John the Scandalous Baptist

Since St. John the Forerunner and Baptist adorns every icon-screen in the Orthodox world it is hard to imagine that he was ever scandalously controversial.  But he was.  And what was it that made the child of desert so controversial?  What did John the Baptist do that was considered so scandalous?  Odd to say, it was his baptizing.  Specifically, his habit of baptizing Jews.  For us baptism is not just not scandalous, but eminently respectable, and when babies are the ones being baptized, rather cute—a nice, family, Kodak moment.  It is hard to imagine that it was ever otherwise.  But assuredly it was.

It seems as if John’s baptism was rooted in and modelled after Jewish proselyte baptism.  (This is disputed by some scholars, of course, but then in the scholarly world everything is disputed by somebody.)  In very ancient times, conversion from one religion to another pretty much never occurred.  Your religion was the one into which you were born, and it was as stable and unchanging as your country of origin or your tribe.  But as the time of Christ approached and Judaism stepped more and more upon the world stage, some Gentiles thought it a good idea to convert to Judaism.  But how could this be done?  It was then that Jews hit upon the idea of proselyte or convert baptism.  Every Jew knew that one immersed oneself to wash away certain ritual impurities, such as contracted after touching a dead body.  This could be used to wash away the impurity of the Gentile world.  So, if a Gentile man wanted to convert to Judaism, he stated his desire publicly, was privately circumcised, and then, after he was healed of his surgical operation, was baptized, immersing himself in water to wash away the stain of being an unclean Gentile.  After this, he was a Jew.  Given the ordeal of adult circumcision, many Gentiles chose to simply become “God-fearers”, worshipping the Jewish God, keeping His laws, and attending synagogue, but without taking the final step of actually becoming a Jew.  But if one chose to take the final step of conversion, that step culminated in baptism. Baptism was thus how an unclean Gentile became a Jew.

As far as John was concerned, the people of Israel at the time of Christ’s coming were as unclean as the Gentiles, and just as unprepared to receive their Messiah.  When Messiah came, He would come in judgment upon the stony-hearted and impenitent.  His winnowing fork was in His hand, and with it He would clear His threshing floor, gathering the wheat into the granary of the Kingdom and burning the chaff with the unquenchable fire of Gehenna (Matthew 3:12).  John was in no doubt that most of Israel was chaff, and with the voice of a prophet he called on them to repent.  Only through repentance would they be ready to greet the long-expected Kingdom which was even then breaking in upon them.  As the sign that they had repented and accepted his prophetic message, he baptized them, washing away the stain of their impenitent uncleanness so that they would receive forgiveness and joy when Messiah came.

For the important people in Jerusalem, this was a scandal.  How dare John presume to baptize Jews as if they were Gentiles, and call into question Israel’s privileged status with God?  They therefore sent an official delegation to John, asking him where he got off baptizing Jews like this (John 1:19f).  Was he the Messiah?  No.  Was he Elijah?  No.  Was he the Prophet?  No.  Since he confessed that he was none of these, what authority did he have for such scandalous behaviour?  John replied that he was nothing in himself, just a voice—the voice of one crying in the wilderness, “make straight the way of the Lord”, even as Isaiah had long ago foretold (Isaiah 40:3f).  That is, his authority was not rooted in himself, but in the Messiah who would come after him.  They were all worked up that he baptized with water?  The Messiah would baptize with fire, and His coming would authenticate John’s mission.  The powerful delegation from the capital, it is safe to say, was not impressed.  Though the common people received John as a true prophet, most of the Pharisees and other power-brokers did not.  They could never believe that they needed to repent and be baptized.  Surely when Messiah came He would be vastly impressed with their Pharisaical holiness.  After all, they were the cream of Israel, they were God’s chosen people, children of Abraham.  They had no need to be baptized, as if they were benighted Gentiles.

What does the scandal created by John mean for us today?  In a word, it means that God wants something more than mere religion.  The Pharisees had plenty of religion—they were zealous in praying, in fasting, in tithing, in Bible-reading.  Yet for all their religious zeal, John still denounced them as a brood of vipers (Matthew 3:7), and demanded that they show the fruit of repentance.  What fruit?  What does God want beyond praying, fasting, tithing, and Bible-reading?  He wants us to love our neighbour, and to show compassion for the poor.  If a man has two coats, let him share one of them with him who has none, and likewise also his food.  Let a man be content with what he has, and share it with him who has less (Luke 3:10f).  This is the fruit of repentance, and what it is that make one’s religion acceptable to God.

John is in the Kingdom now, but the Pharisees he confronted are still around.  They can be found everywhere—both inside and outside of the churches.  (Sadly, self-righteous priggery is not confined to religious people.)  John the Forerunner’s message, therefore, remains as timely as ever.  God wants us to pray, to fast, to tithe, and to read the Scriptures.  But these things must flow from a repentant heart, and they have no saving value apart from such a heart.  If two coats hang in our closet and a man comes to us shivering in the cold from want of such a coat, we will now know what to do.  And if we forget, St. John’s image on our icon-screen is there to remind us.