Considering What John Claimed in His Obedience to Jesus and How It Might Provoke American Sensibilities

John 1: 26-27                                      February 18, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            So the challenge was, John the baptizer, you are NOT the Messiah nor Elijah nor the prophet (by John’s own admission), why do you baptize?  John’s response seems a little odd on the face of it.  “I baptize with water.”  This seems to be his rationale for why it is okay for him to baptize at all, not being one of the ‘big 3’.  If baptizing with water is okay, is there a baptism of some other form that is not okay?

            So it is something to watch for, to consider.  Where else does John the gospel writer, or the New Testament for that matter, talk about baptism that is not directly in regards to water baptism.  There is discussion of baptism of the Spirit.  But the Spirit has not been introduced to this narrative as yet.

            And, as we noted yesterday, the focus here is not on John the baptizer’s ministry except where it points to Christ.  So his answer is focused on Jesus.  He talks about the water, but then goes into far more depth about the one they do not yet know.  He returns to the refrain that this is the one who is coming after him.  I feels to me like John is saying that these discussions about the Messiah, about Elijah, about the prophet, will be far more fruitful with the ‘one who is coming after him’. 

            Now it is one thing to read John, separated so far from us in time and distance, when he says “I am unworthy to tie the thong of his sandal.”  

            For example, in “Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon”, a martial arts flick set in the US, an indulgence from my youth, there was a scene where the young hero is in his karate school surrounded by his students.  In walks the bad guy with his goons.  The bad guy shames the young hero by telling him to ‘kiss his Converse’ (his fancy sneakers) or, the implication was, his goons would hurt the students.  The hero bowed down before the bad guy, but got kicked in the face before he actually came in voluntary contact with the Converse.  Putting your face by someone's shoes is shaming behavior

            When we talk about being unworthy, it is in a satirical environment, as in the SNL sketch and movies about “Wayne’s World”, where Wayne and Garth would proclaim “We’re not worthy, we’re not worthy” when they met a rock star.

            John is embracing what we, in America, would consider to be shameful behavior between people as here, ‘all people are created equal’.  But on a superficial consideration, we can let this comment pass because it is not between people created equal, but a person and the Son of God.  I do not know about you, but this kind of obeisance, obedience shown to a superior through bows and kneeling and so on, is one of the things that I reject, as an American, as a vestige of a corrupt monarchical system.  But while I do not reject what John the baptizer is saying, because he is talking about Jesus, that kind of behavior is WAY out of my comfort zone. 

            When Jesus comes back, I feel like I will certainly be obedient in whatever way is appropriate because I will be so overjoyed, but, frankly, John’s comment about being unworthy to tie the thong of Jesus’ sandal, that’s not my favorite.

            And yet it foreshadows one of the most well-known episodes in the Gospel of John.  At the moment of the Last Supper, faithfully recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, John does not speak to that.  Rather, he tells us about an episode leading up to that meal, how Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, taking on the role of a slave in that moment.  Does John the gospel writer include this piece of John the baptizer’s speech to deliberate connect to what Jesus will do?  I cannot say with absolute certainty, but it is a powerful reminder of what Jesus was willing and what Jesus did do for each of us.