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So, there sat John the Baptist in prison. The Empire struck back, one could say. King Herod’s wife, Herodias, who was also the wife of Herod’s brother, did not like this hermit prophet of Gawd 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 got things rolling, which meant, Cousin Jesus, if he is the Messiah, needed to get on with it…and what would the “it” be? The Kingdom of God – “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven”. But Jesus seemed to be up to something else.
I think that to John, Jesus was probably 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 cleanup of their corrupted royals and the Jerusalem temple authorities and their big business religion. 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. Jesus wasn’t arming up to take over. Instead, crowds were flocking to Jesus, but he was more of a circus sideshow than a “Messiah” – a Deliverer. He healed people, cast out demons, raised the dead, even calmed a stormy Sea of Galilee. He had some great “debates” with the religious authorities and to their chagrin pronounced forgiveness of sins...and he kept company with all the wrong people (whores, revenuers, and fishermen). To those powers that be (the royals) he was more of a sought after source of entertainment than the harbinger of the Kingdom of God that would unseat them. The Romans hardly paid him any attention. Although, a centurion did once solicit Jesus’ to heal his dying son. He didn’t feel that Jesus needed to come to his house to do it, only just speak the word and it would be done akin to how this centurion gave orders. Jesus did just that and said that he’d never seen such great faith in Israel. The enemy having greater faith than the people you’re supposed to deliver? And Jesus even taught to pray for your enemies and if forced to carry a Roman soldier’s stuff, carry it the extra mile. He was no threat to the Romans, but the size of the crowds could be concerning. Everywhere Jesus went through the things he said and did great things happened, but was it the Kingdom of God?
So, in his impatience 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, they were not only the Messiah’s doings, but things God himself said he 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. There’s drums and dancing and people loudly shrieking “halalalalala”.
So, if that’s what John’s disciples heard, what did they see? What could have caused all that loud praising? Well, Jesus doing what God said he himself would do when he himself came to deliver not only his people but also and more so the whole 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 deer and loosing the tongues of the mute so they could praise. He was cleansing the lepers and even raising the dead. And what’s more, Jesus was also sending out his own disciples ahead of him and they did these things too as if to make a highway in the desert so that God’s people could come to him. Joy and gladness were overtaking God’s people. Sorrow and sighing were 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!? “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” That’s what they were hearing and seeing.
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. Don’t stop believing.”
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 in our culture. But now we are not necessary to the public good anymore, at least not in the eyes of the public. To quote somebody, I don’t know who – “We’re not the Mainline church anymore. We are the Sideline church.” 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? Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”
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 life-glued them to Jesus and changed them, indeed raised them to new life. They thought of themselves as an actual new humanity which they called “in Christ” as opposed to the old humanity they called “in Adam”. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, they faithfully lived as New Creation in the midst of the Old. Their way of life was marked by the way of the cross – unconditional, selfless, sacrificial love. 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”. These early Christians worshipped together and served their communities together as living witnesses and testimony to the fact that the Kingdom of God was breaking in on earth. They did this in a culture that was contrary to them and 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-formed way of faithfulness.
This hunger for personal transformation in Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit is where we, the church, need to be right now in this transforming transition. This hunger is at the heart of what it means to pray, “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The Kingdom of God is not that Middle Ages crusading against other religions that we did. It is not a Kingdom or nation ruled by the Church as we try to do. It is not a liberal social/political agenda to eliminate poverty, educate everybody, and provide healthcare to everyone (though I’m partial to that). It’s not a voting block that seeks by any means necessary to instill moral and economic conservatism in a nation by ruling that nation. It is seeking to know Jesus who is with us in the presence of the Holy Spirit with the power to heal, to free, to make us leap and praise, and move us to love as he loves. Where he is, there is the kingdom. Pray for it. Amen.
