Third Sunday of Advent, Year A
I could be wrong, but I see more than doubt and despair in the message John the Baptist sent Jesus from prison.
I see anger. White-hot, sarcastic, malicious anger.
I think John wanted his message to sting Jesus the way John’s “brood of vipers” insult had stung the Pharisees and Sadducees back in Matthew 3 (and everyone back in Luke 3). John had warned everyone that the Messiah would wreak fiery judgment upon all who failed to repent. The Messiah’s coming, John had cried, would leave the landscape stubbled with the trunks of the sinful and the air thick with the smoke of their destruction. The preciously few righteous would be gathered and stored safely in the barn, and John, I think, had expected to be first through the door.
But there John sat, locked away in Herod’s prison for having dared to call out Herod’s sins, while the man he had dubbed “Messiah” was dithering in Galilee, far – too far, in John’s estimation – from the Jerusalem power centers John had expected his cousin to attack. Like the rest of Jesus’ family (see Mark 3, Matthew 12, and Luke 8), John had concluded that Jesus had gone off script and maybe off the rails, and someone ought to do something about it.
Never one to self-censor when he thought the powerful needed to hear some hard truth, John sent his disciples with a public ultimatum for Jesus: Start acting like the Messiah, or get off the stage.
But Jesus reacts to John’s insolence in a way characteristically uncharacteristic of the Messiah John had foreseen. John has gone over to the side of the chaff and the fruitless trees. By rights, he should burn along with them. But Jesus does what he would later do with the post-denials Peter: He offers John a way back.
“Go and tell John,” Jesus says – and I picture him saying this before a crowd, as loudly and publicly as John’s disciples had delivered John’s ultimatum – “what you hear and see: The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”
Jesus is echoing words from the prophet Isaiah 35 that describe the Messiah’s coming, and in tones considerably less foreboding than John’s. If he isn’t quite the kind of Messiah John wants, Jesus seems to be saying, maybe John wants the wrong kind of Messiah.
Then Jesus, having reminded everyone who he is, sets out to remind John who John is.
“And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me,” Jesus says. John’s disciples turn to go. As they are leaving, Jesus asks those in the crowd what had drawn them to John’s wilderness. Not the scenery, not a spectacle, not even a hot-looking celebrity, but rather a prophet – and not just any prophet, but the prophet, the second Elijah that Malachi had foretold (Mal. 3:1), the greatest man ever born.
“Whoever has ears, let them hear,” Jesus concludes. I think he is speaking particularly to the ears of John’s departing disciples and, by proxy, to John himself.
As the Messiah we want, particularly when facing a crisis like the one John was facing, when evil seems poised, for the millionth time, to lop the head clean off of what is good and right, Jesus can seem like a disappointment at best. What good is a Messiah who dithers in Galilee, finally makes his way to Jerusalem, then just gives up, dies, and disappears? Maybe he was just a nut, or even a fraud. And if he was, what does that make us, his followers? Aren’t there better messiahs to be found, ones more capable of protecting us and putting the hurt on our enemies? If this one isn’t going to get the job done, maybe we should ditch him and look for one who will. Maybe we are fakers and fools if we don’t.
The problem with butt-kicking messiahs, though, is that they just might kick yours if you ever dare speak to them the way John spoke to Jesus. We don’t know, of course, what John thought about Jesus’ reply, or even whether he still had a head to think with by the time the message arrived. What we do know is what we hear and see in this passage. We hear and see Jesus – the only true Messiah we get, and the only one we truly need – knowing and forgiving the limits of John’s faith. I think it’s reasonable to hope Jesus knows and forgives ours, too.
