Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's December 4, 2005 Sunday worship service.

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The Cave of John the Baptist

Isaiah 40; Mark 1:1-8

Bethel 12/4/05 2^nd Sunday of Advent

Rev. Marc Sherrod, ThD

If you were to take a few minutes and “google” the word “cave” on the internet, you’d get references a’plenty to famous caverns and caves like Mammouth and Carslbad; you would also get sites describing the Cave of Lascaux in France which has those prehistoric wall paintings of bison, cows, and bulls that many believe go back some 15,.000 years; you pull up a reference to the famous allegory of the cave by the Greek philosopher Plato.

It would take a great deal more “goggling,” and if you stayed with it long enough, you might even come to references to caves with explicit importance in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Think, for instance, of Elijah’s cave on Mt. Sinai where he experienced the divine theophany and heard the “still, small voice.” Or, this time of year, recall that a traditional belief that Jesus was born in a cave, a cave that functioned as kind of stall for animals, likely, therefore, a cold, moist, and smelly place and a far cry from the glorified barns and mangers of or Hallmark Card Christmas scenes. Probably the most famous cave in recent memory has been the series of caves outside the Qumran community near the Dead Sea, discovered in 1947. Then and there, a hapless Bedoin shepherd boy stumbled upon a cave that contained some large earthware jars, and preserved inside the ceremonial jars were the oldest manuscripts we have of many biblical texts, hidden inside the cave for over 2000 years. The theory is that the residents of this monastic community at Qumran, sometimes believed to have been the Essenes who wanted to live pure and separate from the world, had a library of biblical texts, and when they heard the Romans were coming to destroy their community, they hid these sacred texts in the remote caves in the hills surrounding their community -- the Dead Sea Scrolls as they came to be called,

But the most recent discovery of a cave is quite different than the others I’ve mentioned. It is believed to be the Cave of John the Baptist. Archeologists, beginning their work in 2001, have been excavating this cave, which is about a 10 minute drive west of Jerusalem in an area near a Kibbutz, surrounded by orchards, vineyards, and olive trees, not far from a tiny village called Ain Karim – a place traditionally associated as the residence of John the Baptist when he was a young man.

If you have studied the history of the holy land much at all, you know that there are holy sites everywhere – some holier and some more commercialized than others -- and while there are plenty of holy sites associated with the life and ministry of John the Baptist, places visited by pilgrim-tourists from ancient times until now, this cave has remained unused for over 1000 years. The archeologists who spent several years excavating this site discovered, eventually, that there were several distinct layers of stratiography, and they had to slowly dig down 12-15 feet before reaching the actual floor of the cave, the cave having been gradually filled in by mud and debris which washed into the cave during the rainy season each winter.

The lead archeologist, Shimon Gibson, who just published the book The Cave of John the Baptist: The Stunning Archaeological Discovery that has Redefined Christian History, describes how his first discovery upon entering the cave was the rather crude drawing of a human figure, etched into the cave wall, a figure that I’ve reproduced on the front cover of your bulletin. Based on a number of historic data, location of the cave, and other criteria, Gibson determined that this was a representation of John the Baptist, whose head is shown oversized in comparison to the rest of his body, with a very long nose, almond-shaped eyes, holding a staff in his left hand, his right hand upraised in the traditional gesture of a blessing, and the clothing of a camel’s hair cloak shown by the small holes meant to indicate a hairy garment.

There were also other drawings on the cave wall of crosses, a ladder meant to symbolize passage from earth to heaven, and an arm and hand meant to recall the divine hand coming out of heaven and blessing Jesus when John baptized him. There was also a depiction of a camel, which in ancient Christian art, was associated with John because of his rough camel’s hair clothing and the camel was a beast with an incredible capacity to survive in the wilderness – much like John. The archeologists surmised that these rudimentary drawings on the cave wall came from the Byzantine Period, around the 7^th century after the life of Christ.

I have reproduced some other, more refined works of Christian art from about the same time, so you can see how John, in his baptism of Jesus, often held a staff in his left hand as he baptized the naked Jesus with his right. (Incidentally, you may be puzzled about two figures in the upper pictures who look somewhat out-of-place, almost like mythic Greek gods; these are meant by the artist to represent the Jordan River.) The upper right picture, especially, depicts the fully-bearded John in his cloak of camel’s hair. You can see in the lower pictures renderings of the hand reaching down from heaven, with the dove, towards the bowl from which John is pouring water over the head of Jesus.

