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 wond…