 All right, well, it's great to be with you this morning. This is always my favorite conference. It's the oldest conference that I have been a participant in. Going back, I think, to 2004, if memory serves, just a fantastic experience to be together with all of you who are so passionate about scripture and to be able to share with an eager and ready audience and to share my passion because ever since my mother bought me my first red letter edition King James Bible when I was five years old, living in Trenton, New Jersey on the campus of Princeton University where my father was getting a master's degree in homiletics, getting a preaching degree there for a year the bill being footed by the US Navy as he was a US Navy chaplain. And I got my first King James Bible, first Bible at all, an aunt sent us some money and my parents decided to use it to get a devotional Bible. So we all went to the Christian bookstore and my older siblings, I've got four older siblings, we each got to pick out a Bible in our own color. They had Bibles in brown and green and yellow and my siblings all picked silly colors for a Bible. Colors like blue, green, yellow. I came up and I chose the obvious color. I chose a red Bible for the blood of Jesus, amen. And it was a red letter edition. And I was just fascinated by the red letters because of course that meant it was the words of Jesus, the direct quotation of Jesus. And I quickly paged through my Bible looking for all red pages, pages that were completely in red. And I, where do you think I found them? Gospel of John, that's right. So turn right to Gospel, I'm like, oh, it's all red. Blood of Jesus, all the words of Jesus had just sat there looking at all the red. And so quickly the Gospel of John became my favorite part of the Bible. But then my mom started me reading the Bible through as a devotional practice and I'm sure my vocation as a Bible scholar came from that. But we're gonna be talking about a different John this morning, but a John who had a close relationship with John the evangelist. We're going to talk about a John who discipled the evangelist because I'm convinced that the ostentatiously unnamed second disciple in John one besides Andrew who's standing with John the Baptist when Jesus walks by and the Baptist says, behold the Lamb of God and those two disciples, Andrew and the conspicuously unnamed other disciple follow after Jesus. I think that was John the apostle son of Zebedee and that he was in fact a disciple of the Baptist before he began to follow Jesus. And that's because John the Baptist was a great disciple maker and he was a model of discipleship, a compass for confused times that he was living in. So I wanna jump into this, I'm so excited about it, but let's ask for the anointing of the Holy Spirit in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. Heavenly Father, please send down upon us the unction of your Holy Spirit to anoint our hearts and our minds that we may see clearly with our mind and that our hearts may be inflamed with love as we devote ourselves to your word. We ask this through Christ our Lord, amen. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen. So John a model of discipleship for confused times and we need to remember that the first century in Israel, the first century of our era of the years of our Lord was a maximally confused time. The land of Israel was being ruled by Herod. Well, who was Herod? That's a good question. We all know that the land of Israel should be ruled by the son of David. Was Herod a son of David? No. He wasn't even fully a Jew. He was half Jewish, okay? Cause his father was an Edomite and mother was Jew. And he was not an heir to the throne. He was not from the line of David. He was a politician who went to the Roman Senate, sailed to Rome, went to the Roman Senate. He was a great classical orator. He had learned how to give speeches in the Greco-Roman style and he persuaded the Roman Senate to make him the king of Israel. So the Roman Senate did that and then sent him back to the land of Israel with several legions and he lands on the shores of Israel and takes over and makes himself king. So politically you've got an imposter on the throne who by the way he was also mentally and emotionally unstable and the older he got the more paranoid he became and began to kill off his own family members because he was threatened that they were going to take his kingship. So you got a mentally unstable imposter on the throne politically and then religiously you've got figures like Anas and Caiaphas functioning as high priests of Jerusalem. Well, who were Anas and Caiaphas? We know that the high priesthood should have been filled by someone who was a descendant of first of all Aaron, right? Moses's older brother. And then more specifically, the prophet Ezekiel tells us that only the descendants of, anybody know what this is? Zedok, that's right. Only the descendants of Zedok from the time of Ezekiel on were eligible to be high priests. Were Anas and Caiaphas descendants of Zedok? No. Excuse me. Who were they? Well, back in the year 152, one of the Maccabees and kings and the Maccabees, by the way, were just Levites. Okay, they weren't even priests. They were just from the line of Levi. Anyway, Jonathan Aphis took over the high priesthood politically and became both king and high priest. And then from his descendants, the high priest continued. And so Anas and Caiaphas were descendants of Jonathan Aphis. Basically, they were Maccabees, okay? So they were imposters. So you don't have a son of David on the throne of politically and you don't have a son of Zedok functioning as high priest. It's all a sham, okay? It's all fake news, okay? It's the charade. The political world is a charade. The religious world is a charade. Feeling similar? Can you resonate? All right. And those who are trying to be faithful, you know, don't even know what to do half the time. Do I go and worship at the temple or not, okay? It's the place which the Lord God chose to make his name dwell. No doubt about that. It's the place that was designated by David and Solomon for worship. We know that, so that's good. But on the other hand, what's going on there is just offensive. And contrary to the law and following the wrong halacha, which is the Jewish word for the interpretation