Rock Me in the Water

Before there was Jesus there was John the Baptist. John was quite an interesting character. Unfortunately, he pretty much gets lost with all the hoopla over Jesus and all. But John is not just any old goof, you know. The Roman Jewish historian (or is it the Jewish Roman historian) Josephus writes much more about John the Baptist than he does about Jesus, mentioning him by name which he never does exactly about Jesus. In fact, John is a pretty significant dude in at least three religions besides the big C.

John is a pretty important figure in Islam, where he is held as one of the prophets of God. The Muslims call him Yahya the Infinite. He is considered a man righteous, honorable and chaste, and a Prophet of the Righteous (Koran, 6:85, 3:39). He is also an important figure in the Bah`ai’ faith. Baha`’ulla`h (he of much punctuation) indicated that his predecessor, the Bab (not Streisand) ,was the spiritual return of John the Baptist. He even told the Pope so (Pius IX). And John is the central figure of the Mandaens. Who, you might ask, are the Mandaens? Why, they are the remnants of a ancient group that used to be called the Essenes. And who, you ask are the Essenes? They were a sect of Judaism which separated themselves from the rest of the Jews in the first century and went off to live in the desert (the even more deserty desert) away from everybody else. It is believed that both John the Baptist and Jesus spent some time living with them. The Mandaens hold that John the Baptist is, in fact, the Messiah. They don’t hold with that carpenter’s son who came after. The Mandaens do not recognize Moses or Muhammad either. They still practice frequent baptism. They believe in peace above all else, which makes them okay in my book.

The Latter Day Saints (otherwise known as the Mormons) believe that John appeared to Joseph Smith, jr. and Oliver Cowdery in Pennsylvania back in 1829. It was John who gave them the Aaronic Priesthood. They also believe that John’s ministry was predicted by two prophets in the Book of Mormon, Lehi and his son, Nephi. And according to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, John helped Jesus with his ministry in Israel, becoming Jesus’ greatest disciple. It was John’s failure to do so that became the greatest obstacle in the spread of Christianity (which I have always thought did a pretty good job of spreading. Seems to me that religion spread faster than my hips in the same number of years)

Who was John the Baptist? According to the Bible, he was Jesus’ cousin. He was the son of Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth and the priest Zecharias. Elizabeth was a descendent of Aaron, so John would have inherited the priesthood of Aaron (as mentioned above, aren’t you paying attention?) giving him the authority to baptize in the name of God. John was born six months prior to Jesus. According to the bible story, an angel comes to tell Zacarias that he and Elizabeth will have a pretty important kid and that they should call him John. Zecarias tries to tell the angel that he is way too old for that kind of stuff. The angel shows him it is true by taking away his voice until the baby is born, when his voice does finally return. Mary even comes to visit Elizabeth while she is pregnant and Elizabeth will tell her that the baby in her womb has jumped for joy at the arrival of Mary, the future mother of the Messiah.

John will grow up to be a pretty freaky character. All we know from the Bible is that he lives in the desert by himself (much like an Essene, remember them?) wearing a hair shirt and eating locusts with wild honey. Who knows? Maybe locusts and wild honey are pretty damn good. We’re not big into eating insects, but some cultures enjoy munching arthropods. Mostly John preaches that the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket and that people need to turn away from their worldly wicked ways (I just love alliteration, don’t you?). He calls on people to repent and be baptized in the Jordan River as a symbolic gesture of purification. He sort of was the first hell and damnation preacher. He warned everybody that they better repent or they would be mighty damn sorry. “Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” He called them a “generation of vipers”.

With the kind of life that John lived, you might think that he was calling on people to follow his example and live some kind of extreme life out in the desert in order to desperately seek the forgiveness of God, but all he did was tell the people to be baptized and generally be a little nicer. People would ask, “Well, what the hell should we do then? I don’t want to be cut down and thrown into the fire.” And John would answer, “Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise.” He also suggested that the hated tax collectors might consider stopping the practice of over collecting the taxes and keeping the difference. Even his words to the Roman soldiers were gentle, “Do not practice extortion, do not falsely accuse anyone, and be satisfied with your wages.” These don’t seem like such difficult rules to follow.

