The Messenger of the Messenger
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:19-28
And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
That is what the Gospel of Mark says in verse 4 of chapter 1. A question I get all the time is: Did the Jews baptize like we do?
To answer that question let me tell you a story about Muslims. Every year we take the Confirmation Class to the Noor Islamic Center. The first thing my friend Farooq does on the tour is to take us to a room that contains about 8 low to the floor sinks. There are no toilets, no showers, no hand washing sinks like in our restrooms…just sinks about 6 inches from the floor and they had faucets and a plastic stool if one wanted to sit on the stool and wash. Farooq explains that before prayers, all people are to go to these sinks and wash hands and face and neck and the feet or if socks are on, then along the sides of the feet and above the tops of the socks. He explains that it was ritual washing in preparation for prayer to God.
Although the term “baptism” is not used to describe the Jewish rituals, the purification rites in Jewish laws and tradition, called “Tvilah“, have some similarity to baptism, and the two have been linked. The “Tvilah” is the act of immersion in natural sourced water. In the Jewish Bible and other Jewish texts, immersion in water for ritual purification was established for restoration to a condition of “ritual purity” in specific circumstances. Immersion is required for converts to Judaism as part of their conversion.Immersion in the water represents a change in status in regards to purification, restoration, and qualification for full religious participation in the life of the community, ensuring that the cleansed person will not impose uncleanness on property or its owners.It did not become customary, however, to immerse converts to Judaism until after the Babylonian Captivity.
My point in these examples of Muslims and Jews using water is to illustrate that water is an ancient way to indicate purification. And to answer the question of whether the Jews baptized with water as John the Baptist did, let’s look at John and that time period.
John the Baptist began a movement similar to but still separate from that of Jesus, in preaching repentance and forgiveness. Jesus and John are a coordinated pair in the Gospels…each preaching and teaching and baptizing. Water purifications appear in the oldest of the OT Hebrew Bible as far back as Leviticus, one of the original five books of the Torah. At the turn of the era in which Jesus was born there arose a strong interest in water purification rites among a number of Jewish groups. The Pharisees of Jerusalem advocated ritual washing of hands before meals. The Baptism of Repentance was a ritual bathing that was understood to affect the forgiveness of sin.
John the Baptist adopted baptism as a central component in his Messianic movement. To answer the question of Jews and baptism, the answer seems to be…water was seen as symbolic cleansing and there arose a movement around the time of Christ, within the Jewish faith that baptism for the forgiveness of sin or for getting one on the same page as God…was a good and sacred thing to do.
Permit me to give you one other deeply theological point for todays lesson of John the Baptist and why we focus on him just two weeks before the birth of Jesus…even though we see, in this passage, Jesus as a man about to embark on his ministry to the people.
It is all about preparing and getting oneself ready for the coming of Christ. Raise your hand if you are NOT overwhelmed for the Holidays! We seem to take some sort of perverse pleasure in being over programmed and over scheduled for the Holidays.
Here was my dilemma one Holiday season. It was not earth shattering but I imagine it is illustrative of half of your experiences this time of year. Preparing for the Christmas Holiday Season is a mixed experience for ministers. First and foremost the holiday is one of Advent and anticipating the Christ child. Prepare the way of the Lord. We first look to John the Baptist to announce the one to come and then we await the one to come. But if you sit with 10 ministers, all ten will tell you that family time takes a back seat to church time.
A few years ago, our daughter Makaila texted us all and said….”How about all the Tussing’s gather on Saturday at Mom and Dad’s (that’s me and Marty)…she wrote that she would bake Christmas cookies with Hazel and the rest of the family could put up and decorate our tree and since we moved in to our new home last December 30…we could decorate our house for Christmas for the first time.
Very quickly our other daughter and husband texted in that it was a plan! And I loved it too. But…I had and Ordination to attend at 2-4 and a Connect Christmas Party in Victorian Village at 6 so I was doubly scheduled. But then, I thought. Then I texted back that I too was in and I proceeded to cancel the other events to which I was booked. I mentioned this to Rev. Lisa a few hours later and she looked at me and said in so many words…..”well, you’d best take the family stuff while you can.”
I did.
The book of Isaiah is quoted in the Gospel of Mark…and in the Gospel of John, which makes the words doubly important. Isaiah is saying…Prepare the way of the Lord. Prepare for the voice of one crying out in the wilderness…that voice of John. And when John cries out…he is crying out to prepare for the Messiah.
But, sometimes that voice is not crying out in the wilderness, sometimes the voice crying out to prepare the way, is coming from your own family. It is best to heed it and cancel all that you have and follow it. That too is but one way to prepare the way of the Lord. Amen