Advent Day 7: John the Baptist
Rude Awakenings
I baptize you with water, but One is coming who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
Advent Day 7: John the Baptist (c. 4 BC-28 CE)
When I was ten, I was in Sunday school one December morning when our teacher, Miss Dee, announced we were throwing a biblical holiday party. She then passed to each of her budding Methodists a piece of construction paper and a handful of paper dolls. The paper would serve as your party room, the dolls were your guests. Once you finished decorating your “room” with crayon, felt, tinsel, and glitter, you were allowed to invite the dolls to the festivities. The only requirement for admission was that you had to be a character from the Bible.
I have no recollection what anyone’s rooms looked like. What I do recall is that everyone invited Jesus to their party—would anyone dare throw a biblical Christmas party without inviting Jesus?—and no one invited John the Baptist.
That one of the key figures of the gospels—the one who announces the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom; the one who Jesus himself was seeking in the desert—would not be invited to a party is shocking.
But I get it. John is…a lot. He wears a camel hair shirt (smelly). He lives in a desert cave (weird). He yells at people (scary). Plus, what would you feed him? It’s hard enough accommodating the gluten/soy/nut/dairy-free crowd, let alone someone whose preferred protein is locust.
But if we are going to do Advent, not only must we welcome John to the party, he must be given pride of place.
John lived at the advent of the Messianic Age. He announced this age before he was even born, leaping in his mother’s womb at the sound of Mary’s voice (Luke 1:39-45). By this time, Rome had occupied Israel for decades. The local political leadership was tainted by collaboration with Roman authorities. Religious infighting plagued the temple. Rebellions routinely broke out and were crushed. Factions formed against the ruling elites.
One of those factions was a mystical sect called the Essenes. Many scholars believe that John was an Essene. Some speculate that Jesus also may have been one. At the very least, Jesus was influenced by them.
Essenes lived in desert caves, took vows of poverty, and dedicated their lives to practices like daily ritual immersion in water, strict Sabbath observance, and acts of charity. Their eyes were glued to the horizon for the coming Messiah who would liberate Israel from its present troubles.
Out of this world emerges John the Baptist, the last of the great ancient Hebrew prophets, poised at the frontier of a new age. Like all prophets, he blazes onto the scene with an urgent message.
Repent! For the kingdom of heaven is near.
John is like a fire alarm in the dead of night, jolting us from sleep with an urgent message: the darkness is fading, a new sun is dawning.
This is good news. But it’s no small thing. In fact, it’s the set-up for an epic showdown between the kingdom of Rome where power and domination are the supreme values and the kin-dom of God where justice, mercy, love and peace prevail. John is standing in the river yelling “Pick a side!” at the spiritual tourists who’ve come out from Jerusalem (and to us, today). The fact that he’s doing this at the Jordan, the border between the Promised Land and the wilderness their ancestors once wandered, would not have been lost on anyone of his time.
John isn’t just screaming for fun. He wants to wake us up. To jerk us out of our complacency. To open our eyes so we can see the banquet laid before us: new life, a deeper love than we once imagined possible, a Beauty ever ancient, ever new.
John’s message is simple but challenging: if we want to experience the fullness of divine hope, love, joy and peace—those quintessential Advent values—then we must transform. Not by empty gestures, superficial religion or false piety, but deep change, an inside-out job.
Then, because he’s John, he piles on talk of fire, snakes, axes, wheat and chaff. But it’s all a variation on his singular theme: Repent!
We don’t like to hear that we need to change. Not then, not now. Our egos don’t like it. The civil and religious authorities of John’s time didn’t like it. The occupying Romans didn’t like it. Herod definitely didn’t like it.
We don’t like it any better today. Not that repenting is outdated. In fact, we’re pretty cool with it if we’re talking about how those people over there need to transform. You know the ones: in that other political party, that other city, that other church, religion and country. But if we’re talking about us? Well, surely, us and our family, friends, workplace, neighbors and church don’t have any bad habits, delusions or destructive tendencies!
In his signature, wild-eyed style, John demolishes all falsely pious wide-eyed innocence and Who? Me? thinking.
You brood of vipers! Don’t think that being descended from Abraham is enough to make you holy and right with God.
