Jesus the Baptist

[This is the conclusion of the previous article that discussed how the evangelists tried to suppress the embarrassment posed by John's baptism of Jesus. It also covered what we can know about John the Baptist from the gospels. Since this article depends on the previous one, I recommend you read it first.]

John's Rival

If Jesus accepting baptism from John was embarrassing, what about Jesus being a disciple of John and performing his own baptisms? The synoptic gospels portray Jesus presenting himself to John for baptism and then being tempted in the desert for forty days before starting his public ministry. But the Fourth Gospel offers a different sequence of events and additional details about the relationship between John and Jesus.

The Fourth Gospel states that Jesus’ first disciples – Andrew and an unnamed disciple – were previously disciples of John (1:35-42). Andrew recruited his brother Peter and their network of like-minded individuals to become Jesus’ core group. While the evangelist makes it look like John simply pointed Jesus out to two of his disciples and they followed Jesus, the reality must have been that Jesus spent enough time in John’s company to win over two or more of his disciples.

Later in the gospel (Jn 3:22-30), we have the odd story that Jesus and his disciples set up a baptizing ministry in Judea. John’s disciples learned of this rival ministry and complained to John that “everyone is coming to him” (v. 26). John shrugged it off the same way Jesus shrugged off complaints that others were exorcising in his name (Mk 9:38-41). But, in an awkward transitional passage (Jn 4:1-3), Jesus abandoned his baptismal ministry in Judea and returned to Galilee. The reason given – because the Pharisees heard he was more successful than John? – doesn’t make much sense.

Embarrassed by the idea that Jesus was imitating the Baptist, the final redactor of the Fourth Gospel inserted an editorial comment (v. 2) that it was really Jesus’s disciples, not Jesus, doing the baptisms. It seems the idea of Jesus being a disciple of John and performing his own baptisms so cut against the idea that Jesus was a unique and greater figure than John that the other three evangelists suppressed the tradition altogether. Can we really be sure, then, that Jesus abandoned the ritual act of baptism when he started his Galilean ministry? If baptism was not a part of his ministry, why would his last words in Matthew (Mt 28:19) be the command: “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them”? And why would the early Church adopt baptism as the initiatory ritual for new Christians?

Putting it all Together

If we put the pieces together, we have the figure of John, who became better known as “the Baptist” due to his signature ritual, bathing people with water as a symbol of a future baptism in the Holy Spirit from a more powerful figure who would come after him. Undergoing baptism was an acknowledgement that the recipient accepted John’s message of repentance in the face of the immanent judgment of God wherein those bearing the fruits of repentance would be saved and the rest burned in fire.

The Preaching of St. John the Baptist by Alessandro Allori (1535-1607)

Jesus then appears on the scene, takes John’s message to heart, and accepts baptism by John. Most likely he stays on with John for a while, long enough to win over some of John’s disciples. Jesus begins his own baptizing ministry in Judea, and some resentment arises among John’s disciples. Then for reasons unknown – perhaps due to the arrest of John by Herod – Jesus abandons his baptism ministry in Judea and begins his public ministry of preaching and miracle working in Galilee. Whereas John waited for people to come to him, Jesus decided that he would go to where the people were instead.

John was an ascetic, eating simple foods like locusts and wild honey (Mk 1:6) and avoiding strong drink. Jesus, on the other hand, was not an ascetic. Unlike John, he did not fast nor avoided wine. He did not isolate himself in the desert, but had table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners. From his prison cell, John began to have doubts. He had expected the imminent arrival of “the mightier one” who would separate the wheat from the chaff. Reports of his former pupil did not match that expectation, so John sent messengers to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we wait for another?” Jesus responded with an inventory of his miracle-workings and concluded, “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” In a gentle fashion, Jesus asks that his former teacher not be shocked that the end times have indeed arrived, but not quite in the fashion John had envisaged. There is no reply from John.

Implicit in Jesus’ beatitude on those who are not scandalized by him is the threat that those who cannot accept him will not share in the kingdom of God. The John who went to his death believing his life’s mission to be a failure is not the John presented elsewhere in the gospels who leapt in Elizabeth’s womb, or begged to be baptized by Jesus, or proclaimed, “Behold the lamb of God!”

John shows his influence on Jesus in the latter’s preaching of the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God and the call to repentance. John’s influence is also seen in the early Church’s adoption of baptism as an initiation rite. Jesus may have gone is own way, but he spoke highly of the Baptist, saying that he was more than just a prophet and that none was greater than John. But, for all that, John’s vision of the one to come after him was faulty. The “mightier one” would not be laying the axe to the tree or separating the wheat from the chaff, but would be making the blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame walk.

John is the bridge between the time of the Law and the Prophets and the time of the Kingdom of God. The Baptist was the greatest in the time of the Law and the Prophets, but a new era has dawned. In the time of the Kingdom of God, even the least person will be greater than John. That is what Jesus promises.