No, son, that’s not Tarzan. It’s John the Baptist
Psalm 119:49-72 • Psalm 49, [53]
Isa. 9:8-17 • 2 Pet. 2:1-10a • Mark 1:1-8
John the Baptist was zealous and eccentric. He had “a brand.” He wore a coarse camel hair tunic, cinched with a rawhide belt. He ate grasshoppers, which apparently are much improved by wild honey. He had a rugged well-tanned look, noted in the biblical text. He could typically be found at the Jordan River baptizing Jews who would commit to changing their lives for the better. He had become a living tourist attraction.
John was a rabid critic of the highly unpopular local official, Herod Antipas. Antipas pleaded with Caesar Augustus for the right to rule all of his late father’s kingdom but was awarded only a fourth of it. He later built a city on the Sea of Galilee, and named it after Tiberius, the Emperor who succeeded Augustus, to curry further the favor of the Romans.
In Roman courts, Antipas had notoriously divorced his first wife, the daughter of an Arabian king, in order to marry his own brother’s wife. Yet Antipas was somehow surprised when his angry former father-in-law inflicted a crushing defeat on his son-in-law’s troops.
This disaster did not stop Antipas from partying and subsequently promising his step daughter, Salome, anything she wanted as reward for entertaining on his birthday, Prompted by her mother Herodias whom John denounced to crowds of his followers as an adulteress for marrying Antipas while her first husband still lived, Salome demanded the head of John on a platter. And got it.
Christ had notably been baptized by John, and the occasion was dramatically endorsed by the voice of God the Father and the appearance of a dove, ever since taken as a representation of the Holy Spirit. Christ proclaimed John as the greatest man borne of a woman. But John, who deemed himself unworthy, believed that Christ was indeed the promised Messiah, and through messages sent from his prison cell before his beheading, endorsed Jesus.
The vast majority of John’s followers became disciples of Jesus, but even today there are still about 20,000 “Mandaeans,” who hold John the Baptist as their “greatest and final teacher.” In light of persecution by ISIS many have left their ancestral villages in Iraq, with significant communities now in exile in Sydney, Australia and Stockholm, Sweden. They do not dress in animal skins, nor live on locusts. They integrate into communities as famously reliable laborers, honest tradesmen, and ethical shopkeepers. Some have entered healthcare professions and it is not coincidental that on the shores of Lake Quinsigamond in my hometown of Worcester, lies the U. Mass. Medical School, where hundreds of Mandaeans dressed in white cotton or linen robes take to the water for baptismal renewal throughout their lives as often as one of the only 15 remaining Mandaen priests left in the world comes to the city.
Written by Tony Stankus
Tony Stankus is the first librarian ever promoted to the rank of Distinguished Professor at the U of A. Now 69, Tony became an Episcopalian at age 66 because he could no longer resist the transcendent joys of it liturgies, nor the warmth of its priests and people.