of the law. So do we even worship at the temple? And some, like the S scenes that we'll talk about in a moment, one of the sects of Jews said, no, we can't even worship in the temple in good conscience. Others said, well, yeah, but you know, it's the place that God chose so we gotta bear with it. So it was a confusing time. And into this confusing time comes a prophet once more. We have not seen a true recognized prophet maybe since Malachi 400 years before, but then God raises up a prophet to speak to his people, the forerunner of Jesus. Okay? Now, here's my namesake. See how much we look alike. We even dress alike. Nah, not really. But yeah, this is John the Baptist. Boy, what a figure. What a gnarly figure we used to say in high school. What an incredible impact he had on human history. When you think about it, statistics tell us that one in three human beings has been baptized on the globe. Think about that. One in three human beings claims the Christian religion and has been baptized. Where does that ritual of baptism go back to? Well, of course we'd say to our Lord, but then even before our Lord, to this man who was used by the Holy Spirit to shape the right that would become the entrance into the new covenant. During his own lifetime, John the Baptist had followers who are spread over the whole world because he preached at the crossroads of the Jordan. And the crossroads of the Jordan was one of the major trade routes of John the Baptist's own day. See, John knew he couldn't travel all over the world to preach to everybody. So he did a very wise thing. He set up shop, so to speak, at the fords of the Jordan near Jericho. And he preached there. And the advantage of doing that is everybody was passing through from the eastern half of the empire in the western half, western half bringing materials to the east and the eastern half bringing materials to the west and people were going up to Jerusalem from there and then to parts east and to the wealthy exotic cities of the eastern part of the empire. It was like O'Hare, okay? Everybody has to make a connection through O'Hare, okay? And so everybody had to connect through the fords of the Jordan. So if you wanna reach everybody in America today and even around the world, you can set up a pulpit in O'Hare, you know, right in the middle of the concourse and you can reach everybody. But John was doing that in his own day and as we're going to see, he was very effective in reaching people in the far reaches of the empire. He was such a, he was the TV preacher. He was the Billy Graham. You know, he was the national and even international preacher of his day. He is a historical figure. He's recorded in the best history of this time period which is written by the Jewish historian Josephus who has several precious paragraphs devoted to the religious and political impact of John the Baptist on current events. And John the Baptist gets more attention in our liturgy perhaps than any other saint save our Lord and the blessed mother. We'll look at that in a moment. And of course, John is uniquely praised by our Lord as the greatest born among women. So how appropriate that we jump into the study of John the Baptist as we are considering discipleship in the desert. He is the original disciple in the desert. Well, let's start off with a question. Okay, was John the Baptist an S-seeing? Perhaps you've heard of the S-seings. Maybe you've even already read the book that Dr. Han held up, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls. But we know that the S-seings were one of the three major sects of Jews in the time of our Lord. The others are better known because they're mentioned by name in the gospels, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. But besides those two groups, there was a third, the S-seings. And this was a group of Jews that stressed personal holiness and asceticism. They lived lives of spiritual poverty and of prayer. They only dressed in linen because linen was the clothing of the priesthood and they regarded themselves as a priestly movement. And they alone among the sects of Jews practiced celibacy. Now it's interesting, we're on the, today is the feast day, anybody know what the feast day is today? Mary, Martha, Lazarus, thank you Pope Francis for giving us this, it's a wonderful thing that he's done. Beautiful memorial today when we can reflect on that holy family. This is interesting, are any of those three married in the gospels? No, did most Jews marry? Virtually all except for the S-seings. Never thought about that, okay? But here you have these celibate siblings living in Bethany, anybody know what Bethany means? Comes from the Hebrew Beth or Baith, which means house and then Anouim, which is the Hebrew word for the poor. It's the house of the poor. It's the poor house, okay? Poor house is what Bethany means, okay? And they're living celibate and they're offering hospitality to Jesus, right? Jesus comes in, Jesus is a wandering preacher. Does Jesus have a lot of money? Well, not really, they had enough for their needs but you know, he's living off donations and so on and they offer Jesus hospitality and he becomes a good friend of theirs and the other disciples, okay? There are scholars that propose that Mary, Martha and Lazarus were in the S-seeing movement and Bethany, the house of the poor was a charitable community that was sponsored by the S-seeing movement because they were noted for this. They were noted for their works of mercy and for running poor houses for unwed mothers and orphans and other people that were marginalized in society. So that's just a little aside here. The S-seings practiced a daily baptism, daily water washing, Josephus tells us which was for the forgiveness of their sins and they also believed that it communicated to them the Holy Spirit. They practiced a daily meal of bread and wine at noon. Hmm, interesting. They kept to themselves, they practiced monasticism. In fact, we believe that that location that we call Qumran on the North Shore of the Dead Sea was in fact a monastery that was sponsored by the S-seeing movement and the library, the monastic library was in fact what we call now the Dead Sea Scrolls that we discovered beginning in 1947. So the S-seings expected the Messiah soon. They're not named by name in the Gospels