to teach people good morals. When it came down to it, he felt that all religions were about the same and their point was to be a place where children learned the difference between right and wrong. This was evident in the building we worked in as his office had a huge Buddha sitting behind his desk and a virgin Mary outside his office. It was an odd collection of different religious artifacts that just weren’t compatible with each other.
And this is where we get to John the Baptist’s real mission, his important job. It wasn’t just to get people to repent of their sins. It wasn’t just to make sure that they knew the difference between right and wrong and chose to do the right. John’s real mission was to point people towards Jesus. John told people about one who was going to come after him who was going to be the Messiah. He told them that he was baptizing with water, but the one who came after him would baptize with the Holy Spirit.
It is interesting to see how each of the gospels follows a narrative story. The Holy Spirit inspired the writers to write the gospels and as we read them we discover that they each told the story of Jesus in a unique way. We can learn something different from each of them and we discover something unique about Jesus as we read each of the gospels. One thing I find interesting about the gospel of Mark is that it doesn’t start with Jesus’ childhood. It instead starts with John the Baptist. It starts by telling of John who goes before Jesus and prepares the way for Jesus. It starts with someone who points people in the right direction. He convinces people to turn their lives around. He tells them to repent and he baptizes them as a way for them to show the change in their lives. And he points them towards Jesus. And then Jesus comes to him and is baptized by him and then the narrator follows Jesus. We hear about John the Baptist again in Mark 6, but only as his death is related to us and again, he is mentioned in relation to Jesus. John is the one who came before. John is the one who points the way in the right direction. John, in and of himself is not important. His importance is in his connection to the one who comes after him, Jesus.
When it all comes together, we discover that we have much in common with John the Baptist. No, none of us are out in the wilderness living on locusts and honey… though honey isn’t the worst thing to live on, if you ask me. In High School, I lived on peanut butter and honey, a great combination. And, though some of us wear leather belts, I’m not sure if camel hair is the thing to be wearing this season. We are also gathering together in the church, in the place of worship, whereas John hung out far from the trappings of religion. But our mission, as a church and as individuals, is the same mission that John had. We are to point those around us to Christ. We definitely don’t need to be eccentric about it like John was, but it is what we are being called to as Christ’s followers.
Now there are a few dangers involved when you attempt to spend your life pointing people towards Jesus. This becomes very clear when we look at the end of John’s life in Mark 6, where we discover that he was beheaded by Herod. But there are other dangers as well. One danger is that people will start to treat you as if you are something special. If someone is standing up and making a difference in this world, specifically a difference that is for the better, people start to take notice. People will begin to tell you that you have something special. People will begin to tell you that you are more holy, better than others. They begin to treat you like a saint instead of a sinner. This is a problem that John faced. People wanted to treat him special. He was making a positive difference in the life of the people of Israel and they knew something special was coming out of him. Some people thought that he was Elijah come back from the dead. Remember Elijah never died, but was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. And Elijah was known for living in the wilderness and eating locusts and honey. Maybe John was Elijah coming again. Maybe John was the leader that all the people of Israel should be following. Maybe John was the answer to the problems that the people faced. But John spoke up and put an end to this talk. He stood up and gave a message that was clear in keeping him in his place. “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thongs of the sandals of the one who comes after me. I baptize with water, he will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” John avoided the big mistake that many Christian’s seem to make today, both Christian leaders and Christians living out their daily lives. He makes sure that all the focus is pointed not on himself but on Jesus. He makes sure that Jesus is the one who gets the credit for what he is doing. He makes sure that his goal isn’t to bring fame or glory to himself. This gets back, in a way, to the idea that Christianity is about living a moral life. If our faith is really about living good and only living good, then it is about us. If we live good lives, we have something to boast about. If we refrain from sin, we can stand up above those around us and say, “Look at me, I’m the example of what you want to be if you want to be a good person, a good Christian.” But that is not what John did. Instead, he said, “Don’t look at me, look at the one who will come after me, look at Jesus. He is the example of what you are called to live like. He is the one who will bring you salvation, not yourself.”
Are we going to follow the call of John the Baptist? Are we going to make it our mission, make it our ambition, to point people towards Jesus? Are we going to make a point of giving glory and credit to Jesus instead of keeping it for ourselves. I hope so. I truly do.
Wouldn’t it be neat if someone sat down to begin to write the story of your life and halfway into the first chapter they began to write about what Jesus did instead. They started talking about how God worked in your life, they started talking about what God did in your world. What started out being your story turned into the story of Christ.
John the Baptist had an important mission in this world. And we have that same mission. How are we going to proclaim to the world that what Jesus has to offer it is so worthwhile?
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