"There are two reasons why these texts are God’s timely word to us via the Common Lectionary this very morning. John the Baptist may have been the Doberman Pinscher of the Gospels, but the world needs its junkyard dogs, right? 

First of all, the world seems to have returned to the Age of the Herods. When the Berlin Wall fell more than 30 years ago and the Soviet Union collapsed, we thought that democracy had won. It would spread across the entire world like a virus, and despots would disappear. But now in important places of power around the world, there are potentates imposing their puny, pompous prerogatives on citizens who should be free and equal."