He was standing out in the river. We can envision John standing out there. His clothes were soaked. His long, wet hair hung down across his face and down his back. If we didn’t know better, we might think he was someone who had wandered out of the wilderness and was having some kind of breakdown. He was standing there, surrounded by people who had come to see him. They had come from all around the country and there were even people from Sidon and Tyre: foreigners, and not even Jewish foreigners. They had all come to see him standing there in the river, hoping to hear him speak, hoping to stand next to him and be baptized by him. He moved around in the crowd, sometimes talking and sometimes yelling, and sometimes bending over to scoop up a handful of water to pour over someone’s head.

I wonder if John knew what was about to happen? I wonder what John was thinking about all these people and about why they were here? I wonder if he was thinking about why he was there? I wonder if, every once in a while, he just stopped and looked around. I wonder if he looked at the crowds and heard what they were saying? Do you think he stopped and looked at his hands and what they were doing then? I wonder what John was thinking?

We don’t know a great deal about John the Baptist. We know he was born to Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, and her husband Zechariah, a priest who worked in the temple in Jerusalem. We assume John’s early years were at least comfortable and that he was raised to be familiar with the Jewish faith and the role of the temple. We do know that Elizabeth and Zechariah were already older when he was born, and at some point, John was an orphan.

We aren’t told what happened to young John after that. But we do know that the orphaned son of a temple priest would usually be taken care of by the community of which his parents had been a part. We also know that, in the world of the temple, family heritage was the most important measures of a person’s role. Since John’s father and mother were both descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses, and the very first high priest, young John would most likely be carefully raised to be prepared to follow his father’s footsteps and become a temple priest himself. That is what we would expect to happen. But today, we don’t find John standing in the middle of the temple courtyard, but in the middle of the Jordan River with a crowd of temple authorities standing on the shore watching to determine just how much of a threat he really was. Something interesting must have happened, because instead of following the expected path of becoming a temple priest, John ended up being the voice of a movement whose ultimate prayer was the destruction of the Jerusalem temple.

Some believe it was because of the Essenes. The Essenes were a group of Jewish people, possibly a mix of former temple priests and Sadducees who believed the temple had become corrupted. Because of their more conservative beliefs, most of them chose to live apart from the temple and the rest of the Jewish community. They did not believe in offering sacrifices as the temple required. They believed that one day soon, God would return to clean out the corrupt temple and replace it with a new one. Everyone in the Jewish community believed in taking ritual baths to clean their sins, but the Essenes believed in baths, or baptisms, as part of their daily religious activities.

Some Essene communities followed strict dietary rules, limiting their diet to locusts and honey. Some of the more stringent Essene communities did not marry and were known to adopt orphan boys to raise in order to sustain the population of their community. Some believe that John’s diet, his speaking against the temple, and his use of baptism meant that, for some reason, young John left the community of the temple and was adopted into this more conservative, anti-temple movement of the Essenes.

There are many other ideas about what John experienced and why he ended up standing in the middle of that river. But honestly, as we remember the story and see John standing out in the water today, I don’t think it is all that important just how he got there. He is there.

Something happened in John’s life that led him to believe that God wanted something more for people. Something led John to leave the comfort and security of the temple life and spend years living in the wilderness, trying to understand what God wanted him to do. At some point, something led John to come out of the wilderness and start telling others what he believed. And something led people to listen to him and follow him. Something happened to put John in the middle of that river.

If we knew the truth, there were probably several things John experienced through his life that helped bring him here to the river. Everything that had happened helped prepare him to fulfill the role he was fulfilling that day, standing in that river. For me, how he got there isn’t all that important or interesting.

Do you know the thing that does really interest me? I would really like to know what John was thinking about right then standing out there in the water. We know some of the things he said, and what he was doing, but I wonder if there was more going through his head than what we are told. I wonder if he was thinking about what I would probably have been thinking about if it was me standing out there in the water.

I have an idea that if it were me out there looking at what was going on around me, I would have been thinking about all that I had been through to get there. I am pretty sure a part of my thinking would have been something like, “I made it! Finally! After all I have been through, I have made it!”

I’m not saying I would be proud and bragging about what I had done and was doing now, or that I would be thinking I was better than everyone else there, or closer to God than they were. But I do think if it were me standing out in that river, I would be taking a moment every now and then to just enjoy the success.

I have to admit, I would probably look at the crowds lining the shore, and the people still filling the roads to get there. I would probably smile inside to think there were that many people coming to see me. And some of those people had been following me for days, wherever I have gone, they have shown- up. Of course, I would have understood it wasn’t just me they were coming to see, and that I was simply filling a role God had for me. I know that. But still, after all I had gone through to get there — just look at all of them!

Although I would know I was fulfilling a role that God had given to me to prepare everyone for God’s Messiah, a lot of those people believed I was something more than that. Some of them were even asking me if I was the one God was sending — if I am that Messiah. And the way they looked at me and hung onto every word I said. I mean, even the big shots from the temple were here to see me.

