JOHN, THE HARBINGER, PROPHET & BAPTIST

John the Baptist is remembered as the one who lived for truth, one who challenged all kinds of political and social evils and one who died for truth. Nevertheless, his personality is not confined to just that. We can understand him better only if we know his context.

The very first air he breathed contained the fresh fragrance of a priestly legacy as his father Zechariah was a priest himself and his mother Elizabeth belonged to Aaron’s lineage. This means that he was born into a community which belonged to a fixed status. And it is no mistake to gather that being born into a priestly family, he had the call and responsibility to defend the ethos and values of his community.

However, it is believed that he was orphaned in his early age and hence was adopted by the Qumran community which was a closed monastic community. Therefore, as he grew his ministry too was associated with Qumran. In fact, it is in the light of this that we should read Lk. 3^4-6, which is borrowed from Isa. 40^3-5, which indeed was a text important to the Qumran community. It is also to be noted that his Spartan diet and apparent ascetical behavior paint fairly good analogies with Qumran. Moreover, the water rites that he practiced were in continuity with Qumran.

Hence, by birth and life there was a chance for John, the Baptist to be born and to die as part of closed communities. But, what is important here is that he could burst open from that…he opened himself to the world outside. In the Gospel of Luke we find that he preached to Jews as well as to ‘others.’ Soldiers were not Jews, for under Roman law Jews were exempt from military service because they would not fight on the Sabbath. When crowds asked John what they should do, he does not tell them to keep the commandments of the Torah. In the third gospel John’s message is the same for Jews and Gentiles. To repent, they are told to share their clothing and food with the poor, and to be honest and fair. (Lk. 3^10-14)

In a world where we tend to live as part of closed communities, withdrawing ourselves from our social commitments, disassociating with others, forming our own cliques and groups, the life and ministry of John the Baptist stand as a ‘controversy’ - a life in discontinuity and disagreement with the flow. Yes, his was a life that burst open from his closed communities to the world outside. It is this courage that he showed that made him the ‘Harbinger of the Good News’, ‘Prophet of a New World Order’, and ‘Baptist of a Social Change.’

We too need to break our cliques and burst to the world outside, so that we would become ‘Harbingers of the Good News’, ‘Prophets of a New World Order’, and ‘Baptists of a Social Change.’ For this, what we need is not just a life of tolerance but the courage to live a life of harmony with the world outside. Let us not forget that we believe in a God who did not remain to his closed heavens, rather the one who reached out and loved us as we are… who had the courage to live in harmony with us, who came as the herald of the Good News, established a New World Order by challenging and transforming socio-economic and religious ethos.