Embedded in a passage I examined last January, there is the well-known statement about John the Baptist: “…His food was locusts and wild honey” (Matthew 3:4). This has negatively impacted his reputation for many years. Yet this man, who was in the lineage of Aaron, the first Levite priest and the brother of Moses, is a neglected biblical hero. His asceticism, which means making extreme sacrifices in day to day living to be closer with God, has long seemed to make some people uncomfortable. I have been a Christian for over 31 years, and in all of the church services I have ever attended, John the Baptist has rarely even been mentioned. The greatest attention focused on John the Baptist during my Christian journey came from one of the most popular rock songs of my generation, “Jesus Freak,” by the music trio dcTalk back in the mid-1990’s. Spotlighting this biblical martyr added to the radical attraction to the long neglected messages which were offered on that pioneer album.
Talking with a friend last Sunday evening, he started talking about eating bugs. My friend has a Ph.D. from Cornell University, he is a computer expert, and he has an interest in the sciences. Recently he was watching a science program which was discussing the advantages of people eating bugs for a more sustainable planet and for better health. Following up with some research of my own, I learned much. First, insects add nutrition to the diet for many people on our planet in certain regions of the world. Second, I learned locusts are basically grasshoppers who swarm. Locusts eat leaves and certain vegetation, thus a swarm of them can destroy certain crops. I add that cicadas are not from the same insect “order,” and they eat tree sap and do not swarm. For John the Baptist’s diet, the more appropriate translation may be “grasshoppers” if he was eating them year after year. The bottom line is John the Baptist may have been ahead of his time. You may be interested in reading this short article from 2013 in the Smithsonian Magazine: “People in Israel Really Are Eating Swarming Locusts.”
Once I briefly considered eating a grasshopper, saturated in honey, in front of a youth group, thinking my feat might help attract some newcomers to youth group. But that moment is gone. Yet what we are going to find out early on in Matthew 11 is the fact that John the Baptist, Jesus freak hero, was also human.
Hunter Irvine
