Washing Away Concepts

Matthew’s Gospel in particular provides us with the most illuminating, complete sequence of John the Baptist’s demonstrations for the benefit of the people (3:1-12):

John appears in the Judean desert, not in Jerusalem, or Bethlehem, or Nazareth—or in any other place significant to Judaism or Christianity;

He proclaims generalized repentance, not repentance directed toward the Jewish law or covenant;

He is described in his approaching by the use of a passage from Isaiah (40:3) that is imprecisely rendered;

His dress and diet were bizarre and repulsive;

His ministry was, in short, one that struck down or ignored an array of prevailing conceptions about religion, yet the result was:

“Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins” (5-6, KJV).

But the collapsing of concepts was not yet finished:

John was not about to let the concept of repentance exist in sterile separation from that with which it is properly admixed; or, to put it another way:

John was not about to forget that repentance shades imperceptibly into reformation:

“But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bring forth therefore fruit meet for repentance” (7-8).

And so, of course, John’s water baptism of repentance was never so much about water, or even so much about repentance.  It was about a cascade of necessary self-denials that involve us giving up treasured notions about life and existence.

In the context of John’s baptizing, the sacrifice that he required of the Jews was this:

“And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham” (9).

The contemporaries of John the Baptist were, as we are today, provided with a storehouse of concepts about life that allow a person to rationalize away true duty and true responsibility.  John, apparently, was setting about to empty that storehouse.