but if you know what to look for you can spot them. For example, they refuse to call themselves Jews and they consistently call themselves Israelites. Huh, that's interesting because in John one, Jesus has an interaction with a certain person. You remember this? Where Nathaniel comes to Jesus and Jesus says, behold, here is a Israelite in whom is no guile. Very interesting because not only did the S-seings consistently call themselves Israelites but they are also dead set against double mindedness and hypocrisy. It was one of the things that they criticized the most in their internal writings. That you had to be single minded and pure of heart. So we can't prove that Nathaniel was an S-seem but this remark, an Israelite in whom is no guile, that certainly resonates with the scrolls and the S-seings spirituality. Later in the Gospel Jesus tells Peter and John to go into the city of Jerusalem and look for a man carrying a jar of water. That's odd because carrying water was women's work and of course this is a long time before current gender dysphoria and so that's not why he's doing that. Probably he is one of these celibate S-seings that is not living in a community with women to do this kind of women's work and so the men were doing their own women's work. So perhaps that man carrying a jar of water was an S-seeing effect, I'm convinced he is and then later of course later in the scene in Gethsemane we see that young man clothed only in a linen garment who runs away naked, that was probably John Mark by the way, the author of the Gospel and that style of dress wearing nothing but a single linen garment that was characteristic of the S-seeing movement. All right, so some interesting things. Give me this little background. Let's do just a little brief digression on the Dead Sea Scrolls. These are two of the Bedouin cousins, excuse me, who found the scrolls in 1947. One of them threw a rock into a cave. They heard the breaking of pottery, went to investigate, found jars looking like this. We later found out those were purpose-made jars actually thrown for the specific purpose of holding scrolls in them and when they opened the jars in some of them they found scrolls in a semi-deteriorated but still a partially legible condition as you see on the right there. Where was this location? It was at the north end of the Dead Sea on the west, so northwest and they're almost straight east from Jerusalem down in the desert area. This is a picture of some of the limestone bluffs that surround the area that was inhabited. It's a lot like Death Valley, California, it's very similar if you've ever been to that location. This is an aerial view of the excavated monastic dwellings where the monks lived and worked and prayed and studied on the shores of the Dead Sea, that of course the Dead Sea was much higher and probably lapped close to the dwelling back in antiquity. Where did they get all the water that they needed for a monastery in one of the driest places on earth? Well, there's about two weeks of rain in January and December, December and January, in this region of the world and they built aqueducts that went back up into the wadis or we would call them like arroyos in the hills and when they had a couple of winter thunderstorms it would come down into their aqueduct system and fill up their 10 ritual baths, okay? We would think of them as baptismal pools but the monks here had all of these ritual baths that they used for their daily baptism so to speak in this community. That's one of the most striking features about this site. They have more of these ritual baths. They're called mikvot in Hebrew than any other comparable site from this time period that we have excavated. So I mentioned this practice of baptism of the Essene movement. Josephus, the Jewish historian of this time period, writes about them and says they labor with great diligence till the fifth hour, that's about 11 a.m., after which they assemble themselves together again into one place and when they have clothed themselves in white veils they then bathe their bodies in cold water and after this purification is over they everyone meet together in an apartment of their own into which it is not permitted to any other sect to enter while they go after a pure manner into the dining room and then he talks about their meal of bread and wine that they celebrated daily at noon. Striking practices, very little bit familiar to maybe a religion that we're familiar with. Here we read in the community rule which is like their rule of St. Benedict that gave their religious practices and governed their monastic ways of life and they talk about their ritual bathing in the third column of their community rule and it says for only through the spirit pervading God's true community can there be atonement for a man's ways all of his iniquities. Thus only can he gaze upon the light of life and so be joined to his truth by his Holy Spirit. This is interesting. The Essings did a lot with the Holy Spirit. They had a very well-developed doctrine of the Holy Spirit in contrast to say the Sadducees and the Pharisees and you see so much about the Holy Spirit for example in the first couple chapters of Luke for example and that life in the spirit that was already being lived by this pious movement. All right, truth by his Holy Spirit purified from all iniquity through an upright and humble attitude his sin may be covered and by humbling himself before all God's laws his flesh can be made clean only thus can he really receive the purifying waters and be purged by the cleansing flow. Okay, that's a lot of words but what are they saying there? What they're saying is to be forgiven of your sins first you have to be part of the true community of God, right? But that's not enough. You also have to have the right attitude, okay? You can't come in and fake it. You can't come in and just go through the motions. You have to be part of the true community and then you have to humble yourself. You basically have to have a repentant attitude and you have to give up your sins and open yourself to God's working life. And if you do that then you can wash in the waters of the community and your sins will be forgiven and you will receive the Holy Spirit. Wow, let's look at what the New Testament says, Acts 238. Peter said to