While he is staying in Ephesus, Paul encounters another missionary called Apollos, whom Paul obvious admires. Apollos knows about Jesus, although it’s not clear that he is a Christian missionary. Tellingly, he is said to only know about the baptism of John, so Paul puts him and his converts right, explaining that Christian baptism invokes the Holy Spirit, and is more than a mere washing away of in. In a mixture of baptism and what we now know as confirmation, twelve converts receive the Holy Spirit and promptly start talking in tongues of ecstasy.
The short story raises lots of questions; was Apollos a sole missionary operating alone, or was he part of another movement, parallel and not apparently hostile, to the mainline Christianity of Paul? Was there also a Jewish revival/revisionist movement, like Christianity but based on the life and teaching of John, not Jesus?
That there should have been a “John movement” seems quite likely; he had disciples we know, there are hints (in John’s Gospel) of rivalry between them and Jesus’ disciples. We know that John’ baptism had reached Ephesus as part of some sort of missionary drive which involved baptism as an initiatory ritual. The Gospels may not be historically very reliable about John and his influence. The accounts of John, as we have just heard, emphasise his role as forerunner- he leads us in to recognising Jesus. The Gospel writers possibly protest too much; they clearly needed to deal with John, who was popular and perhaps he or his movement was seen as competition to proper Christianity. Adopting him as the last prophet introducing Jesus himself as the Messiah, valued John but kept him in an important, but subordinate place.
Christianity too, regarded baptism as the essential qualification for belonging to the new Church. This is in a way surprising because Jesus himself is not recorded as baptising anyone, nor telling his disciples to baptise anyone (save John’s Gospel as I mentioned, and. once at the very end of Matthew’s gospel). And yet he is recorded in detail as instituting the other great sacrament of the Church, Holy Communion.
However, while the baptism of John was a sign of repentance and forgiveness, Christian baptism was altogether more, involving the candidate receiving the Holy Spirit, as Jesus himself had done as he emerged from the water to be proclaimed by a heavenly voice and greeted by the dove-like spirit.
This distinction between John’s and Jesus’ baptisms goes to the heart of Christianity and is as relevant now as it was in first century Ephesus. There are plenty of ways in which we can deal with a feeling of guilt, and no shortage of professionals ready to help with pills and patience to help us. John’s technique was more drastic, and much more terrifying and cathartic than our rather weedy infant baptism would suggest. I don’t doubt that having been nearly drowned, one did emerge from the water feeling ready to start a new life, but not one radically different from before.
What I’m really wanting to explore, through baptism, is how Jesus’ message differed from John’s, because as I’ve indicated, it seems that both messages were out in the Jewish diaspora, and its fringes, as the Early Church grew. And, I’ve suggested, both messages are active today; many people, and most of us at some time, feel guilt; many feel inadequate, unhappy or lost. And there are many remedies available. I do not doubt the benefits of
many of those therapies, but I do think that Christian Salvation is something altogether different, and yes, infinitely better.
Jesus himself rarely simply forgives sins, and never baptises. There was, however, in his day, and possibly now too, a strong correlation between sin and illness, and Jesus does a great deal of healing, nearly always with a strong hint of spiritual cleansing as well as physical mending. The spiritual dimension is, however, uppermost and Jesus is rarely interested in what sinful action might have caused the illness; he just makes it better. If John dealt with mental guilt, Jesus provides spiritual healing.
In their different ways, however, both men demand a personal and inner response to their message; John calls for individual and personal repentance; Jesus asks very directly: “Do you want to be healed?” And he goes on to castigate the hypocrites and those who harbour evil thoughts, even if the don’t act on them. This is surely because he is concerned with the Spirit; the spirit that is within us as our motivation and inner support and “comforter”.
Jesus is of course, equally interested in our actions, and most of all our actions in bringing about the Kingdom of God. His interest in individual motivation is the necessary groundwork for his promotion of a just and ideal society. He spends a short lifetime practising practical kindness and announcing the arrival of a world in which kindness to all will supersede the prejudices and envy that bedevil this world. Here too the work of the Spirit is fundamental in envisaging the goal and enthusing us to reach for it, because the Spirit was with God at the start of creation and remains the instrument and agent of love in that creation.
So, much more is involved and the possible reward so much greater than merely feeling the weight of guilt removed-although that relief is a pre-requisite for the fuller, life- giving, action that may follow.
This comparison of John and Jesus has not mentioned what you might think the most obvious differences; John does not claim to be the “Son of God” and while he gets himself beheaded, (apart from a reference to Herod’s paranoia) there is no hint of a resurrection and all that means to Christianity. Both John and Jesus clearly derive inspiration from Isaiah. But while John (as far as we are told in the Gospels) delivers relief and heralds a new order of restoration and healing, Jesus combines that message of relief with Isaiah’s melancholy understanding of human suffering at the hands of other men. Indeed, Jesus even uses the word baptism to mean an unpleasant trial that he must undergo) Jesus’ good news does not whitewash the reality of human existence, but it recognises that the resurrection and new life can come out of suffering. And it is surely the Spirit that enables this. It is the spirit which inspires us to recognise that we are more than mere frail and suffering human beings, and indeed capable, if we will follow it, of being part of God’s creative force and sharing a little of his energy, so that we can achieve the work that Jesus began, when he started his ministry, baptised by John on the edge of the wilderness. Amen.