Last Sunday's Thought: Becoming a Nation of John the Baptists

When following a route using a satnav in my car recently, I thought to myself: this is a very boring road, it’s straight. We build relatively straight roads now when we can because it speeds up the traffic and in optimum circumstances cuts down accidents. 

The Romans are famous as the first to build straight roads on a widespread scale. They were able to do so because they had at their disposal a technical innovation, ‘the tool that built an empire’, the groma or surveyor’s cross. The surveyor would send out an assistant with some ranging poles; the assistant would stop after about 125 paces and hold a pole vertically with one end on the ground. The assistant was directed to move until the surveyor could see that the pole was in line with the three strings of the groma. The process was repeated until the assistant had run out of poles, leaving a straight line of poles marking the course of the road. The surveyor would then move forward to the last pole, set up the groma again and send out his assistant with ranging poles to repeat the procedure.

Now while the groma was almost certainly in use in ancient civilizations before the Romans, and was discovered by the Greeks, it was never used systematically by anyone before the Romans. Thus when the Prophet Isaiah foretells ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord’, we know for certain that this could not have been a literal attempt to build a straight road because the Hebrew people did not have access to the invention of the groma at the time of the Babylonian captivity (c. 597 to 538 BC).Unusually, all four gospels quote the words of the Prophet Isaiah who foretells ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord’. 

In his Bible notes, John Wesley remarks that the context ‘relates to the deliverance of the Jews out of Babylon, and smoothing their passage from thence to Judea, which lay through a great wilderness; but principally to their redemption by the Messiah, whose coming was ushered in by the cry of John the Baptist, in the wilderness’. ‘Prepare ye the way of the LORD’, Wesley comments, ‘alludes to the custom of princes who send pioneers before them to prepare the way through which they are to pass. The meaning is, God shall by his spirit so dispose men’s hearts, and by his providence so order the affairs of the world, as to make way for the accomplishment of his promise. This was eminently fulfilled, when Christ, who was, and is God, blessed for ever, came into the world in a visible manner.’

The words of the Prophet Isaiah (40: 3-5) read thus: ‘A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”’

The comparison of the two texts shows us that the revealing of the glory of the Lord in Isaiah has become more specifically the ‘salvation of God’ in the preaching of John the Baptist. All shall see it. But will all be saved? Clearly not. For the prophet Amos the day of the Lord will be one of darkness not light (Amos 5:18-20), while Isaiah continues: ‘A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.’ The implication is that the coming of God’s salvation means judgement on mankind’s inconstancy.

Luke tells us that John the Baptist preached ‘a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ (Luke 3:3). John preached the necessity of repentance, in order to secure the remission of sins, and that the baptism of water was an outward sign of that inward cleansing and renewal of heart, which attend, or are the effects of true repentance, as well as a profession of it. He could exhort people to repent, and assure them of forgiveness upon repentance; but he himself could not work repentance in them, nor confer remission on them. Ultimately, his task was to refer people onto Christ.

Do we need a John the Baptist figure to confront the evils in today’s society? Since John was technically an Old Testament prophet (‘For all the prophets and the Law prophesied until John’: Matthew 11:13), to concentrate on his contribution, whether in the past or present, might seem perverse. Nevertheless, the focus on John is justified by some remarkable statements made about him by Jesus: of those born of women, Jesus said, ‘there is no one greater than John’ (Luke 7:28). In Jesus’ words, he was ‘more than a prophet’. He was chosen as God’s herald, a forerunner of the Messiah who would prepare for his coming (Luke 7:26).

And if we state that we do need a John the Baptist figure in today’s society, we recognize two particular features of his ministry: firstly that he was prepared to criticize the sinfulness of virtually every social group at the time; and secondly that he was a preacher of immense courage who did not tailor his message to his audience. Jesus asked rhetorically of people’s experiences of John’s ministry, ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to see, a reed shaken by the wind?’ (Luke 7:24; Matthew 11:7). No, everyone would know the answer: John was unshakeable in his convictions. As we would say, he was no wilting violet.

When we reflect on the sinfulness of recent generations in our society, and the fact that the sustained abuse of children by Cyril Smith and Jimmy Savile was not denounced sufficiently loudly and strongly at the time, we are bound to conclude that in our society we have lacked a prophetic figure of the rectitude and forcefulness of John the Baptist, who was prepared to rebuke even Herod Antipas. ‘In a day when people reject any notion of truth apart from what’s expedient or “seems right”, who will hold up the standard of God’s unchanging truth if not those who have inherited the prophetic mantle of John the Baptist?’ we are asked. 

Abuse takes place where people have power and control and can exploit their position. Regrettably, it can occur in the church too, just as in the rest of society. We are all called as God’s people to have the courage to stand up to abuse if we encounter it in our private lives, at our place of work, or in the institution of the church. To remain silent, as people remained silent in the past, is to refuse to confess Jesus Christ as our Lord or to acknowledge our duty towards God. It is only when we ourselves become a nation of John the Baptists that we will no longer need a modern John the Baptist figure.