By Christopher Zehnder
“I need to be baptized by you and do you come to me?” (Matthew 3.14)
Thus, John the Baptist, when Our Lord sought baptism from him. It is no wonder that John should shrink from this act; it so ill accorded with this man, whom John had proclaimed the one “whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.” For John’s ministry had been toward sinners — a mere symbolic washing with water, an earnest of mercy and forgiveness. This One, however, would baptize “with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
“I need to be baptized by you…”
Notes from the Wasteland 