This is the third instalment of the ADVENT SERIES with the Department of Sacred Scriptures, Hebrew and Greek
There’s a frenzy in Jerusalem. The matter is urgent. An ad hoc group of learned theologians is summarily set up to take on a dangerous preacher who was becoming a threat to the institution. Is it heresy, scandal, or simply one other lunatic we’re dealing with? Quick preparations were made so that this commission could conduct its theological inquiry to suss him out in the Judean desert.
John the Baptist was the type who would perturb the established, highly respected elite. It is to him that throngs of people ran and around him that they flocked, feeling more true to themselves in this barren desert than in the ornate Temple of the Most High, perfectly serviced by an impersonal personnel, devout functionaries of religious rituals void of the Spirit. They had a whole body of theology, but it was a corpse nonetheless. Conversely, this lone preacher who stirred people’s consciences could not be ignored. Though paralysed by suspicious mistrust, the priests and Levites of the day scurried into the wilderness to assess the gravity of the problem at hand. They approached the provocative preacher… and the interrogation began.
Unlike any tribunal setting, the first questions did not concern some crime the baptiser had allegedly committed. Rather, the commission needed to know this man’s identity.
“Who are you? How would you refer to yourself? What is it that defines you? What kind of title would you claim for yourself?”
Questions and answers darted across in quick succession. But these experts in character assassination had no clue what they were up against. Though bullies harass individuals who seem weak, John was so deeply aware of his identity and mission that he wasn’t going to allow anyone to easily distort or sully his convictions about his testimony to the Christ.
The interrogation was beginning to sound tedious, but it is then that John turned resolutely to the heart of the matter. The suspect became a witness, pointing to one who was yet more of a troublemaker than himself! He asserted: “among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” (John 1:26-27) John only saw himself in this light, or better still, in this Light, for “he came as a witness to testify concerning that Light” (John 1:7). Indeed, John understood himself and his identity only in relation to Christ, the light that had come into the world.
This calls for a degree of soul searching which is precisely what John the Baptist stirred up in his contemporaries. When we think about our own identity we usually perceive ourselves in relation to others, that is we tend to define ourselves by looking around us and deciphering where we stand vis-à -vis what we see (be it in terms of human relations, our profession, our talents and so forth). As the German politician Walther Rathenau put it, to think means to compare – “Denken heißt vergleichen” (Wiesbaden: Verlag Der Greif, 1953, p. 32).
To be a Christian involves a decision to not define yourself by anything that is negative. You are not the sin you have committed, nor those hurtful words that scarred your heart, nor that impaired individual who will never succeed. A Christian is one who has been claimed by Christ. One’s truest identity can only be discovered in relation to Jesus. The question begs itself: Where do I stand in relation to him? Ahead of willingly or unwillingly appearing before that final tribunal, it is wise to remember that the presiding judge has a soft spot for Jesus. All I must do is to align myself to him.
