15 John the Forerunner
Help me Holy Lord
I see the light of Heaven’s porch
But so many of us are born here
Outside your chain link fence
But you can’t hold on
Can’t hold on to love
You can’t hold on
You can’t hold on and live
By the law
Borderlands
John Mark McMillan
Among them that are born of women there has not arisen one greater than John the Baptist. Matthew 11:11
Borderlands, edges, margins, deserts and wilderness. Do we all find ourselves there at some point? We wake up wondering when and why we got here, and whether it will become home. Off the map is thrilling until you’re really thirsty. Suddenly the fact that the familiar markers have all disappeared is less adventure, and more plain scary. Tolkien famously wrote that not all who wander are lost, but I reckon all who wander have those moments of cavernous lost-ness.
One time, in a moment of lostness, with a dash of self-pity, and to the sound-track of Borderlands, John the cousin of Jesus appeared in my mind. He was standing in a dark prison, stretching his limbs in an attempt to keep the damp from changing the shape of his bones. I’m guessing he was utterly reliant on his followers visiting with food and I’m struck by the contrast between the dark confined space, and his before-life under the wilderness skies of Judea. I stay on this thought, wanting to see and honour this forerunner.
The ribbons of time twist and I see a baby, carried by his mama. He holds her tightly under her robes. She walks alone, against her grief, and away from home. All she has left in her hands is this child of promise, the gift to two faithful God-lovers. Watching her, with her strands of grey and lines around her eyes, I remember the 1st Century Jewish historian* . He tells that Jesus’s baby cousin lost his father Zechariah when he was murdered by Herod. So, to the wilderness his mother carried him, and there the thread is picked up by Luke who records:
…. the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel. Luke 1:80
The Judean deserts and wilderness places were inhospitable land. Home of the outcasts, the rejects and the misfits, and those who just wanted to hide. It’s tempting to glamourise the edges, call them names like alternative. But alternative isn’t glamorous when you’re in the company of the desperate, the hungry, and those who’ve fallen off the edge of sanity. It’s even less glamorous when you’re one of them. It’s sorrowful and sometimes scary. Living there leaves scars. Trauma is infectious.The lens so big it distorts your sight even if it’s not your story. I know this to be true. I watch and wonder. Was this John’s experience too? Sometimes it helps to read every mention of the man and then let the stories marinade. I have time. There’s no hurry.
Standing with him, with bits of story and tradition scattered around, he feels kind of awkward. Words spoken are sparse and direct. If you want to hear them clearest it’s helpful to step into his world, on his soil, where his people were. Imagine.
I see his limbs knotty and all his muscles taut and lean. There’s nothing spare at all: no flab, no surplus. He is honed, long haired, and he has grown strong on the nectar and protein from his honey and locust diet.
Honey makes me think of the sweetness of the 3God’s presence . Locusts, of the relentless destruction caused by swarms. Presence and destruction, both there in abundance in the borderlands. It makes it harder to have friends, in these spaces.Especially if you’re not that sociable. I imagine that even as a boy John was different. I wonder if people ever thought him demonised, like those possessed of evil spirits who frequented the desolate areas (Mark 5:2-3). I wonder if they knew when he was younger that it was something else entirely that possessed him.
It was a long time, the desert time. If my maths is right, he moved from boy to man, and was man some seventeen years before he began to speak. Three decades for a message and a purpose to grow and form and burn in him, taut and knotted like his muscles. Ready.
I wonder what the starting pistol sounded like for him. What whisper or Angel-companion moved him out into the Jordan valley and began to give voice to the fire inside: “Repent! For the kingdom of God is here.”
He recruited no followers, and yet somehow, he attracted them. They moved toward him, toward his words, toward their God. Jerusalem and all Judea it says. He stayed in one place, with one voice, one goal: to midwife what was coming next. And they sought him out, followed him into the water, into change. No miracles, no manifestations, just a message. And they listened. (John 10:41). He had no time for those who came as self-appointed guardians of the people, dispatching them with verbal slaps like brood-of-vipers and white-washed-tombs. He had a people to ready. And a cousin to meet.
Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John, to be baptised by him….. after being baptised, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on him.
Matthew 3:13-17
Matthew 3:13-17
This is my beloved son! Imagine. Then imagine watching the beloved leave, while the people keep coming to you in the water, hungry for change and hungry for connection. One is coming, John said. Then the One came, and went on into the desert alone. John carried on until carried away at a spoilt woman’s whim, to the prison of his father’s killer.
I wonder what it was like when Herod’s soldiers came to get him. I wonder if any chose to pass through the water first. I wonder if any of the crowds defended John, and what the river looked like empty of the penitent again. I wonder if John knew his fire would burn bright and burn fast. He’s one I would love to talk with, to know, to understand, but I reckon he wouldn’t welcome the questions. Like the finest of groomsmen, intent had formed him fiercely into an arrow that pointed away from him and toward the One centre stage. He knew who he was, and what he was doing. This is what makes it even sweeter to me that we are given a glimpse into that prison cell, into the wrestle that surfaced when he wondered if he had finished the task he was created for.
Are we waiting for another?
He asks. He asks for reassurance, and it comes as eye witness accounts: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.
And those who are not offended are blessed. Luke 7.22
I get tired of being shaped by the place I made home. Tired of the message I carry and tired of my own unbelief. The damp enters my bones too. In my complaint I hear the sweet song of the Lover. He reminds me he is, and always will be, out there where I belong, dancing his dance, and calling those who dwell in the borderlands to join him. For me, it’s only to point to the one who dances wild and free, with holes in his hands deep enough for all the pain to be poured into. And it’s my choice. My choice to let the offense be shaken off. My mistakes, disappointments, doubts and loss can fall away. I can ask for reassurance, for witness accounts that heal my soul. I can stir my spirit to rise again for my beloved. I’m reminded: we’re just midwives. There is another who is mother, father, friend to all the little ones. Do I believe it?
Father Boyle said we don’t go to the margins to make a difference. We go to the margins so folks at the margins can make us different. In their liberation I find mine again, and again. Awaken my gut to dream new dreams, I pray, and I sing:
From the dirt you, draw me out, and you draw me out, again.
I’m coming out from the dead, coming out of my skin.
Cos you are everything my heart wants,
Everything my heart wants,
My heart runs,
My heart runs after you.
John Mark McMillan – My Heart Runs
John Mark McMillan – My Heart Runs
*Josephus
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