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And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem so that they could ask him, “Who are you?” And he confessed—and he did not deny, and confessed—“I am not the Christ!” And they asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” And he said, “I am not!” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No!” Then they said to him, “Who are you, so that we can give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?” (John’s first century eyewitness biography of Jesus Chapter 1: 19-34) |
John the biographer, writing around AD 90, is (in red above and below) continuing his biography of Jesus. And I’m continuing to ask you to question it…. When now John writes, “And this is the testimony of John, when…” he is writing about a different “John”: John the Baptist, who was a few months older than Jesus and a relative of the latter.
This John the Baptist has begun to annoy the Jerusalem leaders around AD 30. They sent “priests and Levites” to question him. Is that what happens when a person becomes noticed and followed by many people? Do others working in the same area try to find a reason to procure the rejection of the newcomer? But John the Baptist totally refutes being anybody of any note at all. What’s wrong with this man. Why doesn’t he make a name for himself?
He said, “I am ‘the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” ’ just as Isaiah the prophet said.”
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Why indeed! Do you know anybody who merely wants to be acknowledged as “a voice crying out in the wilderness”. Why is he like that? Who is this other person, “the Lord”, about whom he is crying out? Does John feel inferior to this other person?
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And they had been sent from the Pharisees. And they asked him and said to him, “Why then are you baptizing, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” John answered them, saying, “I baptize with water. In your midst stands one whom you do not know— the one who comes after me, of whom I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal!”
John the biographer now wants his readers to know that some of those questioning John the Baptist were “sent from the Pharisees”. I wonder why? Is the baptizing which John is doing – there in the wilderness beyond the Jordan river - getting to the Pharisees? Apparently, there were long queues. Are you, like me, somewhat intrigued by John the Baptist? He's saying, in effect, that he is pointing to someone hugely greater than himself – but, for his questioners, this person remains as “one whom you do not know.” Would my intrigue have turned to annoyance if I had been a Pharisee at that time – a member of this Jerusalem-based elite political and religious party?
These things took place in Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing. On the next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This one is the one about whom I said, ‘After me is coming a man who is ahead of me, because he existed before me.’ And I did not know him, but in order that he could be revealed to Israel, because of this I came baptizing with water.”
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The next day (see above)? Have the questioners gone home? Isn’t it often like that? When you give up and go away, is it only then that some vital development occurs? But have you noticed (immediately above) that John the Baptist remains totally self-effacing? Has the man no ambition? Does he want to stay a lone baptizer for ever? What is possessing this man?
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And John testified, saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending like a dove from heaven and remaining upon him. And I did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water, that one said to me, ‘The one upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon him—this one is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and testify that this one is the Chosen One of God.”
John the Baptist does have a role after all. His voice; his witness.. Who “sent him to baptise with water”? But who told him how to identify “the one who baptises with the Holy Spirit”? And what does that mean? Does that mean that folk there in AD 30 might be immersed, through this now identified person, into a new holy spirit which would enliven them within? What would then happen to their own (unholy?) spirit?
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