“John the Initiator”
Robert Champion was 26-years-old when he died. He was the Drum Major of Florida A&M University’s 420 member Marching 100 band. Champion collapsed on the band bus, unable to breathe. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital, but it was too late. The doctors could not save his life. Last week Robert Champion was laid to rest wearing his band uniform.
The facts are not all out yet, but Orange County investigators have announced that hazing was likely the cause of Champion’s death. Four students have been dismissed from Florida A&M University in connection with his death. 30 students have been kicked off the band. The university has suspended all scheduled performances of the Marching 100. The school’s president has moved to fire band director for alleged misconduct or incompetence. At Robert Champion’s funeral the preacher railed against bullying and hazing saying, "I call on every mother, every father, every niece, every uncle: Do what is necessary now to stop this tragedy so that it will never happen again."
For you see, this sort of thing has happened before on the Marching 100. One band member was paddled 30 times until he went into renal failure and almost died. He successfully sued Florida A&M University and the students who almost killed him. Other band members have reportedly been paddled a hundred times. Thighbones have been fractured and knees have been ruptured. Just two weeks before Champion died a young woman who played clarinet on the Marching 100 was hospitalized as a result of hazing.[i] Details of Robert Champion’s death are still fuzzy, but it appears that the Florida A&M band has cultivated a terrible and violent way of welcoming members.
All organizations have rites of initiation. For the church it is baptism. Some denominations require that their members be plunged totally underwater. In the Russian Orthodox Church even the babies are totally immersed! I’ve heard stories of Orthodox priests breaking through the ice in Russian winters, to submerge newborn babies in the frigid waters. At our church, usually a little sprinkle of warm water on the forehead will suffice, but that’s still too much for some crying babies. Perhaps those infants think that I’m hazing them instead of gently welcoming them into the church. You can tell a lot about an organization by how they welcome new people into their midst. Initiations matter.
In today’s scripture we are introduced to John the Baptizer, that wild man of the dessert who thought it was a good idea to dunk people in the Jordan River. John was the initiator, not just of the rite of baptism, but of the coming age when his cousin Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit. All four Gospels begin with John the Baptizer getting the world ready for Jesus. Let’s dip our toes in those waters as we open up Mark 1:1-8 (page 910) and prepare ourselves for the coming of Jesus.
Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
2 As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
3 the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight” ’,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
3 the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight” ’,
4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’
Sometimes it hurts to be initiated. Last week Pastor Derek explained to me what happens to soldiers and sailors when they move up in rank. When officers reach the rank of Colonel, the rite of passage is that commanding officers don’t just pin an eagle onto the uniform. He jams the bird into the new colonel’s flesh until the uniform is stained with blood. This eagle pin is much more than decoration. That bird cannot be earned without a little blood.
Not surprisingly, the Marines have even more violent promotion rituals. When a lance corporal is promoted to full corporal they no longer are just responsible for doing their job. For the very first time in their careers they have to command. Before they earn their stripes, the corporals have to run the gauntlet. Fifty Marines kick the stuffing out of the new corporal until he has to be carried out of the barracks. Violence is the business of the military, so there is a devastating logic to such brutal initiations. Marines only want to take orders from someone who has felt the boot of violence.
The church aspires to be kinder and gentler with our initiation rites. Generally we are. After all, the church is not about violence, but faith, hope, love and peace. But I’ll be frank with you, when adults ask me to baptize them in a swimming pool I don’t pull them up immediately. I give them fair warning beforehand, but part of being under the water is to identify with Jesus’ death and burial under the earth before the resurrection. I let them stay down there for just a second or two longing for breath and new life. The air tastes sweeter when you’ve been without it for awhile.
When children are baptized, they get off easy. A little water on the forehead and everyone smiles benevolently, even if the baby is screaming bloody murder. But there is a striking practice of the early church that still lingers in some churches today. When those babies grew up to become young adults, they were slapped across the face on Confirmation Sunday to remind them of the offense of the Gospel. My predecessor Pastor Stenberg used to give our confirmands the gentlest slap possible so they could literally turn the other cheek. That practice stopped at this church when a mother declared that nobody was touching her daughter! In its place, Pastor Stenberg initiated the confirmation students by having them weld crosses out of iron nails to wear on their Confirmation Day. As Phil pointed out on numerous occasions, the cross is a far more barbaric image than his tender love tap. The slap is long gone, but the offense remains. No one, not even Jesus, gets to the resurrection without first tasting death.
