The Baptizer
Just as fish trying to escape from sharks crash onto the reefs, humanity literally threw itself out of God's ocean and lives breathless and terrified on the scorching sand. Humanity thus is moribund and without oxygen or peace on the reefs of a world not theirs. The world has chased away the Lord of life and distanced itself from life itself.
Terrified, mankind has run away and as people fled they came upon a beach in a beautiful, wonderful world not completely theirs. The infants of those human beings were born on a scorching beach, without water, a vital element for life. They are born beautiful but terrified and injured and very quickly they are trained to survive out of water, out of God. They lose all beauty, relish, and intelligence. A special child was born in that harsh place, the child was born in a strained set of circumstances; he was born from withered sperm and a sterile womb and his name means “God is merciful (hesed).” John was born, the greatest of all men born of a woman, the wisest , most illuminated, austere, powerful and holiest man in all history. He too was marked by original sin but was preserved from training by the men and culture of that time. No one else was and no one else would be.
The one who would prepare the peoples for the coming of the Hesed made flesh was born. But there were no houses already ready nor were their streets already built, or cities set up, there were no hearts ready and available for Hesed. “God is merciful” - John - had to learn the most absurd and impossibile trade for a human being and only he could do it. John had to learn to be a baptizer -a baptizer of men in God’s ocean.
John must re-immerse at least a few in God's lost ocean by re-immersing them in water while they await the baptizer himself, Hesed has become flesh.
Jesus re-immerses the humanity that once again believes in God in a new and eternal convenant that no one will be able to destroy. It is an incredibile job, helping men to become immersed in God’s world, helping them to re-appropriate the divine and spritual dimension. Helping this humanity crushed on the dangerous banks of life to re-dive into God, into his love, into his beauty, into his mercy.
It is the greatest task of anyone born of a woman (John the Bapstist), but also the same task of the smallest apostle of the Kingdom of heaven. It is the task of the fishers of men, but according to the new economy of the kingdom of heaven even the smallest in that kingdom is greater and more powerful than John the Baptizer, the last echo of the Old Covenant.