According to the Bible, John’s primary function was to announce the coming of the Messiah. “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” The prophet, Isaiah, had predicted this a few hundred years earlier. “There will be the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” That was certainly John. And eventually Jesus would come to John to be baptized. When John sees Jesus come to him, it is reported he said that it was he who should be baptized by Jesus. Jesus went through his baptism and then went off to live in the desert for 40 days (4 x 10, if you remember my little blog on numbers last year), and the rest is history (or at least the New Testament would have you believe so).

John sort of got himself in dutch with Herod, the Jewish King (of the puppet figurehead variety), because he had married his brother’s wife, and never seemed to tire pointing out that the king had been a naughty, naughty boy. So, it was just a matter of time until John would be arrested. He is thrown in prison. Herod, according to the Bible, does not have him executed or anything right off. Herod knew that John was quite popular with the people and that killing him would be a mistake. Sadly enough, Herod’s wife was also fairly unhappy with the things John had been saying, and conspired to have him executed herself. According to the story, she gets Herod drunk and has her daughter do a very seductive, sexy dance. Herod (the dirty old horny guy) is so impressed by this dance that he promises to give his daughter anything she wants so she says she wants the head of John the Baptist (kind of a kinky accessory to be sure) and Herod is obliged to give her what she wants. Goodbye John.

And while at first listen, the Bible seems to make the relationship between John and Jesus fairly clear (they were cousins, after all), there must have been some doubts because while John is in prison he sends some of his followers to Jesus to ask if he is, indeed the long awaited Messiah, or if they should wait for another. So John must not have been completely sure. Jesus tells John’s students to report back what they have seen and heard, that a bunch of people have been healed. When John is executed, Jesus is told, but he doesn’t interrupt his ministry or anything to pay any special attention to it. I guess they weren’t that close as cousins.

Josephus doesn’t make any mention of the whole Salome lewd dancing Herod’s wife plotting thing. He just says that Herod was afraid that John was going to cause trouble so he had him killed which kind of makes sense. Josephus also says that John was a righteous man who called on people to put away their sins and to purify their bodies by washing in the river.

Primarily, it was John’s mission to announce the coming of the Messiah and to call people to turn away from their former way of life. I have had several Johns in my life. Every now and then I meet somebody who reminds me of how I COULD be living, and by his or her model, I amend my life in some ways. I remember a friend of mine by the name of Dan, a fellow teacher whose classroom was once broken into and vandalized. His guitar was stolen (a nice one, too). When he was told, he just smiled and said he hoped the thieves put it to good use. He never got angry at all. He just shrugged the whole thing off and cleaned his room (with our help). Dan taught me to be more forgiving and to let go of wrongs that have been done me. He was one of my Johns. Another fellow, a guy named Steve, once flat out told me that I needed to get off my ass and get my body in shape because I had a destiny to fulfill and I couldn’t do it if I was dead. He was a John, also.

I think we need our John the Baptists from time to time, to remind us that we might be going down the wrong path, and there’s no time like the end of the year to start thinking about those things in our lives we want to change. Because John didn’t just come into the world to point out how we were going in the wrong direction, he also came to tell us there was a light coming to show us the way to go. John didn’t just tell me I was fucked up, he gave me the hope that I could renew myself, could wash myself clean and start over. And I have started over so many times. It’s an occupational hazard of living. We fall down. We get up. We start over. And each time we start over is a type of baptism into a new life. That’s the beautiful thing about life. You can always start a new one. Every moment is a new opportunity.

John the Baptist is frequently sort of forgotten. And that is strange, because you would think it hard to forget a guy who wears hair shirts and eats locusts and wild honey (as opposed to tame honey, I suppose). But even John himself said when his disciples asked himself about that new comer, Jesus, that Jesus must become greater while he (John) must become less. And in a way, we are all John the Baptist. We can all point to a better way of living by living that way ourselves. We can make our own lives a light to others. We can spread a little love and kindness and show the bastards that you don’t have to be mean and nasty. Yeah, I like John. He’s a little intense, but I like him. I have had my own Johns and I hope that I’ve been a John for somebody from time to time. I’ll tell you one thing: there are plenty of times I’ve felt like the voice of one crying in the wilderness. That’s for sure.