I’ve always been intrigued by the nicknames that have been given to notable kings, royalty, or leaders throughout the ages.
I’m talking about the descriptors that come after their names 
that encapsulate something about their character or achievements (or lack thereof). I’m talking about names like “William the Conqueror,” “Alexander the Great,” “Richard the Lionheart,” etc. Being great figures of history, of course, you can’t call them nicknames; apparently, they’re called “cognomens” instead, because that sounds much more noble, but it amounts to the same thing.
Those are the obvious ones, but there are some really cool ones that should be better known. There’s Queen Isabella, the She-Wolf of France; I mean, I want a biographical movie of her just based on that name alone. There’s Pachakutiq of the Incas, known as Earth-Shaker, which sounds like he’s some kind of superhero. And there’s even Vladimir II, the ruler and defender of Kiev in the 13th century, known as “He Who Fights Alone.” I mean, I know I’m a history nerd, but don’t you immediately want to know where he got that name?
But at the same time, there are some less impressive ones, bordering on the hilarious. Sebastian the Asleep of Portugal, for example, can’t have been pleased with his legacy. Perhaps he commiserated with Louis the Sluggard of France, at least when they were both awake. Ivaylo, the Cabbage of Bulgaria, sounds like he got his name from bullies on his fifth-grade playground, along with Ragnvald the Roundhead of Sweden. And finally, there’s Charles II of Navarre, who was stuck with the unimaginative but succinct name of “Charles the Bad.” That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Charles’ reign.
And that is the point, after all, of these cognomens, or nicknames. They are a sort of biographical shorthand, so you quickly know who someone is talking about and what they were known for. “Which Louis?” “The Sluggard, not the Sun King.” “Oh, right.” That’s why we have John the Baptizer, more traditionally known as John the Baptist. “Which John?” “The one who baptizes people.” “Oh, right.” Baptizer is a slightly more accurate translation, because the Greek word there is the verb, “to baptize,” not the adjective of “Baptist.” It’s a little thing, but it reminds us that John was known for his action, the particular action of performing baptisms with people.
And those baptisms were for a particular purpose, as Mark points out: “John the Baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” And, interestingly enough, that was a message and an action that people appeared eager, even desperate, to receive. John the Baptizer was doing all this out “in the wilderness,” Mark tells us, a place that was clearly and unambiguously not a place where you would ever catch a Temple priest or religious scribe; it was a place beyond the margins of the established religious order, a place where only those who were unsatisfied with or cast out from the that established order would risk going. And there appears to be no lack of them. Mark tells us that “…the whole Judean region and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.”
Why were so many people drawn to John the Baptizer? Well, I don’t think it’s that complicated. It’s hard to overestimate the appeal of a second chance when the road you’ve been on has come to a dead end. There’s a wonderful song by an singer-songwriter named Gregory Alan Isakov called “Second Chances” that takes up that very theme. “All of my heroes sit up straight,” he begins; “they stare at the ground, they radiate.”
And then he contrasts that image of strength and stoicism in his heroes with how he feels himself: “Me, I’m mumbling in the kitchen for the sun to pay up / lonely as a ring on a cold coffee cup / I’m some sick hound / digging for bones / if it weren’t for second chances we’d all be alone.” Those are extraordinary encapsulations of what it feels like to feel trapped in your current circumstances: lonely as a ring on a cold coffee cup; like some sick hound digging for bones. But to have a second chance, to have the ability to turn a dead end into a crossroads, offering new paths towards new possibilities?
That is quite literally finding a lifeline when you had given up hope, a chance to live again, to live differently, to live better. Remember that repentance means to turn around, to turn in a new direction; repentance carries a lot of religious baggage because of false theologies of shame, but it is in its essence a word of hope, not of judgment; an offer of a way out of a dead end, a second chance to live life with the fullness and abundance that God has always intended for us. That is what John the Baptizer is proclaiming, is offering in his baptism of repentance; and if you’ve ever found yourself at a dead end in your life, lonely as a ring on a cold coffee cup, hopeless as a sick hound digging for bones, you know exactly how good the news is that John is proclaiming.
But John the Baptizer proclaims the beginning of the good news in this passage, not the end, as John himself tells the people: “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” You see, there are different kinds of baptism, which is why Mark specifies at the beginning of this passage that John is proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John’s baptism is not the same as Christian baptism, as those who continued to follow John would be the first to tell you.
It is based on the Jewish practices of ritual purification in water, most notably the mikvah bath of ritual immersion. And there is actually a whole tradition called Mandaeism that traces its lineage back to the Judean desert monastic-style communities from which John the Baptizer came, and they consider John to be the greatest and last prophet of God. There are only about 60-70,000 left in the world, and they continue to practice a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, getting baptized on a regular basis for essentially the same reasons we do a Prayer of Confession in worship every week: to acknowledge that they have fallen short of who and how God calls them to be, to ask God for forgiveness, and to be assured of God’s grace and strengthened to live more faithfully as they go forward.
That is the baptism that John is proclaiming, but it is not the baptism that Jesus will bring, John says. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit,” John clarifies. John’s baptism, then, is a bit like the musical overture to an opera: it establishes key themes that will be taken up by what follows, but greatly expanded and developed there. And the overarching key theme in question is the arrival and activity of the Holy Spirit, which happens right as John is baptizing Jesus: “just as he was coming up out of the water,” Mark tells us, “he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him.”
And just in case that wasn’t clear enough: “A voice came from the heavens,” Mark continues, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” The Holy Spirit coming like a dove might sound beautiful and peaceful, but it comes because the heavens have been “torn apart.” The boundary between the realm of God and the realm of the earth hasn’t just been crossed by the Holy Spirit, it has been obliterated: wrenched asunder like a strong person grabbing hold of a cloth stretched across a door and ripping it to shreds. The Holy Spirit isn’t just descending on Jesus, it is breaking and entering into the world to begin claiming the world for its own through Jesus. That is the key theme, the point of Jesus’ baptism, to which John the Baptizer points.
Baptism, first and foremost is about God making an unassailable claim upon us. It means we now belong to God, in the face of any other power that seeks to claim us, or even that we seek to claim. It means that our entire life becomes one of second chances, for God never stops offering another second chance. That is why Christian baptism, Jesus’ baptism, is once and for all, not a repeated act like the Mandaeans. There is nowhere we can go, nothing we can do, nothing that anything or anyone else can do, that can void God’s claim upon our lives and our identities. In the oldest Christian traditions, baptism was seen as so central to one’s identity that one was either given a name in baptism (if they were an infant), or given a new name if they were an adult. The only question is how we will live in response to that claim, live out that identity; that is what we are called and empowered to spend the rest of our lives doing.
Since we no longer give new names for baptism, wouldn’t it be great if we gave each other cognomens instead, nicknames that describe something crucial about our character as Christians or the way we live out our faith. Take a look around you right now; go ahead and take a moment to look at those who are around you. If you’re not a regular participant in this church, consider those whom you have known in your life and faith. And as you do, the names will come to you: someone who should be known as the Wise, and someone the Compassionate; someone the Stoutheart, and someone the Just; someone the Eloquent and someone the Quiet Servant; someone the Perceptive and someone the Kind.
There are as many cognomens as there are those who deserve one, and that means quite a lot. So as you go from this service, I challenge you to find at least one of those people, here in this congregation if you can and elsewhere if you need, and tell them your cognomen for them, as a sign of your witness to their faithfulness in how they belong to God through their baptism. For living out our baptisms is always both a calling and a blessing, and this world is as desperate for both sharing and recognizing blessings as it ever has been.