John the Baptist is always easy to pick out in a lineup of saints in paintings or carved into cathedral walls, according to Rachel Held Evans. Whether he is wild-eyed and emaciated from that diet of bugs or his head is already on a platter, his presence among the more serene, more sanitary saints is unmistakable.

In Mark's Gospel, we meet John as a grown man, already emerging from the wilderness to call people to repentance. Mark, like John, is making haste to prepare the way of the Lord. So there is no mention of John leaping in his mother's womb, the first of the first to recognize the baby in Mary's own belly as the messiah. We don't hear much about John's boyhood or the way he might have followed in his father's footsteps and become a Temple priest.

We just get the wild man, whose devotion to God cannot be constrained by the four walls of the Temple. We get the disciple of Jesus who doesn't just follow him, but runs ahead, finding people and getting into good trouble and terrible trouble—a foreshadowing of what Jesus, himself, will face.

Mark's Gospel gives the briefest of that foreshadowing when, in March 6:29, the texts says that on hearing of John's death at the hands of Herod, "John's disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb."

For John, the wild man, who speaks for those who have been consigned to cry in the wilderness, the stone is not yet rolled away. The tomb remains a tomb. His death is an uneasy reminder of just how dangerous Jesus' message is. Still, John's witness—from before he was born until his own burial—points to his steadfast belief in Jesus, the one who leaves no stone unturned to draw nearer to God's people.

Who can you think of that reminds you of a modern day John the Baptist? Who are the wild ones of faith? How comfortable are you with the life and witness of someone who lives their faith through resistance? When have you you recognized Jesus working in your own life? How did you feel when you realized this? When have you leapt at the chance to follow Jesus? When have you resisted that calling?

"Our resistance is not predicated on how likely it will be to alter the conscience of the oppressor. We resist to retain our own conscience. And to awaken all others who are still in possession of their own souls.”

—Cole Arthur Riley

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