Matthew 3:1 - 4:11 Preparation for the Ministry of Jesus

Matt 3:1-12 Reflections on John the Baptist

All the gospels relate but distance Jesus and John. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist (Explicitly in Matthew and Mark, with some confusion in Luke and there is no reported baptism in John. Jesus is the greater one whose sandals he is unworthy to untie.
Mark has Jesus begins his ministry after John is put in prison. John is the one who prepares the way. Luke’s Gospel has Jesus and John as cousins. Herod, who has had John killed, confuses Jesus’ preaching with that of John and asks whether John has risen from the dead. The Fourth Gospel has Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, as a disciple of John who switches his allegiance to Jesus and tells his brother about it. “One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. “ The Fourth Gospel also says that Jesus baptized disciples. In this Gospel, the Baptist who is called “John” functions like one of those exaggerated big fingers you see at ball games: he points to Jesus and says “he’s the one!”

Why are the gospels at such pains to distinguish Jesus from John the Baptist?

• The Fourth Gospel says that Jesus is the true light and John is not: “there was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” To say that John the Baptist “was not the light” suggests that many were saying that he was the light. Similarly, to have him say “I am not the Christ, I am just the messenger pointing to Christ” carries the implication that some were confessing him to be the Christ. Would we have ever thought that this strange man was the Christ if we had not had it suggested to us?
• Hindsight is wonderfully clear. When you have to work hard to make a distinction after the event, there was probably a great similarity there at the time. Were Jesus and John actually all that different? Was there a familial likeness between them that allowed Christian tradition to paint them as cousins?
• It would seem that Jesus and John came out of the same environment. Jesus went out to John and was baptized by him. Matthew has the Baptist say that he is unworthy of this honor: “I should be baptized by you!” Nevertheless, John baptized Jesus, as embarrassing as this may have been to admit.
• The fact that Jesus was baptized by John is not a trivial matter. It puts the stamp of John’s movement on him. John could have had some association with the purification movement of the Essenes at Qumran on the Dead Sea. We know quite a bit about this early form of Judaism because we read their writings and their scriptures. They saw themselves as in opposition to the Jerusalem Temple and as people who were preparing the way of the Lord in the desert by interpreting Scripture. Ritual purification played a central part in their way of being Jewish: John’s baptism, as we see it in the Gospels, is different.
• Jesus was, initially, a disciple of John; baptism and ethical purity were central keys along with a conviction that these were significant times within the big strategic plan of God. Jesus moved on from this, away from the radical, hermit, recluse movement of John towards his own form of radicalism that had more in common with the Pharisees.
• John’s baptizing movement was a monopoly – people had to come to where John was; Jesus’ Kingdom movement was a franchise – his disciples could preach, heal and baptise. (JD Crossan)
• The Baptist in his Elijah clothes was a precursor to Jesus.
• The attempt to distinguish Jesus from John, and the attempt to rank them – John prepares the way for Jesus and no more – raises the implication that during the first century, the early Christian movement was competing for adherents with the Baptist movement just as they were with other Jewish groups. Jesus attracted adherents away from John, people represented by the character Andrew in the Fourth Gospel.
• There was not one way of being early Jewish in the first century of the Common Era. So too, there was no one, unified, powerful, victorious entity known as the Christian church for several centuries. Things are very fluid, particularly within the first century, despite what the story of the “Acts of the Apostles” would have us believe.
• Yet, there are some lines being drawn in the sand by the time the Gospels were being assembled and written in the last quarter of the first century. The Fourth Gospel is saying: we are different from the followers of the Baptist and we are different from the members of the Synagogue. We know stuff about Jesus. We know where he came from and where he went. He was not from Nazareth; he was from above.
• The Gospel of Matthew, as we will see, is nuancing things a little differently and allowing for a tension. It will involve “something old and something new”. "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." (Matt 13:52)
• The readers of the Gospels are not given a moment’s peace. They are constantly being pushed into making a decision. In this morning’s Gospel this choice is beginning to shape up as a choice for Jesus or a choice for John the Baptist.
• So, we have moved on from the story of Jesus’ beginnings – the genealogy and the Magi. We are seeing the preparation for Jesus’ preaching and healing and feeding “Kingdom of Heaven”. We are seeing that there is continuity and discontinuity with John the Baptist.

If we have read through the Gospel of Matthew then this will be starting to make sense.