Pray for Mercy

It is puzzling that people found John the Baptist in the wilderness.  It is not puzzling that the Baptizer was in the wilderness.  What is puzzling is that people found him in a place not normally frequented and so inaccessible.  There was no prototype of today's evening news team which had a "Wilderness Reporter."  No newspapers carried a word about him in its religious section on the day before Sabbath.  It is puzzling that someone found him and that after the one found him, others came. 

 

It is even more puzzling that a crowd would gather.  Surely, the first reports which found their way back to the more civilized places filled with the sophisticated folks were reports of a crude man who preached a hard to swallow message.  Yet, the Record tells us that folks went out not only to hear this man of the wilderness, but to do a very un-Jewish like thing which was baptism.  Jews needed no baptism in muddy river waters.  They knew they were already the people of God.  Still, they went.  What is no puzzle is the  presence of the pillars of the religious status quo, the Pharisees and Sadducees.  They came to check on things and to do whatever had to be done to restore order to the religious insanity that had broken out on the banks of the Jordan.

The church of our day could use a good strong dose of religious insanity.  Theology has gotten so sanitized that God can only wear the mantle of love.  He has become a one dimensional Deity who is eager to give a wink of approval to human craziness.  The church has come to be more like the Pharisees and Sadducees assuming the role of chief defender and protector of the institutional status quo.  And, believe it or not, there are even preachers and pew sitters out there who declare there is no need for the kind of repentance preached by that wild man of the wilderness.  If we cannot bring ourselves to pray for a repenting spirit, maybe, just maybe, we should pray for the mercy of God.