John the Baptizer: Preparing for God's Just Liberation

[quietly, slowly] Prepare the way of the Lord

Prepare the way of the Lord
[a bit louder, still slow] John, the baptizer. Clothed with camel's hair. Eating
grasshoppers.
And wild honey.
Proclaiming.
Preparing.
Pontificating.
In the wilderness. In the desert. In a region populated by robbers. By brigands. By
terrorists. Political outlaws. A wilderness that bespeaks austerity. Authenticity. A
wilderness signifying both the people of Israel's rejection of God's loving and
miraculous kindness AND God's ever faithful deliverance or liberation.
The powers that be, namely Herod, Herod's court and it's connection to Rome, are
fearful of what happens when crowds gather around a charismatic figure in the
Judaean desert.
Time and again, Josephus reports, similar figures gathered together in the dusty
and barren places or in the hill countries.
And before long motley rebels assault the alliance between Rome and Jerusalem.
John the Baptizers' wilderness is every bit as politically charged and dangerous as
the caves of Torra Bora, in the nether regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
__
We are in Mark chapter one.
We are in the time between the preparations of Advent and the Preparations of
the Lenten season. We will generally be following the lectionary material through
the Gospel of Mark in the coming months.
Mark begins his gospel, believed to be the first one written, by explicitly referring
to what he is up to as gospel, something none of the other three gospel writers
do in their opening words. The beginning of the good news, or Gospel, of Jesus
Christ ...
Gospel or glad tidings were generally associated with the announcement of a
great military victory. Good news! We won!
'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'
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John the Baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of

repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Mark's style is spare and sudden. The shortest of the Gospels. It begins
immediately w/ John the Baptizer and Jesus' baptism. No infancy narrative. No
Jesus in the Temple. No flights of philosophical theology as in the Gospel of John's
prologue.
John the baptizer appeared. In the wilderness.
Appearing. Suddenly. Straightway. Immediately. These are the hallmarks of John
Mark's style and are words that will be repeated often. Transitions are abrupt.
Because repentance or conversion is demanded now.
Mark emphasizes Jesus' suffering death. This is the great secret. That God's
messiah comes not in splendor, but to be crucified. Where disciples or spirits
threaten to reveal this plain man's true status, Jesus quickly hushes them,
ordering that nothing be revealed until after the Resurrection. Mark's gospel is,
according to this style and others, apocalyptic. The times are changin'. The
heavens do not merely part, in our passage this morning. Rather they are torn
open, as in the book of Revelation.
And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens TORN
apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.
Mark's Gospel ends with a word that appears multiple times in throughout this
Gospel. TERROR.
So they went out and fled from the tomb, for TERROR and amazement had
seized them; and they said nothing to anyone for they were AFRAID.
From our prologue here with the ever strange John the Baptist to those closing
verses, Mark's Jesus is on a mission to change people's entire way of being. John
the Baptizer calls not merely for a change of mind or heart, but repentance. A
radical change of lifestyle. Metanoia. A change that begins in the heart and with
deeds of righteousness but that is so thoroughgoing that it can only truly be acted
out by a complete immersion of one's body in cleansing water. And, with the
coming of Jesus, by the presence of a new, divine, rushing, hovering Spirit.
PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD
-[quietly again] I am sometimes called a prophet by other people.

