Historical Setting: River Tyne, 794 C.E.
In the long view of time, even things most reliably unchanging — like rocks and rituals — change. Over time rocks wear down and mosses own them, and the forever and always of our human habits and rituals edge away or sometimes quake abruptly but these seemingly most stable things always change.
Changed are Jewish cleansing rituals going from pond to mikvah, but always confirmed by Temple priests. It was still Jesus’s and John’s tradition.
There John came with a big splashing change into the deep dip river of cleansing, shouting for repentance, a turning around. It was an abrupt change, a rock splitting change, with the priest, now, in the wilderness, shouting, not chanting. We came in our youth seeking this turning from the old edicts to the new relationship with God. Shouting down the old — finding new was popular and youthful.
But even as the change was personal, the old Jewish traditions were also flexing in new ways. Synagogues were being built in the outlands to extend the access to the Temple and Torah. New ways of knowing God were rising up here and there within Judaism, some mystical, some midrash with new stories and budding traditions often change as reinvigorated adherence to the old. Questioning was as fresh as our own youth. When John was baptizing, the cleansing ritual was not our father’s rule, but a personal choice to enter the waters.
This was all going on in our community, while the Romans doubled down on outward obedience, holding fast to their ancient gods, with their own purification ceremonies, Lustratio, [Footnote] which had dried up into a procession with sacrifices. The pools of water, Lustral basins, were already losing their luster by the time Christian became Roman.
Then, Christian baptism repented and turned again from a personal cleansing into a tool for proselytization.
Christians replaced the briss with the baptism, and it was no longer a rebellious, teenaged personal option, but a holy demand managed by the polity of the Church. In fact, baptism became the head count for measuring Christian popularity.
As weird as it is to have a torture tool (the cross) once used by the Romans against the Jews, become the sacred symbol of a religion based on the Jewish love laws, the irony of change goes on. Always turning, always changing, even ritual and rocks are organic and always changing.
Footnote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lustratio retrieved 6-13-25
(Continues tomorrow )
Lazarus Ink 