When John the Baptist heard in prison of the works of the Christ, he sent his disciples to Jesus with the question, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them. And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.” As they were going off, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John, “What did you go out to the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind? Then what did you go out to see? Someone dressed in fine clothing? Those who wear fine clothing are in royal palaces. Then why did you go out? To see a prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘Behold I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way before you.’ Amen, I say to you, among those born of women, there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” (Matthew 11.2-11)
While we may have hoped that the time we spent with John the Baptist last Sunday was a one and done, alas it was not. Again we find ourselves on this Third Sunday with this formidable and somewhat fearsome figure from the Judean wilderness who always guards the pathway to Christmas during this season of Advent. Like it or not, there is no getting around him, try as we might to duck around corners or take a shortcut. It has as little success as our efforts to sidestep the bully in the school hallway.
However, the John that we meet today is not the same wild-haired, robed in animal-skins prophet that we met last Sunday. In fact, he is a much more diminished figure on this Sunday, at least in some ways, since we first met him in Chapter 3 of Matthew’s gospel. At that meeting, he was the fire-and-brimstone preacher at the Jordan River commanding the crowds to repent and calling out the Pharisees for being a brood of vipers.
But here in Chapter 11 John is not the bold and brash figure with the booming voice that made people shake in their shoe soles. Much has happened in the meanwhile. In Chapter 4, the evangelist tells us that John was arrested by Herod, the ruler of Galilee for four decades, first appointed by Caesar Augustus. We will not hear the reasons for his arrest for another ten chapters until Matthew provides those details in Chapter 14, telling us how John ran afoul of Herod when he questioned the legality of Herod’s marriage to Herodias, a Medusa-like figure both conniving and vindictive who would not rest until she had his head on a platter.
So, now we find John in prison, no longer the preacher or the public figure he had been, although Herod was smart enough to be fearful of him. It would take a party with too much booze and braggadocio before Herod overcame his fears and did Herodias’s bidding. At this point, John is rotting in his prison cell, a man alone with his thoughts as he faces his imminent death.
These circumstances are important if we are to understand the passage that we have before us today, introduced to us by one simple sentence that reads, “When John the Baptist heard in prison of the works of the Christ, he sent his disciples to Jesus with the question, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?’”
At first glance, the question should strike us as somewhat odd since, after all, John had baptized Jesus in the Jordan after which a voice from the heavens had announced, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Adding to the confusion, Luke would have us believe that John was the cousin of Jesus and the evangelist John would have the Baptist say upon seeing Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God,” a clear acknowledgement of his specific role as savior.
But, as we have seen and will see again, the evangelists do not march in lock step, instead each one offering a storyline that better suits his purposes, in this way causing some discrepancies among the texts. Given that reality, we have to allow John’s question on its own merits without attempting to force it into the framework that the other evangelists provide.
In other words, here in Matthew’s text, John is genuinely unsure and unsettled about who Jesus is, particularly in regard to his part in God’s plan for the restoration of Judea. With a directness that we have come to know as part and parcel of John’s personality, he wants a straight answer. “Are you the one to come or are you not?”
For his part, Matthew assumes we understand that John’s words “the one to come” is a reference to the long-awaited Messiah that the people of Judah had been promised by the prophets of old. All things considered, it is a valid question, particularly given the news that had been circulating about the works of Jesus, the gossip even finding its way into Herod’s prison where John spends his last days.
We can understand John’s want for a clear answer. After all, he had spent his days on the banks of the Jordan warning the people that the time was short for them to get their houses in order before the arrival of the Messiah. Like any person on death row, John is looking back at his own life and wondering if he got it right or had he got it wrong.
Depending on the answer that he will get to his question, he will either be at peace, knowing his preaching was not in vain, or he will be disappointed if not disillusioned, realizing his prediction of the imminent coming of the Messiah was dead wrong. In other words, would his hopes for God’s fulfillment of his promises be proven true or would they be shown to be another pipe dream? John, a man confined to a prison cell with a death sentence hanging over his head, still has one hope left–the hope that he had not wasted his life on a fool’s errand.