I am not so sure.
Certainly not in the sense of foretelling the future. I am terrible at predictions.
But perhaps more so according to the limited way of thinking of prophets as
willing to speak truth to power. When John the Baptizer is asked in the Gospel of
John whether he is a prophet, even the 2nd coming of Elijah, he plainly says no.
Instead he insists that he is the one foretold by the prophet Isaiah, as in verses 23 as read this morning. See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will
prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
Prepare the Way of the Lord.
-But what does it mean Prepare the Way of the Lord? What did it mean for John
the Baptizer's audience? For the initial readers of the Gospel of Mark? What does
it mean for us, at Living Water. In Chicago?
Perhaps we might start somewhere between all those questions. What might it
have meant to the writer of the Gospel of Mark himself? I want to start there for a
number of reasons.
To begin, I was struck this week by a book, just a few years old now, entitled The
African Memory of Mark: Reassessing Early Church Tradition.
For eighteen centuries or so, it was simply widely accepted in the Church that
Mark was an African Gospel, written by a Jewish man whose family had lived,
perhaps even for centuries in the diaspora, in the hills of Libya, in Northern Africa.
Church tradition tells us that John Mark was from a Levite family in Cyrene, that he
traveled widely with Paul and Barnabas, was related to St. Peter as well as
Barnabas, and that he eventually settled in Alexandria in Egypt.
And furthermore, that he is the patron saint of African Christianity.
German Biblical scholarship in the nineteenth century became rather dismissive of
this view, often for very racist reasons. The scholar Thomas Oden has recovered
many of those traditions about John Mark and persuasively makes the case that
church tradition is essentially correct. That Mark is an African gospel, by an
African Jewish Christian. And that we will do well to view the Gospel and its
meaning through that lense.
Mark's family would have moved to Libya during times of great persecution of
Jews by alternating forces from Syria, Rome, and Egypt. The long term settlement
of a Jewish-Roman alliance in the Herodian dynasty for over a century would not
have sat well with John Mark or his family.
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No more so than it did for a vast number of violent and non-violent revolutionaries
and regular old people of the land of Israel.
People who very often, like Jesus' mother Mary, expressed in song and in writing a
longing, for a deliverer, for a great messiah who would return Israel to its rightful
place where worship of God and political control of the land were centred in
Jerusalem, on the Temple Mount, free from foreign interference.
As suggested already, many powerful figures gathered disciples, gathered forces,
really, in the hot dry desert regions, the forests, the mountains ... THE
WILDERNESS.
Now, there is a great deal of debate as to whether John the Baptizer had any
relationship at all with the Essenes or the community that produced the Dead Sea
Scrolls. The Essenes and/or the Dead Sea Scroll Community also gathered
together in the crags and in the tucked away places in the deserts and mountains.
Much like John, they preached a message of holiness, of preparation, a cleansing
of the heart through cleansing of the body. The Dead Sea Scroll Community had a
number of baptismals or ritual bathing places which were central to the
understanding of purity within the community.
And while John the Baptizers message differed quite markedly from the Dead Sea
Scroll community's in very important ways, the Dead Sea Scroll community drew
heavily from Isaiah's vision of renewed purity and holiness before God, as
preparatory for political renewal.
Prepare the Way of the Lord.
It has long been noted that our passage in Mark, for the morning, quotes from
Isaiah chapter 40 verse 3. A voice cries out: In the wilderness prepare the way of
the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. These passages and
the following verse have remained politically potent generation after generation.
I though for a bit about playing for you one of many Martin Luther King Jr.
speeches or sermons where he famously quotes the following verse in Isaiah 40.
Verse 4: Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made
low.
The Dead Sea Scroll community, in particular, emphasized the WHERE of the
preparation. The land itself needed to be cleansed in preparation. Prepare in the
wilderness the way of the Lord, is how a certain Dead Sea Scroll translated this
passage.
In fact, as another book I consulted this week puts it, the Gospel of Mark is
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structured as a way to re-present Isaiah's vision of a New Exodus. A new liberation