them, repent, right? And what does it mean to repent? It means to humble yourself, turn away from your sins, have the right internal attitude, right? And be baptized, there's the external right, the washing of water, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, that's the true community, the community of Jesus Christ in his name for the forgiveness of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. You see what I would argue is the Holy Spirit was already preparing some of those Jews who were looking for the kingdom of God, who were waiting for the kingdom of God. Remember how Luke tells us that there were Jews who were waiting for the kingdom of God, right? Like Zachariah and Anna and Simeon, et cetera. And God was working their hearts and getting them ready for the sacraments, all right? Even prior to the ministry of our Lord. So we look here at Cumbron at this monastic dwelling that was excavated that yielded for us the Dead Sea Scrolls. And we see a lot of these baptismal pools. In Hebrew they're called mikvot, the singular is mikveh and the plural is mikvot. So here's one, it's undergone a little damage, maybe got to break out the cock gun for that. Maybe some flex tape actually, because that's pretty bad. Here's one in a better shape. You still have the kind of the sealing, the plaster that they used for waterproofing these. Notice the multiple staircases. That's to avoid what? Yeah, I mean, what if you're unclean and you walk down into the baptismal pool and you wash, now you're unclean, so far you're unclean. And you walk back up and your body walks down and bumps into you. Doh! Now I've got to wash again. You got all your uncleanness all over me. You just touched a dog. Then you bump into me. Doh, they go back down. So to avoid that, we had a staircase for when you were unclean that you could walk down in. And then after you were cleansed in the waters, you walk back up by a different staircase so you don't bump into anybody. And we can keep this all nice and in order. Here's another smaller one, but again, you see the multiple staircases. So as the movement was pretty fascinating, they show us a lot about what Jews were expecting just on the cusp of the ministry of our Lord. And one of the things they were expecting was actually two messiahs. Okay, we call that diarchic mesianism, but you don't need to remember that. So two messiahs. We see this, for example, in one of those dead sea scrolls that's called the Damascus document, and they write, and this is the exposition of the regulations by which they shall be governed in the age of wickedness until the appearance of the messiahs of Arendt and Israel. See that? First of all, age of wickedness. They realize they got an imposter on the throne, the temple's being run like a sham, everything is in confusion. They're just like, pfft. This is such a mess. This is an omelet nobody can unscramble. Except the messiah. So we're just gonna go into internal exile and wait for the messiah. Can you feel them? All right, age of wickedness. Yeah, it sure sounds like 2021. The age of wickedness, all right? Until the appearance of the messiahs of Arendt and of Israel. So the messiah of Arendt was the priestly messiah, okay? And the messiah of Israel was the royal messiah. So I got Arendt on one side here and Solomon on the other. Those were the two models of these two messiahs. Where did they get that idea? Well, it's not that far-fetched because there are scriptures in the prophets that suggest something like this. Jeremiah says, thus says the Lord, if you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, that's the Noviac covenant, by the way, the renewal of the covenant of creation. Then also my covenant with David, my servant may be broken and my covenant with the Levitical priests. Okay, so you can't break. Well, if those covenants aren't gonna be broken, it kind of implies you're gonna get an air from both of those lines. Then also Zachariah says, then I said to him, this angel who's reviewing this vision to Zachariah, what are these two olive trees on the right and the left of the lampstand? What do you get from olive trees? You get oil, right. And what do you do with oil? You anoint. And what's the Hebrew word for anointed one? Messiah, right. So he said to me, do you not know what these are? And I said, no. Then he said, these are the two meshechim. These are the two mesheachs, the two anointed ones who stand by the Lord and the whole earth. Okay, so it's not far-fetched that they were expecting to messiahs. Now, this is interesting because we go to the Gospel of Luke. And does the Gospel of Luke begin with the annunciation of the birth of Jesus? No! Ever wonder why not? Hey, isn't this a biography about Jesus? Like, who's this dude, John, you know? Usually don't start a biography with like a lot of information about somebody's friend, right? But that's what you get in the Gospel of Luke. You begin with John. In the days of Herod, there was a priest named Zachariah and he had a wife of the daughters of Aaron and her name was Elizabeth. Okay, so, you know, he got a good, blue-blooded priest here but they had no child. Now, while he was serving as priest before God, there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. So he was one of the higher-ranking priests that had a pedigree that enabled him to go in and offer incense in the holy place which was kind of a privilege. And then the angel said to him, do not be afraid, Zachariah, for your prayer is heard and your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son you should call his name, John. We forget that John was a priestly stock. Why is that so important for Luke and why is Luke trying to communicate that to us? Okay, I would suggest to you, one of Luke's audiences are those Jews who were waiting for the priestly Messiah and the royal Messiah. And if that's what you're waiting for, you've got John from the priestly line and then a few chapters later, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. There we go, not Herod with his Edomite pedigree from Esau, the hairy red guy back in Genesis. No, the house of David and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel said to her, behold you will conceive in your womb where a son he will be great, be called the son of the most high, the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. This is clearly the royal Messiah. So we're talking about, was John an Essene? So let's look at some things. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, this is Mark one, the son of God, as is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold I send my messenger before thy face who shall prepare thy way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Okay, Isaiah 40 verse three is quoted there. John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And there went out to him all the country of Judea and all the people of Jerusalem, they were baptized by him in the river Jordan confessing their sins. We're gonna look a little bit more carefully at what this word confessing means in a little bit. Now John was clothed with camel's hair and had a leather girdle around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. He preached saying, after me comes he who is mightier than I, I have baptized you with water but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And actually that's not how he said it at all. He's more like, you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Bear fruit, refitting of repentance because I tell you from these very stones the God of Israel who appeared in fire to Moses can raise up children to Abraham. So repent because after me comes one mightier than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. I baptize you with water but he will baptize you with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand. He will gather the wheat into the barn but the chaff he shall burn up with unquenchable fire. Yeah, crazy John, big hair. Half naked with a hair, garbant leather belt, bee stings all over him. Little honey coming down his beard and a couple of grasshopper legs. Stuck, fire. Gotta love him, gotta love him. All right, similar is between John and the Essings. John was out in the same region. Okay, he's not even a full day's walk from the monastery. Okay, he's baptizing all the Judeans. There's only a 10 mile stretch of the river Jordan that bordered on the territory of Judea. North of that it was Samaritan territory and they wouldn't enter that. So he's baptizing all the Judeans. Within this short stretch you can walk it in a single morning and then Qumran is just a couple of miles around the northeast shore. So he is in the same region. He's out in the wilderness, just not even a full day's travel from the monastery. So that puts them in the same location. He's preaching water washing, associate with the Holy Spirit. The Pharisees aren't doing that. The Sadducees aren't doing that. That's totally Essing. He expected the Messiah anytime soon. That's totally Essienish. And he associates himself with Isaiah 40 verse three. I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said. That's John's life verse. You ever hear that about, do you have a life verse? What's your life verse? Well my life verse is Isaiah 40 verse three, okay? But not only was it his life verse, it was the monk's life verse. Because they explain what they're doing out in their desert in their own rule. They say, when such men as these come to be in Israel, conforming to these doctrines, they shall separate from the session of perverse men to go to the wilderness, which was the desert east of Jerusalem. There to prepare the way of truth as it is written in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. It's interesting, we think of the desert as a negative place, but frequently in the Old Testament, the desert is the tristing place. It's this place of mysterious courtship where you go out to be alone with your loved one, or in the case of Israel, for them to be alone and have a romantic relationship with God. Very interesting, but we can't go there. So the instructor must not reprove the men of the pit nor argue with them. He shall save, reprove for those who have chosen the way. In other words, they did not believe in preaching to the broader community, which they considered to be lost. Men of the pit, everybody who was in the community was just like, going to hell, do not pass, go, do not collect $200, you're lost cause. So don't preach to those losers, okay? Nobody in the community from the bishop on down, what the instructor means, could preach outside. That's important cause we're gonna talk about that in a minute. He shall ground them in knowledge, each will walk blamelessly with his fellow, guided by what has been revealed to them. That will be the time of preparing the way in the desert. So they are totally going out to the desert to prepare for the Messiah. It's exactly what their mission was. And John says the same thing. Pharisees weren't doing that, Sadducees weren't doing that. The only people doing anything with Isaiah, 40 verse three are John and these monks. That's too close to be a kawinkidink, as they say. So what about John's diet, okay? This is interesting. So Josephus tells us, when I was about 16 years old, I made a trial of several sects, the first of Pharisees, et cetera, third Essenes, underwent great difficulties, went through them all. But when I was informed that there was one named Bonus, living in the desert, used no other clothing than what grew upon trees, and had no other food than what grew of its own accord, and bathed themselves in cold water frequently. Huh, sound a little familiar? In order to preserve his chastity, I imitated him in these things and continued with him for three years. So Josephus, this great historian, says that when he was a youth, he apprenticed himself under a very John the Baptist like figure named Bonus, who's doing a lot of the same things that John is doing, wearing whatever he can get, eating whatever's on the land, practicing water washing for spiritual reasons, okay? Now, what is the connection there? Well, in another place, Josephus tells us this, but for those that are caught in any heinous sins, now he's talking about the monks. He's talking about the monastery here. For those who are caught in any sins, any monks caught in sins, they cast them out of their society, and he who is thus separated from them does not often, excuse me, does often die after a miserable manner, for as he is bound by the oath he has taken, and by the customs he has engaged in, he is not at liberty to partake of