Now, I realize what I am saying may sound like blasphemy to some, but I don’t mean it that way. I just wonder if John felt any of the things I think I might have felt. And let’s be honest. If you were the one standing out there in the middle of all that praise and excitement, don’t you think some of those thoughts might have crossed your mind too? Don’t you think it is possible you might have had some second thoughts about why you were there or who you were supposed to be?

The young man had the dream of starting his business for many years. He had developed a new model for designing learning activities for those who struggled with traditional learning and he had spent the past twenty years demonstrating how well it worked. It was going to be a business with one goal of helping others; helping them become the person they dreamt of becoming. But it would be expensive to create and operate, so he had spent many of those years finding the resources to make it happen. He had sacrificed a lot. He had been laughed at and had doors slammed in his face over and over again.

Until today.

Today he is sitting at a table with a group people. Each of those people has created their own successful businesses and has the resources he needs to make his business a reality. They are sitting there to sign the paperwork giving him the money to make his dream come true. The young man would finally be able to fill the role he had felt was his calling and become the helping person he believed he was supposed to be.

The papers were passed around the table and everyone signed them. The dream had come true. As they all rose from the table, two of the others walked over to shake the young man’s hand. One of them said, “Now that you are one of us, you will of course want to change how you dress and how your wife dresses, too.” The other person said, “And you will want to be more careful about the people you spend your time with, now that you are one of us.”

“Now that you are one of us.” The words bounced around inside the young man’s mind.

As he tried to sort out his thoughts, a third person took his hand. “Now that you are one of us, of course you will come to the golf outing this Saturday. It is an invitation-only thing, but now that you are one of us, we look forward to seeing you there.”

As the day passed, wherever he went there were more people who stopped to talk to him. People who had never stopped in the past. One offered the use of box seats at the ballgame anytime the young man wanted to use them. Another offered a position on the board of her organization, looking forward to having the young man’s new ideas to explore. A third simply said, “Now that you are one of us, anytime you need anything, anything at all, you just let me know.”

Other people saw and heard the conversations. While many people he had never spent time with were now showing up every day, many of those people who had been a part of his life for the past many years no longer came around. When he approached them, even those he had felt the closest to, they seemed hesitant to talk with him. It was like they believed he was no longer a part of their world. His dream had come true, but it was not quite the dream he had dreamed.

One morning, as he was sitting at the restaurant, one of his successful new friends sat down next to him and said, “We all think it is a wonderful gesture to want to try and do something to help other people. But if you want your business to be as successful as ours are, your primary focus has to be on ensuring profits, finding opportunities for expansion, and diversifying in ways to have a more stable base you can build upon for the long- term. The idea you have is admirable, but the simple reality is, now that you are one of us, you need to rethink who you are and what you are doing.”

“Now that you are one of us.”

The words haunted the young man. They kept him awake at night and churned his stomach all day. Who am I? Who am I meant to be?

He had spent so much time and had worked so hard to get to this day and become the person he believed he was supposed to be. And now that the day is here, he finds himself wondering if that person was who he really wants to be. He sees the opportunity to be more than he thought he wanted to be. And the recognition, the praise, the acceptance, the people believing he might be something more. It just felt so good.

The young man knew he had a huge decision to make. Who am I, really?

Who am I meant to be?

It is a huge decision and can be a difficult one. It is difficult to not get caught up in opportunities and become distracted from who we are and who we want to be. Opportunities for recognition, for praise, for acceptance, for anything that feeds our desires, can cause us to lose track of who we are, who we want to become. We can lose track of why we are here.

I sometimes wonder if John had to make that same decision. I wonder if John, even for a moment, became so caught up in all that was happening that he thought about believing what the people said about him? In my mind, I like to think that John did wonder. I like to think he was human enough to be tempted, even for just a moment or two. I like to think that, because it makes it all that much more powerful when he looks at the people asking him to be the person they wanted him to be, and he said,

“I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I will come” (v. 16).

John remembered his role. He remembered who he was, and who he was meant to be. And if John could do that, there is hope for us too.

No matter how certain we might be in our faith, there are times when opportunities appear that offer us things of which we have only dreamed. Things that offer us answers, money, recognition, pleasure, or anything else that might grab our attention. And all we have to do to have those things is to change who we are and who we want to become.

Who are you, really? Who do you want to be? Who am I meant to be? Why role has God asked you to fill? John reminds me that it is easier to answer these questions if I remember that there is one who is more powerful than me if I remember the role that one has asked me to fill.

John reminds me that I am not here to create my following, or my kingdom but to live my life in a way that reminds those around me there is one greater than me. And that one has asked me to do one thing: tend and feed my sheep. That is my role. That is who I am. That is who I want to be.

A bit later, when Jesus appeared in the crowd and John baptized him, the story says that God’s voice spoke to Jesus from heaven saying, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.

Between you and me, I think God was very well pleased with John as well. Amen.