Matthew 11:2-11
There is a lot of waiting going on right now. Children are waiting for a visit from Santa Claus and for the time to unwrap all those gifts that are piling up under the Christmas tree. Parents are waiting for packages ordered to arrive on time. Families are waiting for the days to arrive when they are all together again. Churches are waiting during the season of Advent, watching as one candle after another is lit, working their way gradually towards the story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. And the world is waiting for the return of Jesus to establish the reign of God on earth.
While waiting happens whether we like it or not, waiting patiently is not necessarily something that many people can do well. Being patient while we wait for something good to happen can seem impossible, too difficult for us to even imagine! And waiting patiently during the holidays can be particularly challenging, especially if a flight is delayed or canceled! Patience may be a virtue, but it is not one that we all possess in abundance.
But just imagine if we had to wait for 500 years for something to take place? What if the next family gathering was 500 years in the future, or even 500 days? Five hundred years is a long, long, long time! But that was how long it had been since the last of the Old Testament prophets had spoken a word from God. The Jews had been expecting the Messiah to come during all that time, had waited through the reigns of many kings, had waited during years of foreign domination and conquest, had waited and waited and waited, all that time praying, “God, please send the Messiah now!” Occasionally a leader would arise who seemed to possess some of the qualities that they expected the Messiah to have, such as during the Maccabean revolt during the period between our Old and New Testaments. But when they asked, “Are you the one?” the answer was inevitably, “No.”
But now we find ourselves in the early first century. A prophet of God named John had come to prepare the way for the Messiah, Jesus. He had preached a baptism of repentance and had baptized many people who came to him from Judea and Jerusalem. And he had, in fact, even baptized Jesus. John seemed to be convinced that Jesus was the Messiah early on. When he was preaching in the desert by the Jordan River, John had declared, “One who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.” (Matthew 3:11) And when John sees Jesus walking by, he tells his own disciples, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)
But now John seemed to express some doubt about the identity of Jesus. Mark Yurs writes, “John the Baptist … had the conviction. He had the clarity that told him Jesus was the real thing and second to none. Now he asks of this same Jesus, ‘Are you really the one we have been waiting for?’ What has happened?” Well, two things have changed that may have affected John’s thinking.
For one thing, John was in prison. Yurs writes, “Prison can put doubt into anybody’s heart. It is easy to believe in God in the bright sunshine when all is joyful and free, but let the iron doors of difficulty slam shut, and doubt is there in the darkness.” John was in prison, a political prisoner of Herod. In those days, prison was merely a temporary holding place for those waiting to be either exiled, exonerated, or executed. In John’s case, prison would lead to death by beheading. But for now, John was there waiting. And he began to rethink things. Was Jesus who John had believed he was?
Another factor may have been at work here. Perhaps Jesus wasn’t doing the things that John had been expecting him to do. John probably had some ideas about what the Messiah would be doing, ideas that Jesus’s disciples shared, ideas of an earthly ruler, a military leader, someone who would drive out the enemy (Rome) and sit on the throne of the kingdom of Israel. But Jesus was doing nothing like that. Instead, Jesus turned the question around. He told the messengers from John to go back and report what they had heard and seen: the blind were receiving sight, the lame were walking, the lepers were cured, the deaf could hear, the dead were being raised, and the poor had heard the good news preached to them. These things were the evidence that should convince John – and others – that Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah that they had been waiting for.
Jesus then went on to talk about John. He asked the people around him, “What did you go out into the desert to see?” Was it a reed shaken by the wind? Was it someone dressed in fine clothes? No, Jesus said, they had gone to see a prophet. So what did he mean by the reed? That may have been a reference to Herod Antipas, who had imprinted the symbol of a reed on some Roman coins. Perhaps Jesus was implying that Herod was merely a reed blown about by every wind that came from Rome, a puppet ruler in other words. And how about those dressed in fine clothes? That was likely a reference to the religious leaders and political elite, whose lifestyle was sustained at the expense of the poor. Jesus was pointing out, in a way, the subversive nature of John’s mission. And he was laying the groundwork for people to understand that he had come as the successor of John, whose mission would take the same direction.
And at the end of his exalting of John’s mission, Jesus made the statement that as great as John was, the least one in the kingdom of heaven would be greater than John. The least in the kingdom that Jesus had begun to usher in would be greater than this last of the prophets, John the Baptist. That is because they would be followers of Jesus, disciples, and believers in the gospel, the good news that was being preached even to the poor.
After centuries of waiting for the Messiah, John asked, “Are you the one?” Mark Yurs points out, “This question occurs to just about every person in the church, including the strongest Christian. Is Jesus the real thing? Is there anything to our religion? Has the church really gotten hold of something that matters, or is this business of Christmas and its Christ only a fanciful tale, charming, but ultimately worthless and powerless against forces that dampen hopes and deaden dreams?” Of course, we don’t go about asking this question openly; we don’t want to appear to have no faith. And yet, who among us has not questioned at some time or another? Are you the one? And Jesus answers us as he answered John, “Look at the evidence.”
What is the evidence that you see that proves that Jesus is who he says he is? What is the evidence in your own heart and life? How have you seen Jesus at work in our church? And has your faith in Jesus motivated you to do the things that Jesus did? And can you wait patiently until the day you see Jesus, either when he returns to this earth to establish God’s kingdom or when you arrive in heaven at the end of your earthly existence? With God’s help, you can.
