“A Message from the Wilderness” Colchester Federated Church, December 10, 2023, (Mark 1:1-8) Second Sunday of Advent

On the second and third Sundays of Advent this lectionary year, we encounter John the Baptist.  John is out in the wilderness calling for people to be baptized and announcing that Jesus would be coming after him to baptize people with the Holy Spirit.  John the Baptist is a memorable Advent figure.  One of the best church memes often shared during Advent is an image of a man assumed to be John the Baptist, a man who certainly looks like how John the Baptist is described—with clothes made of camel’s hair, a leather belt around his waist, with a rather wild look in his eyes and crazy hair—saying, “Happy Advent, you brood of vipers!” 

You gotta love John the Baptist!  Though it’s important to place John the Baptist in a larger historical and religious context.  Doing so can help us better understand John’s message from the wilderness and what that message means for all of us worshiping here at Colchester Federated Church on the Second Sunday of Advent today.

Let’s set the scene.  Because there were multiple Jewish groups present during the lifetime of John the Baptist and Jesus.  This week I read essays on “Jewish Movements of the New Testament Period” and “The Dead Sea Scrolls” in The Jewish Annotated New Testament.  Ipulled up old class notes from Systematic Theology II at Andover Newton to re-familiarize myself with the landscape.  Because the truth is that some Jewish groups are just more familiar to us in the Christian Church than others.  From the New Testament Gospels and the Book of Acts, we often hear about the Sadducees and Pharisees, right?  The Pharisees were focused on the detailed study and strict compliance of Mosaic Law.  The Sadducees were focused on maintaining the Temple in Jerusalem and the Temple Sacrificial System.  Though there were also Jewish groups around during this time that some historians label as Messianic Movements.  The followers of John the Baptist and Jesus could be labeled as such.  Then there was the Sicarii—anti-Roman rebels whose Latin name means “dagger-men” and they were designated as terrorists by the Romans.  The Sicarii were a specific group of Zealots.[1]

The final Jewish movement to consider is the Essenes.  The Essenes probably abandoned Jerusalem to protest how the Sadducees were running the Temple.  The Essenes went out into the wilderness near the Dead Sea to prepare the way for the Lord, following instructions from the prophet Isaiah.  The Essenes were focused on ritual purity within a cloistered community.  Some describe them as Jewish mystics.  L. Michael White (Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin) refers to them as “an apocalyptic sect of Judaism.”[2]  It is likely that the group of Jews living at Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered) were a group of Essenes

Now why does this all matter, who cares?  Because John the Baptist has been historically linked to Qumran (the community where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered)—a community of Essenes.  Doesn’t some of what historians know about the Essenes sound a little bit like John the Baptist?  Going out into the wilderness to prepare the way for the Lord, following closely the commands from Isaiah.  Mark quite literally quotes Isaiah in verse two of the Gospel, referring to John the Baptist.  Listen again, “The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, God’s Son, happened just as it was written about in the prophecy of Isaiah: Look, I am sending my messenger before you.  He will prepare your way, a voice shouting in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight.’”[3]  John the Baptist was following the commands of the Prophet Isaiah and baptizing people in the wilderness.  Why?  Mark tells us that it was “to show that they were changing their hearts and lives and wanted God to forgive their sins.”[4]  Doesn’t this sound like a ritual of purification . . . in the wilderness . . .  to prepare the way for Jesus? 

Could it be that John the Baptist was an Essene?

L. Michael White cautions that we cannot prove that John the Baptist was part of the Essenes.  That’s true.  Though Daniel Schwartz (Professor of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) writes, “If—as is often assumed, for good reason—there is a link between John the Baptist and Qumran, he was someone who took the sect’s universalistic message to its logical conclusion, preaching a message of salvation ‘for all flesh’ . . . and belittling the importance of Jewish descent, arguing that God can turn even stones into sons [children] of Abraham.”[5]  Moreover, Maxine Grossman (Director and Associate Professor at the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Program and Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland) writes about the Dead Sea Scrolls by relating that “the evidence of the scrolls was brought to bear even more directly in comparison with John the Baptist who, like the scrolls’ authors went out into the wilderness to ‘prepare a way for the Lord,’ lived ascetically, and preached baptism for the removal of sins and the preparation for end-times salvation.”[6] 

Here’s what we know—there was a great deal of diversity within Judaism during this time.  The Essenes questioned the traditions and the way it had always been done, particularly when it came to the worship of God in the Temple in Jerusalem.  The Essenes decided to make their own way in the wilderness to prepare the way for the Lord.  Maybe John the Baptist was an Essene.  Either way, doesn’t it matter that John’s message we hear on this Second Sunday of Advent came to us from the wilderness of all places!

When we hear the word “wilderness” what comes to mind?  A barren wasteland.  The desert.  A wild landscape.  Untamed land.  An uncultivated, uninhabited, inhospitable region.  Yet there was John the Baptist preaching and baptizing in the wilderness.  In a place where people had a hard time even living.  The wilderness was a place where God’s people often encountered God.  Many Jews in Jesus’ day believed that God would deliver God’s people for all time, and that deliverance would begin in the wilderness.

Don’t we have wilderness moments in our own lives?  After a death or a divorce, after losing a job or a friend.  After an epic failure or somehow needing to start all over again.  We have those moments where it feels like we are in the wilderness.  Maybe not physically.  Though emotionally or spiritually—we find ourselves in an inhospitable place, a barren wasteland.  It happens, and it is so hard.  In this season of Advent, let’s remember John’s message from the wilderness, a message that can give us a sense of peace.  Because we can change our hearts and our lives.  In the wilderness, we can even encounter God.  We can welcome the Messiah.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] Daniel R. Schwartz, “Jewish Movements of the New Testament Period,” in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, Editors.
[2] L. Michael White, “The Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls: what does the discovery of these scrolls reveal about first century Judaism and the roots of Christianity?” PBS,  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/essenes.html
[3] Mark 1:1-3, CEB.
[4] Mark 1:4, CEB.
[5] Daniel R. Schwartz, “Jewish Movements of the New Testament Period,” in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, Editors, pg. 530.
[6] Maxine Grossman, “The Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, Editors, pg. 569-570.

Photo by Rev. Lauren Ostrout.