Double Dipping

John the Baptist should apparently be more rightly called John the Dipper (βαπτιστὴς) and despite the fact that baptism is supposed to be a once and for all affair I'm repeating (and indeed this is true for dipping too - I remember a woman insisting some time ago that double-dipping your tortilla or crudite is a major crimes!

Though Double-dipping might be frowned upon, it seems PREACHING about John the Baptist more than once is not the same. This Sunday I will be preahcing for the THIRD time in five years on Advent 2 and for the FOURTH time on John the Baptist.

When I first saw this on the rota I remembered how much trouble I had LAST time trying to come up with something new so I was a bit disheartened. My dad said I should use 'number one' or the best of the three again and see if anyone notices. I'm not sure which would be worse - being caught repeating a sermon or no-one noticing that I was!


In fact, my solution has been to preach on a slightly different part of the text. You'll have to wait and see when I pop it up on Monday. It's one thing for someone to catch me repeating a sermon from a year back but to read it on here then have to listen to it on Sunday would be a bit much!

I had a great plan to blog the different John the Baptist sermons. Unfortunately... I can't find them!! Not a great loss I suppose as I really don't tend to re-use sermons. I prefer to say somehting aimed rather specifically at who I'm preaching to but then, I've been in the same place for five years and I suppose this might change when I move on. You never know!

Interesting reflection on whole John the Dipper (βαπτιστὴς) thing. John says he will dip/dunk us in water but the one who comes after will do so with the spirit. Drenching/dunking/dipping someone with the spirit does just have more power as an image than the wordy baptising in the Holy Spirit.