That’s John-speak for put your credentials away because no money, power or prestige gets you a ticket to ride in the Light. If we want to live the way we say we do—if we want every bump smoothed out, all the ruts paved over (Luke 3:4-6)—we must transform ourselves in, by and through love. John wants us to get down in the trenches of our souls and conduct a searching, fearless inventory. To break old habits and patterns. To face with courage the world we inherited and are creating.
To just get real.
Advent is about preparing the soil of our souls so that the good news of Jesus can take root. So, getting real is the most Advent thing we can do. It’s spiritual fertilizer.
The Bible repeats John’s message over and over: we must wake up.
…it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers…the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Romans 13:11-12
Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. James 5:8
I get why people, then and now, prefer to look away from John when he comes near, as he does in Advent. The change he’s calling us to is tough. It is the way of the cross where new life only comes after death. But if we allow ourselves to “lose” our lives we will find them. That’s the promise of the Sacred Way.
Note that John doesn’t call us to perfection how we commonly think of it today (i.e. flawlessness). Rather, he beckons us to perfect our love—to grow it, deepen it, to draw its circle wider and wider until it includes God, everyone (including “enemies”) and all creation. This is a redirection of heart: from death to life; from scarcity to abundance; from suffering to salvation.
In other words, John is calling us back to our original, Edenic goodness. He is stretching out his hand to you and saying, Come on home, stranger!
John didn’t think that deep soul transformation was impossible. Otherwise, he would have saved himself a whole lot of trouble (including getting beheaded) and just kicked back in his cave with a big bowl of roasted, salted locusts.
John’s life began in darkness and moved toward light. Advent begins in darkness and moves toward light. That transformation is full of challenge, but also beauty, goodness, and the gospel news that is good for all time: God is for us and with us, always.
Reflect
Now, let’s get real (Advent is about getting real, right?). Where do you need to transform? What habits, stories, justifications and attitudes have you been clinging to that are doing you and others harm, or preventing you from living into the spiritual abundance (aka radical love and reconciliation) John the Baptist is calling you to? How can you take on repentance as a spiritual practice? Is there a contemplative practice you can deepen, or try, that would help you on this path?
And if that word repent is giving you flashbacks to Jimmy Swaggert—I’m talking to you, children of the ‘80s—remember this is not about shame. The Hebrew word from which we get the word repent is teshuva which means to turn around or to turn back. This is about returning to the original goodness that is inside you and which lies at the heart of creation.
To help get you in a contemplative frame of mind, enjoy this poem from retired Methodist pastor and Mainer Steve Garnaas-Holmes. Maybe make it your prayer today. Or, even, copy it down and carry it with you in your pocket.
Love would move through me but for the rubble and clutter I cling to. God, move aside what needs to be moved. Clear a way for loveliness. Fire up the gentle bulldozer of your grace. Put your little orange stakes of mercy where the road goes. Mark what needs to be cut, and cut it. Fill with your presence my pits of fear, my potholes of discouragement and despair. Level my piles of self-importance. Smooth out my bitterness, straighten what's bent. Clear out what's in the way of love. In that wilderness in me, prepare the way for your mystery to unfold.
Bonus reflection:
In the years ahead, as we face cascading environmental crises, everyone will be called to transform how we use resources. Most of us have probably already started to make small but meaningful changes. Today pick one area where you can lighten your footprint on the earth, and commit to a plan of action in the year ahead. Then say a prayer and light a candle for this one Earth we all call home.
Holiday Happenings at Life In The City
Dec. 10, 11:15 am: LITC’s original musical, Make Room In Your Heart.
Dec. 21, 7:00 pm: Blue Christmas, an intimate service for the darkest night of the year.
Dec. 23, 6:00 pm: Christmas Eve-Eve, an LITC tradition!
Dec. 24, 11:15 am: Celebrate Christmas Eve with our church family.
Dec. 31, 11:15 am: A fun, casual service with cookies and coffee to welcome 2024.
Ready For More?
Read the Introduction to the 2023 edition of The Heart Moves Toward Light: Advent With The Mystics, Saints and Prophets.
Find more mystics, saints and prophets in our Archive.
Feedback
Did you catch a typo? Do you have suggestions for mystics, saints and prophets we might cover in the future? Leave feedback in comments section below or email Greg Durham at greg@lifeinthecityaustin.org.
As long as “those people” need repentance, we’re all for it! Thanks so much, Greg. You make John the Baptist come alive in new ways.