December 8, Advent 2C (Baruch 5:1-9; Luke 1:68-79; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6)
Being baptized requires becoming vulnerable to at least one other person.
The prophets of the Old Testament knew how to get a crowd’s attention. When they delivered a message of repentance, it was hard to miss: they wore hair shirts and smeared themselves with ashes. They had visions of angels. They walked into lions’ dens or got swallowed by giant fish.
By the time of Jesus, these stories had been around for generations. The book of Jonah was 400 years old; Isaiah, 800. The texts were still familiar, read aloud regularly in worship, but they were no more contemporary to their readers than Shakespeare or Chaucer is to us.
And yet, the coming of the Savior is foretold by none other than John, the son of Zechariah: a creative anachronism in the flesh, wearing a hair shirt, eating locusts, quoting an 800-year-old book, and demanding baptism for the repentance of sins. Something about his presence is so compelling that crowds flock to the desert for a chance to hear his preaching, and believers line up for immersion in the River Jordan. He proclaims a message from Isaiah—“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (40:3)—and manages to make it exciting and new.
