[Matthew 3:4-5]

We want to know what to do.

Some of us, anyway, when we become part of a group or we have a new identity or we are starting fresh, we want to know what to do. We want to know what the rules are, what it takes to fit in, to measure up.

And then we look for examples.

And some of us find John (the baptizing one).

He’s dressed in a garment woven from camel’s hair with a leather belt. He eats locusts. He eats wild honey.

And we think that we need to.

I mean, he’s the spiritual one, right? He’s the prophetic one. If we are prophetic, if we are to speak out the truth, we should live on the fringe. We should wear burlap and eat oddly.

But he didn’t wear burlap. (It would have been more like wool.) And he may well have been the only one of Jesus followers to eat bugs. The disciples will be found eating wheat and fish and bread and wine and other normal (for the time) food.

We want to copy outsides because that is so easy to do. But what made John distinctive wasn’t what what on the outside. In fact, part of why he wore what he wore is that he didn’t care so much about the outside. He wore what was available and durable.

There is much in Matthew that is descriptive: “This is what John did.” We want to make it prescriptive: “This is what I should do.” All the while, as we copy those things, we may miss what truly is prescriptive: “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?'”

It is, after all, much easier to worry…than to follow.