that food that he meets with elsewhere, but is forced to eat grass and to famish his body with hunger until he perish. Wow. You see, the monks, when they entered the community, they took a vow no longer to eat food prepared anywhere else for the rest of their lives. There was a reason for that, had to do with the discipline within the community. The problem then was, if you got kicked out of the monastery, you had this oath which you had sworn to God, which you were still bound by. So what do you eat? Well, grasshoppers, honey, grass, you know? As Josephus mentions, what? There was one loophole. The oath was, stuff prepared anywhere else. So what does that leave open? Unprepared stuff, stuff that's just lying there, okay? No human hand has touched, but is edible, okay? You could eat that without breaking the vow. So I suggest maybe both John the Baptist, this is speculative, but John the Baptist and Bonas look to me at least, both like guys that have been kicked out of the community. Why would John the Baptist have been kicked out? What is John doing? We made this point already. He's preaching to everybody, right? The Gentiles. Were the monks doing that? No, they said, no, you can't preach to everybody. I think it was an issue that came to the head between John and the rest of the community about preaching to the whole world. So he was forced out because he wanted to bring the message of salvation. Do you wanna bring the message of salvation to the whole world? I hope you do. Can I get an amen? Amen, that's what we're here about. We're in the spirit of John the Baptist on this. So what are all these similarities? In the same region, preaching, water washing, social, the Holy Spirit, expecting the Messiah anytime soon, identifying with Isaiah 40 verse three, the diet. Then there's that remark in Luke 1.80 that John was out in the desert during his childhood until he began his public ministry. That's weird. Can you imagine Elizabeth and Zacharize? Okay, John, you're five years old now. Time to go out to the wilderness. See ya. Right. I hear the grasshoppers are good eating. I cannot just get a send your kid out to the desert to raise himself. Like, how's that gonna work? I mean, how's that practical, you know? Well, what does Josephus tell us? He says, the Essenes reject pleasures as an evil but esteem continents and the conquest over our passions to be virtue. They neglect wedlock but choose out other person's children while they are pliable and fit for learning and esteem them to be of their kindred and form them according to their own manners. Look at that. We use that word to this day, right? Formation, right? Get spiritual formation, et cetera. So they chose out boys from the larger community or were sent boys and they raised them in the community. That's where they got their vocations from. The child group became strong. He was in the wilderness to the day of his manifestation. I suggest John was sent out for a variety of reasons. You know, Zachariah and Elizabeth were elderly to begin with, et cetera, but he was raised out there. I think that's what indeed happened. And of course, there's that priestly connection because John had that priestly lineage. I won't go into that but the Essenes were big on that priestly connection. Is this all coincidence? I don't think so. I think there is a strong connection. Where are these baptismal practices coming from? They are developed from the prophetic oracles. Isaiah, I will pour water on the thirsty land. Streams on dry ground. I will pour out my spirit on your descendants. Ezekiel, I will sprinkle clean water upon you. You shall be cleaned from all your uncleannesses. Joel, it shall come to pass after all. Pour out my spirit on all flesh. I will pour out my spirit. This is what is inspiring these practices and the Holy Spirit also is guiding pious men like John and these Essenes toward what is going to become the sacrament that initiates us into the new covenant. Now, John is a model of discipleship. The Bible and the church are trying to tell us how important John is. Jesus says to us, truly I say to you, among those born of women, there is a risen no one greater than John the Baptist. Boy, would anybody like to have a compliment like that from the God man? Okay, you know how I like to have Jesus right here? I'll tell you, you know, of everyone born on earth, there is nobody greater than John Berg, you know, like, whoa, you know, thank you. Christi talks, goes on and talks about being the least in the kingdom of heaven, et cetera, because John still did not see the coming of the kingdom in the sense of he did not live to see the establishment of the church, but he was right on its cusp. All the Gospels begin with John. Is that amazing, okay? Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Nobody begins the story of Jesus with Jesus. They all begin with John, you know, you think the Holy Spirit's trying to tell us something here, and then the church is trying to tell us something. John gets more feast than virtually anybody, again, save our Lord and the Blessed Mother. He gets his nativity on June 24th. Is that date ring a bell, okay? That's halfway between Christmases. You know, Christmas is roughly at the winter solstice, okay? John is at the summer solstice. That's huge. That means like setting up a parallelism between John and Jesus. We, sadly, we don't do much with the feast of John the Baptist. I mean, we don't set out shoes. We don't have Baptist trees. We don't send John the Baptist cards. It's a shame, but if you look in Catholic European culture, at one time, the feast of John the Baptist was a major deal, okay? And they would light bonfires all night long on the feast of John the Baptist, which roughly coincided with the summer solstice and the longest day in the shortest night. The celebration of, you know, the entering of light into the world through the ministry of John. But then there's also a beautiful thing, see, because the feast of John the Baptist is the day on which the day begins to decrease, right? Until you get to roughly Christmas, right? And then it begins to increase again. And what did John say famously about his relationship with Jesus? I must decrease, he must increase. So it's a beautiful thing the church has done, set his feast day on the day, on the very day