Advent II, Locusts and Wild Honey – 4.12.2020

 

Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.  He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.  I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 1:6-8)

John the Baptist has always seemed to me an awkward item in the gospel narrative, not made easier by his clothing or his diet.  He defies category.  Was he Jewish?  I assume he was, but he would have been somewhat conspicuous in the synagogues.  Was he Christian? pre-Christian? proto-Christian?  And then… camel’s hair…?  Well, I come wearing sheep’s wool or a snug possum fibre mix, in winter.  Locusts and wild honey…?  I believe locusts are nourishing, but why ruin good honey?   John is conducting a rite of baptism in water, in the river.  That symbolism is as old as religion… you go down into the water with all your sins, and you rise out of the water to new life, pardoned and free.  It is an ancient way of shedding guilt, and of initiation to a new life. 

John’s main purpose however, as Mark insists, is to point away from himself…  John announces a coming one, vastly superior, he says.  I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.  I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.  This is to be something more than the forgiveness of sins, something essentially different.   

Camel’s hair, locusts and wild honey, the more I think about it, do seem to signal a distancing from the socially respectable or acceptable norms of synagogue or church, but equally from many of the expectations of secular culture and lifestyle.  Lately we have been thinking of it as moving to the edge of centre.  Jesus invites us into his company.  And in that company the distinguishing feature is the (usually) gentle, subtle but pervasive power of the Holy Spirit of God to inspire, to change things from the inside, to strengthen and enliven and renew… to recreate, to restore the image of God… the true self.  It is a company in which social and ethnic differences become no longer divisions.  The issues of sin and guilt in our lives come to be seen now in the context of love, mercy and grace.  Humility and service take precedence over power, might, mana and prestige. 

In a time like ours, when even water baptism is largely cast aside as pointless, or relegated to something Granny would like you to do for the children – or if it’s adult baptism by immersion, it’s likely to denote entry into a limited world of fundamentalist faith in any of the many forms that takes… in such a time, we do well, I think, to share some of the vision John had, of the One who would baptise with Holy Spirit, inspiring life from within, displacing ego to its proper place, a life led by Jesus, living simply.  In the incomparable words of the Prophet Micah: Doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly…  And in one of Paul’s many ways of expressing it:  Practising faith, hope and love, these three, the greatest being love.