(John, entering from the back, in costume, down the center aisle.)
Wake up, everybody! God’s Messiah is coming! That’s really good news! Get ready! Things have got to change around here! God’s blessings are coming for you! But you have to be ready! Clean it up, folks!
(John standing in front)
My name is John Ben Zechariah, which means John, son of Zechariah, but you have heard about me as John the Baptist. I know that you are preparing to celebrate the birth of the Messiah. And it looks to me like folks around here are really confused about preparing for Jesus, so your pastor asked me to come and tell you my part of the story. You see, it was my job to get Israel ready for their Messiah, so I’m the one to help you get ready, too.
Well, my story began before I was born. You met my father, Zechariah, last week. All his life he had longed for God’s Messiah to come and save us. But it had been 400 years since God had spoken through a real prophet and, even though my parents really worked to do everything right for God, it was getting hard for them to really believe that God would come for Israel again, or that God would come for them and make it possible for them to have a child.
My father was a priest. And the one time in his life when his name got drawn to go into the inner court of the priests and burn the incense before God, he had the shock of his life because the angel, Gabriel was there waiting for him and told him that he would have a son, even though he and my mother were way too old for that, and that God was finally going to move in Israel, and that I would have an important part in what God was doing. And that son was me.
While my mother was pregnant with me, she had her own shock. Her niece, Mary, came for a visit. And Mary was very young and she was engaged to a really good man, Joseph. Only she was pregnant and that was a big problem. But Mary had seen Gabriel, too, and Gabriel told her that she was going to have a baby son, who would be the Messiah. And Gabriel told Mary about the miracle that my mother was expecting in her old age. And Mary was really scared and confused because she and Joseph weren’t properly married yet. She was really afraid that Joseph would dump her. So Mary came and stayed at our house for a several months. And my mother really helped Mary through that scary time. They both knew they were going to have very special sons. But it was all too much for them to fully understand.
My parents were really good people. You met my Dad, Zechariah, last week. He was great. Did he wear his priest’s robes? Didn’t they look great? He was pretty impressive when he was on duty. And everybody assumed that I would be a priest, too. My Dad would bring me to the temple often and he started showing me what priests do. I knew all the routines of what happened on all the official special days, all the things he loved. Every one of them had a meaning and they really helped my Dad worship God.
But that life wasn’t for me. I wanted something deeper. I saw plenty of people going through the rituals in the temple and then going home and living lives that just weren’t right. And I could see that they weren’t ready for God’s Messiah. And I could see that there was no way that I would get them ready just by leading them through the motions in the temple. It tore me up inside. I was just burning to fulfill the purposes that God had created me for, but I didn’t know how to do it.
My father suggested that I take some time away from it all and just listen to God and search the scriptures and sort it all out. And I knew that some of the greatest times that God spoke to our people were when our ancestors were in the wilderness on the way from Egypt to Israel. So I went out to the wilderness to pray and find for myself what God had for me. It would be rough, but I could be alone with God there.
I went down to the Jordan River valley, where the river cuts through a dry and barren stretch before it runs into the Dead Sea. The wilderness purifies the soul. And it was hard. But it was worth it. For one thing, the food I brought along ran out pretty soon. But I could supplement my diet with locusts. (Pretends to eat an artificial locust). You should try one some time. They aren’t bad. And there was wild honey out there, too. I got stung sometimes, but that was a treat.
God had called me to prepare the people for the ministry of the Messiah. My parents had told me the Messiah was my cousin, Jesus. But he lived up in Nazareth so I only got to see him a few times growing up. And I could see that he was special. But how could I get others to see that. How could I get the people ready to receive him, to follow him, to trust him?
I just couldn’t see how I could do that as a priest in Jerusalem. But as I prayed and reflected on the scriptures in the wilderness it came to me that God wanted me to do my ministry in the wilderness, to totally break out of the temple routines. People needed something radically new. When I thought about the words of the prophet, Isaiah, to prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness, suddenly I understood that God wanted me to call people out of all their comforts and routines and come out into the wilderness for a fresh start. That sounded crazy, but that’s what God was calling me to do.
