Is it possible that the point of this text is that John was waiting for the wrong kind of Messiah?
Gospel Reading: Matthew 11:2-11
For Sunday, Dec. 12, 2010: Year A - Advent 3
John the Baptist is the anti-Christ. Or the Bizzaro-Christ. Put less hyperbolically, Jesus is not the one that John was waiting for. Maybe.
Imagining Jesus
My co-pastor at House of Mercy, Debbie Blue, preached a great sermon on last week’s Advent lectionary encounter with John, where she said (more artfully than I will here), that John the Baptist has spent his life proclaiming himself hoarse about looking forward to one that is more powerful than he. Power being the key here.
Jesus, however, is just not wielding the power the way John looking for, longing for, hoping for. John is imagining a rebel leader that breathes fire (and maybe a little brimstone), unquenchable fire.
Taken Aback
John is taken aback at his first encounter with this Messiah. Jesus comes to John to be baptized and John is so...what? Embarrassed? Confused? He is talking to Jesus out of the corner of his mouth, hoping the crowds won’t notice, “Get out of the water! This is not what I told the people would be happening! Where is the fire? I thought you were bringing fire!”
Jesus doesn’t seem to care that submitting to a baptism of repentance by John doesn’t fit with the story John’s been proclaiming. It doesn’t make him look very, well, powerful. And then Jesus just leaves. Sure he is taken away by the Spirit, but maybe John was thinking he would get to come along too.
Never Invited
I always wondered why John was not one of Jesus’ disciples. He seems like he would be the number one candidate. In the past I always put it on John, like he wanted to keep his gig going, but now it seems clear that he was never invited.
Of course things might have turned out differently if John hadn’t gotten arrested for taking on Herod. Did he take on Herod, because Jesus didn’t? He probably thought that was the logical first step in the revolution and Jesus was just wondering around healing people and worse yet teaching. Where was the inciting? The rallying? The storming of the gates?
So, when John sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he is the one they have been waiting for it is because he has serious doubts, he is going to lose his head he mistook Jesus for Messiah. Jesus answers them, “Go tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed…and blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Is that last part directed at John the Baptist?
The Hardest Question
When his disciples return and report what Jesus told them, does John the Baptist conclude that Jesus is not the one he was waiting for? Is it possible that the point of this text is that John was waiting for the wrong kind of Messiah?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.
