Then the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. And he went into the region of the Jordan and preached there everywhere a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah: ‘A voice of one crying out in the wilderness: / Prepare the way of the Lord! / Make straight his paths!’  Every ravine shall be filled in / and every mountain and hill levelled. What is crooked shall be made straight, / what is rough shall become a level path. And all people shall see the salvation of God.
 

John is in the desert. A significant place, which in the Bible is often associated with God’s presence, but also with desolation. In Holy Scripture, people have different experiences in the desert. It is not merely a place of retreat, but also stands for a reorientation that can enable people to become a new creation. The account of John the Baptist in the Gospel of Luke describes precisely this desert experience, yet develops its own dynamic of the journey: it is centred on the key concept of repentance (Greek: μετάνοια – metánoia).

The evangelist Luke presents John as an eloquent prophet who does not dwell on the calamity that God’s wrath will reveal on the Day of Judgement, but focuses instead on the hope of God’s salvation (‘All people will see the salvation of God’, v. 6). He allows some people to suspect that he himself is the Messiah, the messenger of God who will free humanity from its guilt and sin. Yet John is aware of his mission: he is to prepare the way for the Lord. John fulfils God’s commission through his preaching and baptism. The evangelist attests to John’s prophetic role by citing the passage from Isaiah (40:3). The call resounds as if from one voice: Prepare the way of the Lord!

The desert path that John has gone before leads from the realisation of guilt, through repentance, to the waters of baptism. Topologically, this refers to the banks of the Jordan; theologically, the water signifies the source that, through baptism, enables a radical turning towards a life that makes (new) sense.

For Christians, repentance means more than an exit strategy from sin, and baptism more than a symbolic washing with water: in a figurative sense, the Jordan is the stage of the journey where repentance not only becomes possible, but a life-defining decision is demanded: Do I want to be saved by God? Do we want our child to be incorporated into the family of God?

John the Baptist’s message is striking: by turning towards God and being incorporated into the community of all believers, we set out on the path of life – it leads along rough and winding paths through the ‘desert’ to the destination: Jesus Christ.

Miriam Pawlak