The archeologists surmised that this cave, during the Byzantine period, was a kind of hermitage where monks and ascetics would come to commemorate the life, ministry, and prophetic message of John.

But as these archeologists dug down further, they discovered in the layer of material dated to the Roman period, which would have been the period correlating with the actual life of John, a series of amazing finds.

First, they unearthed a series of steps that had been carefully hewn out of the stone that, they eventually learned, led down to the floor of the cave. This led them to ponder how the cave had been used during the Roman period. It seemed strange that if it was nly a temporary refuge for shepherds to escape stormy weather or a storage spot for farmers, strange that so much care would have been given in shaping those stairs.

Second, one way archeologists date a time period is by sifting through and classifying pieces of broken pottery; a shift in pottery styles and sizes can be very revealing of change over time. Ordinarily, the discovery of many potsherds or pottery fragments indicates that a site had been used for domestic purposes, that is, people had made their home there or they had used the site as a garbage dump where they tossed their broken pottery. Well, the archeologists were stunned to learn that one type of vessel was preponderant over any other and was apparently in use almost exclusively during this Roman period and before – this was a one-handled vessel, a jug, about the size of a wine decantor, ideal for filling and pouring water or olive oil. After much puzzlement, they determined that these vessels must have been used in some ritual purification ceremony, and once used, broken on the floor of the cave, to ensure that the vessel itself would never again be used for any impure purpose.

And then, third, the archeologists found a large oval-shaped stone, apparently brought into the cave from outside. Within the stone, there was the footprint of a person’s right foot that had been hallowed out of the stone, and from the footprint there ran a tiny channel to a saucer-like depression. Apparently, the one-handled vessel would have been placed in this saucer, and with a person’s right foot inserted into the footprint in the stone, a ritual anointing of the person’s foot with oil was carried out.

What’s more, the archeologists soon learned, during the final phase of their dig, at the rear of the cave there was a ceremonial pool of water for bathing purposes, where according to long-standing Jewish custom, a person desiring ritual purification of his flesh would go and dip himself into the water of the pool seven times, and then receive a blessing.

It seemed easy enough to conclude that this cave was where John and his followers carried out Jewish purification rites by dipping in water and anointing feet with oil – water as a sing of initiation into new life and oil on the foot as a sign of God’s presence going with the devotee on the journey. What if, here in this cave, these Jewish water purification and anointing rites merged with early Christian baptismal practices? And what if Jesus visited this ritual place, perhaps after his own baptism in the Jordan River? As always, with so much of the Bible, archeology can only tantalize us with questions and possible answers.

But I, for one, have always been puzzled about what to do with John the Baptist this time of year. A ranting and raving madman, as he is often remembered, doesn’t really fit in with the nativity scene or in this holiday season more generally. For me, part of the problem is that wilderness as his symbolic location is such a wild, amorphous, ambivalent place itself, and John seems a bit wild, amorphous, ambivalent too – but the discovery of his “cave” at least makes him a bit more accessible and humane, not quite such a remote and dark figure.

We usually think of John as the forerunner of Jesus, and that’s the way the gospel writers try to portray him. But, probably, John did not see himself as a forerunner of Jesus but rather as a harbinger of the return of Elijah, that quintessential Hebrew prophet who also came out of the wilderness with fire in his eyes and judgment on his tongue and who, at the end, transcended death, in his fiery chariot that he rode into the heavens, and who had his own cave experience where he felt the presence of God in “the still, small voice.”

We can make a lot of assumptions about John the Baptist, his cave, and those who followed him, but we can’t mistake his message. He is a messenger whom God sends to wake us up and to help prepare the way. And rather than focus on the rough appearance and the harsh words, we need to remember that he is one who points us to God’s ultimate purpose, the forgiveness of our sins. Without a doubt, he knew that his words would seem strange, and even dangerous, likely to bring him an unjust death. But John, nonetheless, insisted on God’s compassion and mercy.

And in this wilderness of hatred and violence that we have made of the world, John makes us ask, “Can it be that mercy really is at the heart of God?”

We have not a cave or its ancient rituals here today, but we do have our own purification ceremony in the church, a time to face ourselves and our God anew and to be washed and to have our flesh made clean as we make ourselves ready.

Let us, therefore, recall the ministry and message of John as we come to this, the table of our Lord. And let us reclaim the historic faith of the church as we share together in reciting the Nicene Creed.