I smell John the Baptist

For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page, which includes Gillespie's current Living by the Word column as well as past magazine and blog content. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century.

John the Baptist is an acquired taste, like roquefort. He’s complex. He is an amalgamation of unanswered questions: Is he a zealot acting out the Exodus as a kind of political comedy sketch? Is he the leader of a rival faith community, a serious threat to the fledgeling Jesus movement? Is he a kind of Enkidu figure—a fugitive of our collective consciousness from the epic Gilgamesh—who crawls out of the wilderness, learns our ways well enough and then attempts to wrestle and pin our society to the ground, only to be admired briefly and then destroyed?

Whatever John is, he’s not easy to put on a cracker. He’s ancient, aged and moldy. He’s tragic. Yet each Advent, he’s here.