Popular depictions of John the Baptist tend to emphasize his wildness. A literally peripheral figure, dressed in camel’s hair and subsisting on a diet of locusts and honey, barking about the “unquenchable fire” and attacking the crowd that follows him as a “brood of vipers,” he is seen as the antithesis of normal—as an angry, unstable, very strange man.
But a closer look at the ethical advice John offers in this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading reveals a figure who is shockingly reasonable, at least when it comes to his opinions about how to behave:
- “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none,” he tells the crowds, “and whoever has food must do likewise.”
- “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you,” he instructs the tax collectors.
- “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or accusations,” he directs the soldiers, “and be satisfied with your wages.”
“Be satisfied with your wages” hardly sounds like the rhetoric of a radical. In fact, when John and Jesus are compared, it is Jesus who often sounds more extreme:
- Jesus tells his followers to get rid of their possessions, in some cases all of them. “If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat,” he advises in the Sermon on the Mount, “give your cloak as well.” John does not ask us to give away something we might need in the future; John simply asks us to share if we have excess.
- Jesus summons the tax collector Levi away from the occupation of tax collecting so that he can follow Jesus. John, on the other hand, does not require tax collectors to abandon their professional lives; he only requests that they stay within customary limits.
- Jesus warns that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. But John does not advocate for soldiers to abandon their weapons entirely. He merely wants soldiers to refrain from exploiting their power.
What should we make of these differences between Jesus and his famous relative? Well, for one, they suggest that we may have domesticated Jesus and his teachings—made them a bit too palatable to our minds, a bit too meek-and-mild. But they also, I think, invite us to wonder if we may have given John short shrift over the years—if we may have dismissed him a bit too hastily. Perhaps he does have something valuable to say to us when we raise ethical questions. Maybe he’s not so crazy after all.