It is important that we understand the gravity of the question because Matthew’s concern is not so much with John the Baptist who has long since been killed by Herod, but with the Christian believers of his own time who were very much alive, but also very much concerned with the same question. They may not have been in prison cells–although some were–but they faced the same uncertainties and the same doubts, wondering if putting their lives on the line for the one called Jesus of Nazareth was justifiable or was it fool’s gold.
Given that lived experience of the early believers at the end of the first century, we can appreciate the seriousness of the question that John posed to Jesus. Like John, they were left to wonder if their hopes were valid or were they not. Was he “the one who is to come” or was he just another wannabe Messiah in a long line of would-be pretenders?
As we see, Jesus answers the question, but probably not in the way that John had expected. “Go and tell John what you hear and see,” he says to those sent by John. “The blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.” These were, in fact, the things that Jesus had been doing, the things that the crowds “had heard and had seen.”
On the surface, one might think the answer would be sufficient to quell any lingering concerns about his identity, but we have to understand that the deeds that Jesus offered as proof were not those expected of the Messiah as commonly understood. The “one who is to come” was supposed to be a person of power, someone able to topple the control of Rome and restore the independence of Judea, returning the twelve tribes of Israel to their former glory. He was to be someone with military might and strong political alliances.
So, whereas John was looking for deeds of power, Jesus pointed to deeds of compassion. His answer offered a redefinition of who the Messiah was, positing the Messiah as someone whose compassion was his greatest attribute, not his might. In effect, we find Jesus replacing the assumed attributes of the Messiah–one with strength, political savvy, and great stature–with deeds not considered to be those of the Messiah–such as forgiveness, mercy, and healing of mind and body.
Given his answer to John’s question, an answer that flew in the face of expectations, we are left to wonder if John was able to adjust his thinking and realign his understanding of the Messiah with that of Jesus’ presentation. Regardless, we hear Jesus offer great praise of John, going so far as to say that “among those born of women, there has been none greater than John the Baptist.”
Why, we may wonder, is this particular passage given such a prominent place in this season of Advent, serving as one of the major stepping stones to the celebration of Christmas. There are several good reasons for its inclusion. For one, the question of the identity of Jesus is at the heart of the passage, a question that every Christian believer must wrestle with at some point.
Certainly, many, if not most, Jews could not accept the reinterpretation of the Messiah that Jesus offered by his words and by deeds. As a result, they soundly rejected him as “the one who is to come.” Not only did they reject Jesus, as his crucifixion showed, but they also rejected those who chose to follow the way of Jesus, rejection becoming part and parcel of the life of the disciple. That has little changed in the centuries since John’s question to Jesus.
Also, a major building block of the notion of the Messiah was the hope that the Most High God could and would be faithful to his promises, namely that his justice and his peace would return to the world, brought back by the long-awaited Savior. That same hope has stayed with the Christian community from the start, a hope for a better world because of “hearing and seeing” what Jesus had said and done while upon the earth.
As our experience has proven with uncanny continuity, our hopes are often frustrated and just as often not brought to fruition. When that happens, do we succumb to the disappointment and disillusionment that follow on the tail of our unfulfilled hopes? Or do we persist and persevere, holding tight to our hope that some day things will change even if that day is not today.
This season of Advent is fundamentally a time of expectation, our eyes focused on the coming of the God-Man into our world at a particular time and in a particular place in human history. We call that event the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, a birth that truly defied every expectation commonly held about the Messiah, requiring of believers a serious adjustment in our understanding of the ways of God.
However, our expectations about God do not begin and end with the celebration of Christmas. They stay with us each and every day, asking us to trust God to work all things for the good even when he doesn’t meet those expectations. In the end, it was the same situation that John the Baptist found himself in as he marked on the wall of his prison cell the number of days that had passed, his death drawing nearer with each passing day.
Could he continue to trust in God? That was the question behind the question. And it is the question we also will ask ourselves whenever and wherever our expectations about God require us to adjust our thinking, even as we hang on to the hope that Jesus, born in a barn in Bethlehem, naked and shivering in the cold with his comfort coming only from the straw put beside him, truly was “the one who is to come,” however unexpected the circumstances of his birth may have been.
–Jeremy Myers
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