So there sat John the Baptist in prison. The Empire struck back, one could say. King Herod’s wife, Herodias also the wife of Herod’s
brother, did not like this prophet of God meddling in her morality. So she got Herod to arrest him. He was not under a death sentence, but the
likelihood of his getting out was nil unless the Messiah should get things
rolling, which meant, Cousin Jesus, if he is the Messiah, needed to get on with
it.
But, I think that to John, Jesus was a bit of an
enigma. He didn’t live up to the
Messianic expectations of the day.
Faithful Jews were expecting an overthrow of their Roman occupiers and a
clean up of their corrupted royals and temple authorities. But Jesus of Nazareth, he wasn’t exactly the
likes of his Hebrew namesake Joshua who led the people across the Jordan River to
a conquest of Canaan’s Land. Sure,
crowds were flocking to Jesus, but he was more of a circus sideshow than a “Messiah”
– a Deliverer. He healed people, had
some great debates with the religious authorities, cast out demons, pronounced
forgiveness of sins...and he kept company with all the wrong people (whores,
revenuers, and fishermen). To the powers
that be he was more a sought after source of entertainment than the harbinger
of the Kingdom of God. Though the size
of the crowds could be concerning.
So, John sent some of his disciples to put the
question to Jesus, “Are you the One, the Messiah who is coming, or should we
wait for another?” Jesus told them to go
back and tell John exactly what they were hearing and seeing. Then, and just to make sure they got it
right, Jesus gave them a list of things that he was doing that the prophets of
old and particularly the Prophet Isaiah foretold that the Messiah would do. Yet not only the Messiah’s doings, but things
God himself would do when he himself came to deliver his people; acts that were
a reversal of the universal maladies caused by sin, a healing of more than just
Israelite national and religious problems.
These were the healings of the very signs that something had gone deadly
wrong in God’s good creation.
What did these disciples of John hear? I imagine they were hearing the sound of
people praising God with great joy, a sound so loud that it seemed to be the
voice of all creation resounding in victory at the arrival of its Saviour; rejoicing
that the glory of God had returned to the Land of Israel. It was like the wanton wasteland of the dry
wilderness of humanity becoming lush, breaking forth and blossoming like the
dry riverbeds in the Palestinian wilderness coming into blossom in spring just
after the end-of-winter flooding. (I’ve
seen that and it’s beautiful.) If you
have ever heard Middle Eastern people when worship comes on them, you know what
I mean. It is emotional, loud, and
powerfully joyful.
So, if that’s what John’s disciples heard, what did
they see? What could have caused all
that loud praising? Jesus doing what God
said he himself would do when he himself came to deliver not only his people
but also and more so all of creation from oppression by sin and death. Weak hands were strengthening. Shaking knees were steadying. Jesus was opening the eyes of the blind and
unstopping the ears of the deaf. He was
making the lame to leap like dear and loosing the tongues of the mute so they
could praise. He was cleansing the
lepers and even raising the dead. Jesus
was sending out his own disciples ahead of him who did these things also as if
to make a highway in the desert so that God’s people could come to him. Joy and gladness was overtaking those people. Sorrow and sighing was fleeing. John’s disciples were seeing and hearing
Isaiah 35 manifesting all around Jesus everywhere he went. What better news could there be for the poor
in the land than these signs of “Immanuel” – God is with us!?
Jesus told John’s disciples to go report what they
hear and see and also sent them back with a little kick in the pants for
John. Tell John, “blessed is anyone who
takes no offense at me.” If I had to
paraphrase that, it would be, “John, I am who I am and I will do as I am. I am God and you are not. I may not be doing what you think ‘God’ ought
to do. But I am ‘God with you’. Keep being faithful, John.”
When I try to imagine what it was like back then I
find myself quite challenged. The
“Church” today is transitioning into something different than what it has been.
We used to be a, if not the,
foundational institution. Now we are not
necessary to the public good anymore at least not in the eyes of the public. We’re not the Mainline church anymore. We are the Sideline church.[1] In this time of transition I, like John the
Baptist, would like to know what Jesus is up to. I feel like I’m blind to seeing what Jesus is
doing. I feel deaf to his voice and
powerless to leap. Churches are dying; I
want to see them raised to new life. Where is Jesus in all this? Where’s the Holy Spirit? What’s God up to? God is with us. This is all part of his plan. But what is he up to? Where are we going?
The position the church finds itself in now in our culture
is very much like what it was in the first century? So we must ask, why did the early church
spread so far and wide and not get snuffed out? Well, they were Resurrection people. They unquestionably knew that the God and
Father of the Lord Jesus Christ had in the power of the Holy Spirit raised
Jesus from the dead. They knew this
because God the Father had poured that same Holy Spirit upon (into) them and bonded
them to Jesus and changed them, raised them to new life – an actual new
humanity which they called “in Christ”. They
faithfully lived as New Creation in the midst of the Old empowered by the Holy
Spirit. Their way of life was marked by
the way of the cross. Their fellowship
was (and this is attested to by non-Christian 1st and 2nd
Century historians) distinguished as being filled with compassion, peaceful,
and just.
The Apostle Paul summed it up when he said, “I have
been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ
who lives in me. And the life I now live
in the flesh, I live by (in) the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me
and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:19-20).
What the people in the crowds experienced as physically restored sight,
hearing, and abilities, the early Christians experienced as new life “in Christ”
and they worshipped and they did this in the midst of a culture that was
contrary to them and that often persecuted them.
Paul also said in Philippians, “My goal is to know
him (Jesus) and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his
sufferings, being conformed to his death” (Phil. 3:10). He didn’t say, “I just want to be a good
person, and have my private beliefs, and hope for heaven when I die if
anything.” He desired personal
transformation that was in accordance with a cross-based way of
faithfulness. This hunger for personal
transformation in Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit is where we need to be
right now in this transforming transition.
“Jesus, teach me who you are?” That needs to be our first prayer in the morning. To hunger for knowing who Jesus is the beginning of seeing, of hearing, of leaping, of becoming clean, and indeed being raised from the dead. Jesus, teach me/teach us, who you are. Amen.
“Jesus, teach me who you are?” That needs to be our first prayer in the morning. To hunger for knowing who Jesus is the beginning of seeing, of hearing, of leaping, of becoming clean, and indeed being raised from the dead. Jesus, teach me/teach us, who you are. Amen.
