Purification and Authority

I am reading about Jesus and His disciples and John and his disciples both baptizing people who are coming to them. As I want to see more clearly the reason this is written and how it is interlinked with what I have been reading before, I spent some time going back over the first three chapters to look for threads and important repeating ideas and words.

What I am seeing is several threads emerging. John chapter one talks about John the Baptist baptizing during the time when Jesus first shows up on the scene. He is confronted by the Pharisee's demands for him to show his papers so to speak, to give an accounting of why he thinks he has authority to administer a rite that they reserved for their own use. The Pharisees had developed the idea of baptism as an initiation ceremony for proselytes that they had converted to Judaism from outside the culture. They used this as a symbol of cleansing to bring someone into the Jewish religion. They viewed the history of their ancestors passing through the Red Sea as an initiation of the birth of their nation so baptism was never considered as something to be administered to a person who was a naturally born Jew.

So when John came along and started baptizing Jews or anyone at all who wanted to repent and turn to God irregardless of their background or nationality the Pharisees became very concerned that he was ruining their ceremonial rite by using it improperly. Obviously to them this was happening because John had not first obtained proper permission and authorization from God's appointed authorities, the Jewish leaders. Instead of being properly licensed he had just started baptizing people helter skelter. It was obvious to them that to maintain proper respect and control over this important rite that not just any old Joe who might come along should be allowed to start baptizing. But even more importantly no one should ever be allowed to go around baptizing Jews, because to do so would create the implication that Jews were not already the chosen people of God by nature of their birth and that idea was simply unthinkable.

What I find interesting is that when John was demanded to account for his lack of authorization by the Pharisees, he did not answer their question directly as they wanted. Instead he diverted attention to some idea of another person for which he was waiting to come into view who would be even more radical than he was in administering cleansing and purification. This next person was supposed to baptize with much more than water – He would use fire to baptize people. This was certainly an attention getter.

John also made it very clear that he believed he had been sent by some other authority, a higher authority Who had commissioned him to preach and baptize. But his authority that he refused to argue about was not the recognized leadership of the current religious establishment. Furthermore, the person he was sent to highlight and amplify who would come after him had even greater authority than the Jewish leaders could ever hope to be able to confer – this One would be none other than the very Son of the God they claimed to represent, the Lamb of God as represented by the symbol at the very center of all their religious ceremonies and their own sacrificial system of worship.

Over the centuries the Jews had devolved their whole system of representative religion into the object of their worship itself and had almost completely lost sight of the much greater realities which it was originally designed to represent. They had come to view themselves as the source of all spiritual authority on earth by merit of their lineage and traditions while failing to recognize the true authority of the God who gave them these symbols. While they claimed to be God's representatives and carried on the systems and ceremonies and Scriptures that He had given them, they had taken all of these things and turned them into objects of worship and thus had developed a counterfeit religion based on externals while failing to pursue a personal relationship and accountability of the heart with the God behind those externals.

As a result, their concept of authority had become very human oriented. And we have done the very same thing today. Authority is viewed as having to do with licenses, ordinations, degrees from universities, union cards, denominational affiliations, conformity to governmental regulations etc. We, like the Jews of old, have lost sight of the truth about real authority and as a result find it difficult to comprehend what the underlying issues are under discussion in these passages. Like the Jews, we find it confusing and disturbing if anyone comes along without the right credentials and begins to speak or administer religious rites to others without “proper authorization” according to our standards.

Baptism in the minds of the Jews was closely associated with ceremonial purification. They had quite a number of ceremonies connected with purification rites and many of these revolved around the use of water. The stone jars that Jesus employed during the wedding in Cana in chapter two were designed for just such purification. These were supposed to be containers for purification rites very similar to baptism. So when Jesus instructed the servants to fill up the water jars during the wedding these good Jews were likely quite confident they knew what He intended to do next, especially since He was rumored to be the Messiah for their nation. It was clear in their minds that before the Messiah could set up His kingdom that He would have to purify the people who were going to participate in that kingdom. So when He told them to fill up the purification jars with water they became very excited that the kingdom really was about to be initiated big time.

But of course, Jesus was often messing up people's assumptions. Instead of using the water for purification rites He did something radically unexpected with the water jars, possibly even contaminating them in the opinion of the Jews. The following story shows Jesus again upsetting quite literally things at the very center of the Jewish religion where symbolic purification should have been taking place. Instead of supporting and endorsing the system of organized religion in the temple, Jesus came in and caused such a disturbance that once again the leaders felt compelled to challenge yet another disturber of the peace about this issue of proper authority and who is allowed to represent God and truth to the common people.

The main topic of importance for the Jews revolved around how to bring about the kingdom of God on earth. It was generally believed that what was needed most was for God's chosen people to be purified so that the Messiah could come and find people acceptable for Him to bless and empower and put in control over their enemies. People longed for power very intensely. They resented being under the control of foreign occupying forces and they deeply resented even more that their religion was not the dominant one since obviously from their perspective it was the only true one. They believed that God would enforce the true religion on earth and force all to comply with His laws if only His chosen people would just make enough effort to purify themselves in preparation for the coming of the Messiah.

