Sunday 18 January 2026
I struggled in mass to pay attention. I do drift when John the Baptist is mentioned.
He is easy to dwell upon.
It’s not just his clothing, the makeshift clobber of someone completely uninterested in possessions, appearance, or the opinion of others (a powerful contradiction to our times).
Neither is it his diet. The fascinating combination of locusts and wild honey that did goodness knows what to his teeth. He cared nothing for any of the status or value we place on food today.
Perhaps it’s his steadfastness.
I imagine he would have been an intimidating figure to find on the banks of the river Jordan. He certainly would have looked that way, with bits of honey and bug on his scruffy cloak. And I doubt he was a man built for small talk.
Then to encounter that unflinching conviction of his. One of those people whose mission seems to emanate from them, like meeting a general or a tennis champion.
But perhaps it’s because this image always contrasts in my mind with what feels like another side to John, revealed later on in the gospel, in Luke 7:19, as John awaits his fate in a Herodian prison cell.
‘And John, calling to him two of his disciples, sent them to the Lord, saying “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?”’
I always read this to be John showing a very human vulnerability. It’s almost childlike, or can be read that way. Like a small boy, intent on being brave, looking for a moment of reassurance. This is the Messiah, yes? I don’t have it wrong, do I?
It’s the answer to his whole life, and it affects me every time. It sounds like a human moments we can all relate to. He seeks the answer to his uncertainty. Not quite allowing himself to belief it’s all true. I feel paternal reading it, what with our dramatic irony, wanting to reach out to John myself and recognise his vulnerability.
Of course it’s possible that’s not the interpretation intended. John may have been insisting on clarity more than anything, not wanting to waste his time. Laying down the law, so to speak. A tennis champion wanting to get on with their serve rather than argue the last point.
But it’s how I hear it. And it reminds me of the total awe he must have felt at the arrival of Christ. And how we should feel the same too.