Picking Up the Mantle

This Sunday’s lectionary text (Matthew 4:12-23) really continues the story from my last blog about John the Baptizer. In re-imagining John as a leader, I sourced the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus who described him not as a supporting character in Jesus’ story, but as a powerful figure in his own right. John drew very large crowds which caused Herod to be concerned about the impact on his authority.

In the gospel, however, nothing more is talked about John’s mission and the impact that was having on the contemporary society. The text almost moves on too quickly. The reading for today opens with the words, “Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested ...”. 

As I said previously, I think that a careful glance at John gives another lens to interpret Jesus through. So, John is arrested and Jesus picks up the mantle. Jesus is not starting a new ministry or cause but continuing what John started. The text makes that clear— “from that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent’ …”. The same call John had been making: a call to turn, to re-orient life, to live differently.

The message of John was not going to fade into insignificance with his arrest, Jesus was taking it up. This radical, revolutionary message was not going to weaken but to strengthen. It is no wonder that the authorities ultimately felt threatened by Jesus too. This was not a comfortable domestic message but one that demanded change from all who heard it.

The text continues with Jesus’ encounter with Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John. This gathering of the men to be disciples always saddens me a little. Obviously, other parts of the story of Jesus show that there were women followers, but none so explicitly named or called as the men. However, I have talked about that in past blogs so today I want to muse a little on these four men.

It does not make sense to me that these men saw a stranger and dropped everything. These were not unattached men with nothing to lose. They had wives, they were embedded in families, responsibilities and fragile economies. Yet they dropped everything to follow a stranger. Why would anyone do that? 

Nobody turns their back on everything without a good reason. Therefore, I think they must have had an inkling about what they were joining. It must have been a cause close to their hearts. They wanted to be part of it. They were no longer going to seek fish, but they were going to seek people. They were going to change the world. They were going to make a difference. They had been invited to join a cause that they felt was worth sacrificing everything for. 

As the lectionary invites me to muse of these four men this week, I am reminded that it wasn’t a light or easy thing they did. What impresses me most is that none of this happened in a vacuum. John had already been arrested. The cost of speaking this message aloud was no longer  theoretical. The danger was visible. But still, Jesus took up the mantle. Still these men chose. join.

This is not naïve enthusiasm or blind obedience. It is a decision made in the shadow of risk. 

The call to “follow” was not a call to safety or certainty. It was a call to place their lives alongside a movement that insisted the world could be changed, that people could live differently. Perhaps this is why I find the story unsettling. It asks uncomfortable questions about risk, sacrifice and choices. 

John’s voice was silenced. Yet it survived. It was carried forward, not without cost, not without loss but with immense courage. These men, these first disciples, were just ordinary people who choose to step into that dangerous yet life-giving mission, calling people to live differently.

Re-Imagining John the Baptiser

Today’s lectionary, (Matthew 3:13-17) is a story of two people who had known each other from infancy. John and Jesus, two boys, relatives, of whom John was the elder by about six months. 

Had they had contact over the ensuing years? I have no idea; there is no source for that information. However, when Mary found herself pregnant it was to John’s mother, Elisabeth, she turned. Elisabeth who played that wonderful prophetic role in affirming the Christ child. So, I think it is likely that the boys knew each other, had even played together, had met probably on several occasions or, at the very least, knew the stories of each other’s birth and history.

I do wonder if sometimes, the import of John is lost a little as the focus is always on Jesus. So, I want to pause here and think about John. Even to reframe John a little, which in turn will open a new lens to view Jesus.  

Outside the Gospels, we have only one significant historical witness to John: The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, writing toward the end of the first century. In Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus describes John not as a supporting character in Jesus’ story, but as a powerful figure in his own right. Josephus acknowledges John as a good and righteous person who called people to live justly with one another and faithfully before G*d. John invited them to imagine another way of living.

Baptism, in Josephus’s telling, was not a magical washing away of sins, but a bodily sign that a life had already begun to change.

Josephus also tells us something else important. John drew crowds, very large crowds. So many people that Herod Antipas became afraid. Afraid that John’s influence might spark unrest. So, Herod had John killed, not as a moral critique of Herod’s household, but because he feared John’s influence may provoke a revolution.  

This matters, because it reminds me that when Jesus stepped into the Jordan, he is not stepping into a harmless religious ritual. He is stepping into a movement already marked by resistance, by risk, by political consequence. John is not simply preparing the way; John is already walking it.

The longer I muse on this scene, I am also impressed by the quality of relationship between John and Jesus. There is no hint of jealousy, no competition for followers, no anxiety about who is the greater. That alone is remarkable, especially as both the Gospels and Josephus talk of John’s popularity. If anything, John has more social capital at this moment. John has the crowds. John has the reputation. John has the movement.

And yet there is no grasping. John does not cling to status, and Jesus does not exploit it. 

What happens instead is mutual recognition. John recognises something in Jesus and Jesus honours John. Jesus does not bypass him, does not create a separate ritual, does not claim exemption. Jesus comes to John. Relationship is preserved, not overridden.

It is sad that rivalry so often creeps in between people. But here, one calling is not better than another calling. John’s work is not diminished by Jesus’ presence, and Jesus’ identity is not threatened by John’s authority. It is shared faithfulness.

This is strengehend by their exchange.

John tried to resist, “I need to be baptised by you, and you come to me?”

This is not a false humility. It is discernment. John knows what this water means. He knows what it costs. And he does not rush to claim authority over someone else’s body or calling. There is something profound here, something about consent. John does not seize the moment. He questioned it. He hesitated. He pushed back.

And Jesus responded not with a command, but with a request, “Allow it now.” And John consented, consent is named, not overridden.

Jesus enters the water not as someone above it all, but as someone willing to be immersed, fully, bodily, vulnerably. In John’s time the Jordan was not a safe, sanitised river. It was a wild water flowing through the Zor floodplain dense with reeds and shrubs. It was a dangerous water with banks unstable and prone to collapse, with and an abundance of insects, snakes and animals. It varied wildly in depth. The Jordan was also a boundary river with much historical significance. Israel crossed it to enter the land, Elijah and Elisha both crossed it, Naaman was healed in it, So, it was water that has held the hopes of exodus and the threat of danger drowning. 

For Jesus to step into it was to relinquish control, to step into it was to espouse fully John’s mission with all that meant.

Then there is the Spirit.

Frequently imaged as a soft, white, domesticated dove forgetting how misleading that image may be. The bird named in the text would almost certainly have looked more like a rock pigeon, grey, iridescent, common, urban, unremarkable. Not a creature of ornaments or greeting cards, but one woven into everyday human landscapes. A bird you might barely notice.

This feels right, the Spirit does not descend in spectacle, but in familiarity. Not exotic or rare but present. The Spirit rested, abided. As at creation, the Spirit moves close to water, not to dominate it, but to dwell with it. 

And just as Jesus consents to the water, there is relationship again. Nothing forced, nothing dramatic just presence. In this light, baptism looks less like a transaction and more like a web of relationships held in trust: John and Jesus, river and body, Spirit and flesh, heaven and earth. No rivalry. No hierarchy. Just a shared turning toward what is right.

And perhaps that is why the voice that follows does not compare or rank or measure success. It speaks only of love and delight — “beloved.”

As I re-imagine John, I see that John’s importance has never been about standing before Jesus, pointing the way, but about standing with him ankle-deep (or maybe waist or even shoulder deep) in the river, faithful to the work of justice, unafraid to resist the status quo, and willing to bear the political consequences of his stance.