This issue of purification had become the very center of the religion of the Jews. Nearly everything they did, talked about and thought about revolved around how to become and remain pure. Ritual and physical cleansings abounded throughout their ceremonies and all their activities. The issue of who had authority to determine the correct way to be pure was also very much a part of this. When John the Baptist appeared on the scene and began making vivid announcements about the soon coming kingdom of heaven everyone sat up and listened. He was talking their language in a time when everyone was eager to hear. Religion had become oppressive and life was bitter under the Romans. John spoke of things like cleansing and purification with vivid words that put a completely different light on it than the teachings of the religious leaders.

All of this attention being drawn away from the recognized leaders to a new exciting preacher produced jealousy in the Pharisees and elders. John the Baptist had not been taught in their schools and seemed to have no interest in soliciting their endorsements or earning their accreditations. He simply made a claim that Someone greater had commissioned him to preach and he would preach and baptize whether they liked it or not.

Now here comes along another young upstart teacher making waves in the public arena which was causing even more concern for the religious establishment. This one too, seemed unwilling to acknowledge the assumed jurisdiction of the established authorities and was becoming possibly an even greater threat to undermine the influence of the established leadership. It was rumored that He could perform miraculous signs which was more than John had done and this could present a real problem for the established church. This man like John also seemed unconcerned about acknowledging the proper chain of command, of submitting to licensing through appointed authorities and conforming to receive the approbation of the religious establishment.

At this point in the book of John, one of the most thoughtful and intelligent Pharisees decided to do a little private investigation of his own. Maybe he felt that he might be able to assert some influence through quiet diplomacy if he could just conduct a private interview with this new teacher. He also felt that maybe this teacher might listen to the concerns of the leadership if they were presented in a proper way and Jesus might be willing to be a little less combative or confrontational. So Nicodemus conducted his late night foray into the camp of a suspected enemy of the nation to see what he might accomplish. But he was totally unprepared for the response that he received.

Instead of having a good animated discussion about how to respect proper authority and clarify in this new teacher's thinking the right way to carry on the expected works of the Messiah, Nicodemus found himself very quickly drawn out of his own comfort zone as this teacher confronted him with disturbing issues of the heart which had seldom been addressed in his lifelong training in religion. Instead of haggling over fine points of purification or exploring how to further the ambitions of the Jews, this man seemed ready to challenge the accepted tenants of religion and insisted that even good, upright religious people like Nicodemus were clueless when it came to embracing the true work of the Messiah and introducing the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Immediately following this story we are told about Jesus and John with their disciples baptizing people who were coming expecting to be purified. Baptism was an invention of the Pharisees who wanted to convert gentiles into being good Jews according to their standards. The Jews believed that by right of ancestry every Jew had already been baptized into becoming the chosen people of God when their forefathers passed through the Red Sea under the leadership of Moses. So as a sign of joining this chosen people, anyone who was not born a Jew was baptized in water as a symbolic way of passing through the waters of the Red Sea so they could join God's chosen people.

This is why the religious leaders found John's baptism of Jews so highly offensive. Baptism was supposed to only be used for outsiders, gentiles, never for Jews. To baptize a Jew was to imply that maybe it was not enough to be physically born into the chosen nation of God and that was intolerable heresy in their minds. Their whole life was centered around the strong belief that God's chosen people were the Jews alone and to question that foundational assumption was out of the question. Baptism thus became a point of contention between the Jewish leaders and John for the leaders believed that what was really needed to prepare for the Messiah was ceremonial purification, but not baptism of Jews. That was simply taking things too far.

But when questioned on this issue, instead of acquiescing to their traditions John asserted that the One who was to follow him would conduct baptism and purification in more radical ways than even he was doing. John declared that the Messiah would come and use fire to baptize people to purify them, not just water. This vivid language did nothing to quell the apprehension of the leadership but it certainly caught the imagination of the common people longing for something more meaningful than the heavy burden of external regulations imposed on them by their religion and their leaders.

With this context it becomes clearer what is meant by the next story. Now a discussion about purification arose between John's disciples and a Jew. (John 3:25 NRSV) Nothing further seems to be said in the story about this comment so it is assumed that the reader is aware that purification was the hot topic of the day under widespread discussion. It becomes easier to understand when it is used in reference to John baptizing since the Jews were likely very offended by John baptizing people who in their opinion were already part of God's chosen people. Baptism of Jews implied that it was not enough to be born into the right nationality but that real purification was an issue of the heart rather than the externals. All of this threatened to unravel centuries of carefully accumulated traditions and teachings of the elders and the whole religious establishment. Now it was emerging that Jesus too was getting involved in this “renegade baptizing” of Jews and so it finally came to a head when some patriotic Jew insisted on trying to straighten out some of John's disciples on their theology.