I realized that they needed a prophet who spoke to them directly, like Elijah did in the Old Testament, who challenged them to just turn their whole lives around. So I started dressing like Elijah did: a camel’s hair robe and a leather belt. Camel’s hair robes are really cheap. That’s what the poorest people wore. I never realized how scratchy they are. (scratch)
And I thought it might be crazy, but it seemed to be what God was telling me to do, so I just started telling anybody I saw the message that God had burned into my heart. The time of waiting for God to come to us is over. The Messiah is about to appear. And we really need to clean up our act to get ready.
I was afraid that nobody would listen. I got a new understanding of what the prophet Isaiah wrote about a voice calling out in the wilderness. But would anybody listen?
The first few days were scary for me and I came close to quitting several times. There were some people who just ignored what I said or even scoffed at me.
I found out that there were a lot of people who were really hungry for something more, for God’s help in breaking away from a shallow life and a life that embarrassed them. They longed to have an experience of God for themselves. They longed to see our nation turned around.
But it wasn’t long before people were coming out, looking for me because their friends had told them about what I was doing. There were some days with big crowds and I was making speeches to crowds instead of just talking to one person at a time.
When they asked me what they needed to do in order to be ready I wasn’t easy on them. I told them they needed to make a total turnaround. I made them confess their sins and then step into the Jordan River and I dipped them under the water to symbolize that the old person was dying and a new, clean, forgiven person was being born. That’s why they called my John the Baptist.
People started coming to me that I had never seen come to the temple. Tax collectors came out. They were notoriously corrupt and everybody hated them because they were collaborators who were collecting taxes for the Romans. But they wanted to get right with God. I didn’t tell them they had to quit their jobs, but I was very strict that they had to do it honestly from now on. And when they confessed their sins I baptized tax collectors.
Some of Herod’s soldiers came. Some of them had been really brutal in the past. I didn’t tell them to quit their jobs, either, but no more threatening people and using their power to take advantage of anyone. And when they confessed their sins I baptized soldiers.
And there were a lot of ordinary people who came to me and asked what they needed to do and pretty much all of them needed to learn to watch out for the poor around them and share. If somebody doesn’t have enough food, then you need to share or you’re not ready for God’s kingdom. If somebody doesn’t have a coat and you have two, then you need to share. In God’s kingdom we watch out for each other.
Pharisees and Sadducees came to me. I used to see them in the temple a lot. They made a big show of being religious, but their hearts were proud and they were mean. They wanted me to baptize them so they could be part of the movement, but I could see that they hadn’t repented of their sins. If I brought people with hearts like that into God’s movement they would ruin it, so I let them have it. I told them they were behaving like snakes and they needed to repent before I would baptize them. Some of them were really mad and they left.
One of the greatest joys was that there were a number of young men who asked to stay with me, learn from me and help me. They became my disciples. Some came from way up in Galilee, two sets of brothers, Peter and Andrew, James and John.
The day came when I was really quite famous and the crowds were huge. I could hardly believe it. People started telling me how great I was. And I had to keep telling them that I was just the warm-up act. I was just the messenger boy. The really great one, the Messiah was coming and coming soon. And whatever they thought of me, I wouldn’t be worthy to even untie his sandals. And I knew it was my cousin, Jesus, but I didn’t know when he would make himself known.
Then one day Jesus was there. I pointed him out to my disciples and called him “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Those 2 sets of brothers from Galilee, Peter and Andrew and James and John left me to follow Jesus that day.
The others thought that was a big loss. Some said that I should go after them and bring them back. But that would miss the whole point. Jesus was the one they needed to follow. I knew the time would come when the ministry of Jesus would increase and I would decrease. Jesus was the Messiah. He showed us God’s grace. He died for our sins. And what a difference he makes.