that would allow exiles in Egypt and beyond to return to the land of Israel and
claim rightful ownership over it.
In this sense, it is worth noting that John the Baptizer, in the Gospel of Mark,
echoes not only the Isaiah passage, but weaves it together with lines lifted from
Exodus chapter 23 and Malachi chapter 3.
Mark chapter 1: See I am sending my messenger ahead of you who will prepare
your way. Exodus 23:20: I am going to send you an angel [or messenger] in
front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have
prepared.
In other words, the words we have before us this morning resonate deeply
throughout God's salvation or liberation history with the people of Israel.
-In Exodus, as the children of Israel depart Egypt and head for the promise land, in
the days before betrayal and wandering in the wilderness.
-In Isaiah, as God's people languish in captivity in Babylon, longing for a new day
and a new start in the land of Israel.
-And yet again in Malachi chapter 3: See, I am sending my messenger to prepare
the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will Suddenly come into his
temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight indeed, he is
coming, says the Lord of hosts.
By this point, a return from exile has been accomplished, but all is still not right.
Malachi closes out our Old Testament with a longing for someone who will rule in
the land with righteousness and justice. The Messiah.
And so this morning, John Baptizes Jesus in the River Jordan, and the Spirit
descends ... all after John has declared that he is not worthy even to lace the
sandals on Jesus' feet.
Prepare the Way of the Lord.
John will eventually be executed for speaking truth to power, or, as Josephus tells
us, because Herod feared that his disciples and he could overturn the political
order.
-So what of this Baptism John preached?
How does John's Baptism square with an Anabaptist or believers church insistence
that you must follow Jesus in your heart first, not as a way of cleansing
preparation, but as an outward sign of surrender to the Way of Jesus?
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I grew up as a Baptist, not an Anabaptist, but these little phrases here in Mark 1:4,
and also in Acts chapter 2, have always meant a bit of theological nervousness:
what does proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins
suggest? Is baptism itself what cleanses us and makes us right before God?
To shift gears slightly and to let a question hang in the air, church people have
very often understood Baptism as something basically completely new in the New
Testament. John's immersion is, indeed, as a commentator I read this week put it,
something novel and extraordinary in Israel's salvation history, but also
comprehensible Biblically. Immersion, in fact even immersion in living water,
goes back to the heart of the Torah itself as a way of removing uncleanness.
We often think of impurity or uncleanness in the Old Testament as a kind of yucky,
crude proto-understanding of sinfulness.
In fact, existing in a state of uncleanness was fairly normal and acceptable. Sin
and uncleanness are not synonymous. As one of my profoundly respected
professors put it in a class once, most Jews were unclean most of the time in
Jesus' day. Apart from the priesthood, most Jews only thought of themselves as
needing to be ritually clean when they brought their sacrifice to the temple once
or twice a year, on pilgrimage.
Bodily cleanness was required only at very unique times when one purposely
approached that which was most Holy and Divine.
The Essenes or the Dead Sea Scroll community seems to have set itself apart as a
community by uniquely attempting to be completely ritually pure, at basically all
times, in preparation for a coming liberator. This required constant bathing,
ablution, washing, immersion, or baptism.
John the Baptizer's baptism, meanwhile, is a one time event, something that
occurs as part of a radical life change, a reorienting of the entire person away
from a life of unholiness, toward God, and in his day, a renewed relationship with
Torah.
There's a curious little episode in Acts 19 where a unique branch of disciples of
Jesus, also followers of John the Baptizer, encounter Paul and the main church
leaders of the day. They have apparently not been privy to the events of
Pentecost and know nothing of Baptism's connection to the Holy Spirit.
[ASTONISHED] Into what then were you baptized? asks the Apostle Paul with
great astonishment. Into John's baptism. Elsewhere Paul speaks as well of a
baptism into Moses. Here, Paul gives the followers of John and Jesus a second
baptism, an anabaptism if you will. A baptism into the name of Jesus to receive
also the Holy Spirit.
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For the church, this moment at the outset of Mark is of tremendous import. Jesus
is Baptized as an adult, uniting his work with the work of the Holy Spirit and
launching his public ministry.
For a good long time now, as already discussed this morning, the Hebrew people
in Judea and in the far flung diaspora beyond Judaea, longed for the end of the
age that was, for a new beginning, for a new reign of David in Jerusalem.
Critical in that vision was a reinfusion of Israel with God's Spirit.
We discussed Mark's Apocalyptic language already, the signal of a political and
historical overturning in progress, ... John dressed as Elijah, the wilderness,
heaven torn open, and now here the Spirit arrives, whirring, rushing, as a violent
wind, but hovering peaceably, like a dove, anointing Jesus, and accompanied by a
voice, You are my son, the Beloved: || I am pleased with you.
All of this now recalls another scene from Israel's scripture: Daniel by the river in
Babylon. There is water there, of course, and the Angel or messenger Gabriel
arrives in swift flight. And there is Wisdom and a vision immediately after the
messenger announces:
you are greatly beloved.
From the very first pages of Scripture, the Spirit and Water, Wisdom itself, And
belovedness, are unmistakably Feminine instantiations of God.
The Hebrew feminine noun Ruach or Spirit hovers over the primordial waters of
creation in Genesis chapter 1.
She swoops.
And she hovers.
She gives birth boldly, wonderfully, expansively to new life, new understanding,
and to entire new political orders. New orders that arrive on the wings of waters
which dramatically flood away old, corrupt orders. Baptism in the Water of the
Spirit and baptism by fire are indistinguishable.
I know that I have perhaps overwhelmed some this morning with material more
akin to a heavy lecture. I want to draw some strands together now and then ask
what all of this means for our understanding of the opening verses of Mark. Of
baptism, repentance, and most of all what it means for us to
Prepare the way of the Lord.