John invented baptism. He lived out in the wilderness, far away from polite society. Everyone from the small towns to the big city wanted to meet this holy man of the desert, but John didn’t make house calls. Anyone who desired to find John would have to wander into the wilderness. Their initiation began with a pilgrimage to no man’s land.
Finding John meant leaving civilization. There were no farms in the wastelands. The Baptizer lived off the wilderness: eating nutritious bugs and delicious honey. John’s diet was just as odd then as it is now. I’m sure that most pilgrims brought enough food to get them to the Jordan River and back, but there were no quickie-marts to visit along the way. John’s initiation meant abandoning security and risking real hunger.
Previous to John the Jewish people practiced ritual bathing. Women would bathe themselves after childbirth to become ritually pure. Men who touched a corpse or were recovering from a skin disease would bathe in a mikveh to become ceremonially clean again. Priests would take a ritual bath to prepare themselves for worship. When foreigners converted to Judaism, their initiation was to be washed in the waters. John was certainly influenced by Jewish ritual baths, but his baptism was something quite different than what came before.
John’s baptism was not a comfortable dip in a warm tub. At John’s campsite on the Jordan River no one got to wash themselves. John took it upon himself to plunge initiates into the water. Like a parent scrubbing a squirming child, John was the one who did the cleaning.
John was convinced that everyone needed repentance. When the Pharisees and Sadducees showed up by the riverside, John insulted them by calling them murderous snakes. I don’t imagine that John was the hazing type, but he certainly harassed the religious leaders because they had no true interest in repentance. They just wanted another badge of spiritual approval. John’s point is that no one shows up at his river clean. Everyone was in need of some serious scrubbing in the water.
John made the people ceremonially re-enter the land. The River Jordan is the historic Western boundary marker of Israel. John expected everyone to go back to the very beginning. Like the Jewish slaves escaping Egypt and the wilderness it was time for them to re-enter Israel. John wanted God’s people to renew their relationship with the Lord so they would once again be dependent on the grace of God.
But John’s baptism was much more than just another ritual. John wasn’t hazing God’s people like fraternity pledges. He was getting them ready for what was coming next. John initiated baptism but more importantly John initiated a brand new age. All John had to baptize with was river water, but his cousin Jesus was coming to baptize with the Holy Spirit.
Water can only get you so far when you are trying to make something clean. Every squirming baby is bound to get messy again. No pot or pan stays clean after a single washing. Water is great for cleaning, but it has no power to make anyone permanently clean. John knew full well that his guests in the wilderness would go home and return to the same dumb behavior; the same bad choices; the same harmful relationships. It was enough for to make a prophet to lose his head! But John did not despair. He knew that God was sending a Savior with the power to deliver his Holy Spirit. When the Spirit came, God’s people would experience real change.
This is why John tells his followers that he was not worthy to untie the shoelaces of the coming Messiah. When Jesus came, he would change everything. Instead of empty rituals and lame initiation ceremonies, Jesus would bring the Spirit of God.
When people are baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they are initiated into a relationship with the Living God. They are never ready for it, not if they are drooling infants; not if they are mature adults. Nobody is ever prepared for the power of God in their life. Baptism is the beginning of a relationship, where God in invited to go to work in our lives. If you let Him, God will change who you are.
Most initiation rituals demand something from you: some pain; some blood; some flesh in the game. The Spirit of God is a game changer. With the Holy Spirit the equation is reversed. When you are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus, you only have something to gain. Instead of paying the price and feeling the pain, Jesus has got you covered. He took all the hazing the world could muster when he submitted to the cross. In Christ, the Holy Spirit shows up in your life to give you something. God’s Spirit fills you with love, with hope, with joy, and with peace. The Spirit starts moving in your life so you can let go of some of the old wounds and bad habits that are holding you back. Baptism is our initiation into the grace of God. Trust in God to finish the job by filling you up with his Holy Spirit.
[i] http://www.11alive.com/news/article/215536/3/FAMU-Band-Director-Champion-looked-like-he-had-passed-out
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/01/four-students-dismissed-from-famu-after-hazing-death/
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