when, well, more or less, the day begins to decrease to remind us we need to decrease until we get humble. What did Dr. Sree talk about there, meeting us in the valley of humility, right? Until we become humble and then Christ can be born in us when we have decreased to that extent, and that's kind of the message, the beautiful way of using the cycles of nature to speak to us about spiritual truth. So John's nativity is June 24th. He gets a vigil for this, because it's a solemnity. So June 23th is his vigil, then he gets the nativity. Then we celebrate his martyrdom on August 29th, that's coming up. In the Eastern churches they celebrate his conception and then also the feast of the baptism in that transition between Christmas and ordinary time at the beginning of the year, that is, John plays a huge role in the feast of the baptism. John also plays a huge role on the Sundays of Advent, two and three, okay, because the second and third Sundays of Advent every year are focused on John the Baptist. So what do you think the liturgy's trying to tell us? This guy is really important and why is that? It's because he models Christian discipleship. Can he give you three ways that he does that this morning and I'll make this quick as some other famous people have said. So first of all, repentance. What does John begin preaching? Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand and they were baptized acknowledging their sins and he tells them produce good fruit as the evidence of your repentance. The leading call of John is this call to repentance and I wanna spend just a minute on this to emphasize this because this is what I see lacking in the current church's proclamation of the gospel. It is not that modern proclamation of the gospel is wrong, it is that it is incomplete. So typically we say a lot of good things, we say things like God loves you, we say that you're made in the image of God, you have the potential to be a child of God, we say that we'd like to accompany you, we say that God meets you right where you're at, all of those things are absolutely true but there's one key element that transforms that from all being kind of theistic psychotherapy to being conversion and that is repentance which means you turn from your sin and you stop your sinning. And this comes back to a principle that only dawned on me a few years ago which is all those times in the scriptures where it talks about Jesus coming to save us from our sins. For almost all my life, every time I heard that Jesus saves us from our sin, I always quickly retranslated it in my mind that Jesus comes to save us from hell. But what is hell? Hell is the consequence of our sins but Jesus didn't come to just save us from hell, the consequence of our sins, he came to save us from the sins themselves. Why? Because if you think about it for a while, you begin to realize that sin and hell are the same thing, right? What is sin? Sin is a choice of that which is not God. At every moment of our lives, we are perpetually faced with choices and basically one fundamental choice. At every moment we can choose God who is love or we can choose not God who is, which is not love. And the choice of not God is what we call sin and the permanent choice of not God is what we call hell, that's right. So all the only difference between hell and sin is the permanence thereof, okay? So it absolutely does not make sense for us to want to go to heaven so that we can continue to make selfish choices of the choice of not God. And every time we sin, every time we sin, we tell God that we don't want heaven because what is heaven? Heaven is the presence of God and what is God? God is love, right? So every time we sin, we're saying no, this is heaven, God love. This is not heaven, not God, not love. And when I sin, I choose that. So we're telling God we don't want to go to heaven, okay? Every time we sin, right? Now the problem is a lot of us have this vision of heaven that it's basically Disneyland, right? And we're gonna ride coasters for eternity. This is gonna be fun and so on. But what is the appeal of Disneyland? The appeal of Disneyland is really like indulgence of all your pleasures, right? You go to an amusement park and everything you want to do and everything that's fun and everything that you want to eat, you can all have it. You can satisfy all your pleasures, okay? So oftentimes we have this idea that, oh, I deny myself now and then when I get to heaven, woo-hah! It's heaven time, oh! Let's get indulged, I know I could indulge, right? But that's it, so what? So I could be selfish for eternity, right? Really doesn't make sense. We really got to, no, it's not what it's all about. Heaven is self-gift, hell is love. It's very different from how we imagine. But Jesus came to save us from our sins. Why? Because our sins are the choice of hell. And John says repent and they baptized acknowledging their sins. Sometimes it usually translates to confessing. Let me talk about what this means in Greek. This is, it's a Greek word, ex homo logeo, which means X is out of, homo is the same and lego is to speak. So it means to speak the same thing out of your mouth. What does that mean? It means to agree with the other person. So they say something and you say the same thing out of your mouth. And what's going on when we confess our sins? Well, God says what you did is wrong and then we say you're right, it is wrong, okay? We acknowledge that it's wrong. And what's the problem with our culture? Don't wanna acknowledge that this stuff is wrong. We don't wanna say the same things out of our mouth that God says out of his mouth. But I'm sorry, you can't get into heaven. You can't be in communion with God when you're saying the opposite thing from God. You have to learn to speak together with God. You have to learn the same thing come out of your mouth, call a spade a spade and acknowledge the truth. Repentance and then mortification. This is a key thing that God is calling the church to in this age of confusion. He's calling us back to good old fashioned corporal mortifications, denying our bodies certain things. John Ward clothing made of camels here. That scratchy was usually used for tents. Foo was locusts of wild honey, very constrained diet. Every night it's honey and locust casserole. There's only so many