A little girl who normally attended another Sunday School happened to attend a Methodist Sunday School one week-end, while visiting her grandmother.  In the course of the morning she heard a number of things she wasn’t quite sure about, but when the teacher said that Jesus was a Jew she responded, “Maybe Jesus was a Jew, but God is a Baptist!”

Of course, God isn’t a Baptist; and neither was John the Baptist, for that matter.  That is why the Revised Standard Version calls him “John the Baptizer”...to avoid such confusion  (I only used the title in today’s sermon to try to pique people’s curiosity.) The reference is not to any of our modern-day denominations, such as the Methodists and the Baptists.  My sermon has nothing to do with our neighbors to the west: the Baptist Church next door. …