-I spoke earlier a bit about Isaiah's New Exodus as a thematic in the book of Mark.
Political victory in this vision required
-repentance,
-obedience,
-a new relationship to the land itself
-and a new understanding of ritual washing.
For intertestamental people committed to Isaiah's New Exodus, a negative
response to the messenger or forerunner's vision of a New Exodus by leaders and
the people would mean a curse on the land.
Meanwhile, we see that time after time, a reinterpretation of baptism or
immersion has been seen as radical, politically dangerous. Upsetting to those In
Charge.
-The Essenes reinterpretation of baptism was at the heart of a new, set apart
community that was eventually destroyed by Rome at the culmination of the
Great Jewish war around 70 A.D.
-John's baptism gathered a community so offensive in its willingness to speak the
truth that he was imprisoned, then beheaded by the grandson of Herod the Great.
-Jesus' Baptism launched a public ministry that three years later saw him
crucified.
-Baptism into the Name of Jesus in the first centuries of the church lead to conflict
with other forms of Judaism and, to a much greater extent, with the Roman
empire.
-Re-baptism became a highly politically charged question as the Roman Empire
transitioned from pagan to ostensibly Christian.
-Centuries later, Anabaptists such as Elizabeth, Balthasar, Menno, and Pilgram
upended the assumption of a smooth plane between Christianity and European
citizenship with our rejection of infant baptism.
-Prepare the way of the Lord.
Prepare the way of the Lord.
I have no new radical re-vision of baptism to unveil this morning. It is often said
that prophetic words should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. In
my view, Living Water and the wider Reba Community are neither afflicted nor
comfortable. There is a great stability here, born of nearly 60 years of experiential
trial and error and, above all, of great faithfulness.

Yet the Living Water continues to take new risks. I was extraordinarily proud of the
difficult first step, and I do hope it is only the first step, in walking out of this
church and into the intersection to proclaim that Black Lives Matter here.
When Jodie and I consider what it means to preach a radical sermon in North
America, we very often discuss how to challenge churches to take Jesus teaching
to the rich young ruler literally: sell all that you have and give to the poor and you
shall have eternal life.
Not everyone here for understandable reasons, but many, we know here and at
Reba place, do share abundantly, even all, in a common purse, in dedication to
living simply so that out of your abundance, others may be drawn into new,
powerful relationship with God and God's church.
Nevertheless, I want to end with a simple but very hard question this morning. A
hard question perhaps most of all for those who have been here the longest and
are the most dedicated.
A question that came up in very tough ways for the Church in and around St.
Francis' day regards not just the wealth of individuals, but wealth for the church
itself. Yes, individual Christians are called to give all, but should the church itself
be poor? it was asked. It was soon discovered that individual austerity could
greatly enrich the Church as an institution.
A minor theme that I have pursued throughout this sermon is the relationship
between preparation, repentance, our baptism in Christ ... AND the very land
itself. Whose land is it? Who should rule in the land? What new relationship are
we to prepare for between the land and God's messiah? What does our very
substantial property holding as Mennonites in and around Chicagoland mean?
For many of us in North America, the conquest of this land we live on is some far
distant injustice. It's somewhere in the past. We really have no way of righting
that wrong.
But is it really so distant?
This question struck home for me as a street pastor in Toronto where one of my
closest pastoral relationships was with an Inuit man. An Inuit man named
Simeonee who lived on the land, slept in an Igloo in winters until he was six years
old. At that point, the Canadian government destroyed his family's pack of
huskies on the pretence of health regulation. This drove them off the land and into
suburban housing where a kitchen fire soon landed Simeonee in hospital in
Montreal for nearly a year.
The advent of a new and atrocious political order, of ejection from the land is still
a very living memory for many of our most outcast neighbours here in North
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America. For people like my friend Simeonee and his large family, this living
memory is even more present and realistic than for others.
I do not wish to belabour the point, nor to dictate the outcome of this line of
questioning.
But what would justice in the land of Chicago and Evanston look like for Living
Water and Reba Place with respect to land?
What would it look like to repent of our people's sins? To enact justice and prepare
for a New Exodus?
Exodus has long been the template for black resistance in North America. What
would we do if we were to take seriously a renewal of land justice for our Native
American or First Nation tribal neighbours?
-[Long pause ... VERY LONG]
Prepare the way of the Lord.
Prepare the way of the Lord.
And as John the Baptist continues according to the Gospel of Luke ...
Prepare the way of the lord.
And all | people | shall see || the salvation | of our God.

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