nights he can eat that. Don't bring that to the church, Potluck. You're coming up on parish, Potluck season here. Now like, just don't bring one of these. St. Josemaria says, prayer without mortification is not at all effective. And a day without mortification is a day lost because we have not denied ourselves. We have not lived the Holocaust. I can't go into this very deeply because I'm out of time, but I want to recommend some resources from one of my favorite saints, St. Josemaria. He has a little book, The Way. Chapter six is all about mortification. Maybe you can jot that down or take a picture of the screen or email me. I'll send you these slides. Also is a little book, The Furrow. Chapter 32 is on penance. I'm not saying that you have to ditch your clothing and go find some hairy garment and a leather girdle, but maybe you could abstain from meat on Fridays. Maybe you could like, full out fast on Fridays and do bread and water on Fridays. Maybe you could, at every meal, try to discipline yourself to eat a little bit less of a dish that you like and a little bit more of a dish that you don't like. Maybe you and I could learn to skip salt sometimes on our food or sugar or ketchup or cream in the coffee or sugar in the coffee. Maybe we could learn to skip snacks between meals. Maybe we could learn to sit down to the table and just hold off for a few minutes before we start eating. Maybe we could go to bed on time rather than watching that one more YouTube video. Maybe we could learn to get up right at the alarm. Maybe we could learn to sit up straight and not cross our legs at our desk, shuffling all through the crowd here. Take a cool shower or take a shorter shower, maybe floss, flossing can be a mortification. Trying to shorten your use of the bathroom in the morning, maybe clean up the bathroom after you that can be a mortification. We're not talking about sleeping on beds and nails here. Maybe we could not surf the web, cut back on email a little bit, not spend money on anything not unnecessary. There's all kinds of things. I can't go into everything here, but you know what, I just came out with a book, The Word of the Lord, Year B, which are commentaries in all the Sunday readings. It's a book available. My chapter on the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time in Year B in that book, The Word of the Lord, Year B, 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, got a whole list from a holy priest, give all these little corporal mortifications that we lay people can do, just small things. And the advantage of small things is this, they don't impress anybody, okay? Now, wearing, you know, fasting for 40 days and wearing a hair garment, that's pretty impressive. But if you tell your buddy, hey, did you know? I skipped butter on my toast this morning. Like, whoa. Could you pray for me? I'm gonna kneel right here in front of you. Mr. Butterskipper, okay? Like, no, it really doesn't impress anybody, but you know it's so hard. It's really, really hard to do. You're like, oh, shoot. We're having too much fun. All right, now I really gotta wrap this up. So we're talking about mortification and then disciple making. John was a very effective disciple maker and we had this beautiful passage. Okay, first of all, we see he was making disciples even before Jesus' ministry and he hands two of his disciples off to Jesus in John one. What a beautiful thing, right? Because we don't wanna make disciples of ourselves, do we? We wanna make disciples for Jesus. So that's a beautiful image that, yes, we wanna help in the formation, but we always wanna turn people toward Jesus. At the same time, though, every one of us, we need to think about discipling another person. You might be saying, well, I'm in finance, you know, or I'm in contracting, or I'm a homemaker, or I'm an educator, I work in the public schools or whatever. Whatever your walk of life, you need to be looking for somebody younger than you that you can mentor and show them how to be a disciple of Christ as a public school teacher, disciple of Christ as a contractor, a disciple of Christ as a homemaker. You should always be looking for someone that you can bring along and be discipling so that when you die, there's other contractors who are full of the spirit of Christ, that when you die, there's other homemakers, you get the idea, et cetera, et cetera, all right? Can I get a noddle of commitment from you guys that I will at least try to look for a younger person this year that I can mold to fill my shoes? Let me see some hands there. At least try, okay? I wanna be a disciple maker, okay? We wanna leave a legacy in what God has left us. That's what John did. And we find a beautiful passage in Acts 19. I'm not gonna read it all because we're running out of time here, but years after John's death, Paul is way out in Asia Minor and he runs into a bunch of people that have been discipled by John and knew John's baptism. And then Paul effectively gives them confirmation and they receive the Holy Spirit and they're full of the Holy Spirit and they enter into the fullness of faith and look at this last line, verse seven. I just noticed this for the first time in my life, last night. How many of them were there? 12. The 12 disciples of John the Baptist who entered the new covenant. Can you imagine that? He ended his life so pitifully. Looked like everything he had worked for had been destroyed, living in a dungeon for the last couple of years and then beheaded just ignominiously. And you're just like, well, that was a crash and burn for his ministry. And then decades later, there are still 12 guys at the west end of Turkey who knew his baptism and were ready for confirmation and became the 12 Christian disciples of John the Baptist. Holy cow. All right, let's wrap up. John the Baptist is probably connected with Kumran. One of the most important saints in all salvation and ministry, we've just scratched the surface of this powerful saint. Repentance, mortification. We got to get back to practicing that if we're going to be ready for the persecution that's coming in our culture. And we got to learn to replicate ourselves and to make disciples. Amen. All right, that's my contact info. Feel free to reach out. Let's pray in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.