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When John the Baptist heard in prison of the works of the Christ,
he sent his disciples to Jesus with this question,
“Are you the one who is to come,
or should we look for another?”
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| A modern icon of John the Baptist. |
This seems a bit of a lapse, since John is supposed to be the greatest of the prophets. He also ought to know Jesus fairly well; Jesus is his cousin. John seemed to understand who he was well enough when cuz appeared for baptism: he balked, saying “It is I who need baptism from you.” And, had he not already known, he then heard a voice from heaven declare “This is my son, the beloved. My favour rests on him.” Ought to have been a clue.
And that is all in the same gospel—not a question of two eyewitnesses having two different stories. The contradiction must have been apparent to the gospel writer.
Which suggests it is an important clue.
It really forces us to an alternate interpretation: John knows perfectly well who Jesus is, but he cannot say so. What he is doing here is handing off his disciples to Jesus. John cannot tell them directly; Jesus must.
Why can't he simply say it to them: that Jesus is the “one who is to come,” the Messiah?
Because, perhaps, it is out of character. It violates his prophetic mission, which is a call to repentance.
We noted last week that John had the look and feel of a comic character: he is the sad-faced clown, the little tramp, the same character played by Charlie Chaplin, or Emmet Kelly; with an element of the choler of John Cleese, W.C. Fields, or Donald Duck. If you were casting the gospel for Sesame Street, John would have to be Oscar the Grouch.
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| Emmett Kelly in the role of John the Baptist. |
There are two masks of classic drama, the smiling mask and the frowning one. John is the sad mask of heaven. This is commonly shown by making him like a photographic negative of Jesus—Jesus fair, John dark.
Comic characters must show no character development. They are humours: that is, extreme personality types, like automatons, predictable and incapable of change. We know Falstaff will never grow up; WC. Fields will never sober up; Shylock will never soften up. When they do change—a common fault of incompetent Hollywood sequels—all humour is gone, and only melodrama is left. But so long as the cartoonishly extreme character is preserved, so extreme it can generally be described in one word, there is a spark, it is funny—so much so that we use “humorous” and “funny” as synonyms.
John is this type of character. This is not to say that John the Baptist is a fictional character. So long as God is in control, so long as we submit ourselves to his control, all life and all history is art. Art, conversely, is prophecy. To the extent that John the Baptist is a true prophet, he is playing a specific role in the divine comedy, and as a great prophet, he plays his role to the letter. His message of repentance would be fatally damaged, in dramatic terms, and in rhetorical terms, by any hint of “Rejoice!”
That must be left to his cousin. It is not for John to proclaim the good news, any more than it was for Moses the lawman to enter the Promised Land, or for Jerry Colonna to play the romantic lead. His turn ends the moment the next performer, Jesus, tumbles into the ring.
This progression from the dark andforbidding to the light is not unique to Christianity: it is the spiritual path. The “Dark Night of the Soul,” the turning away from the sensory and social world, in spirit if not in literal terms, is necessary to see the true light of the spirit, the light that shines in the darkness. That is John's message. If he were to say, in the middle of it, “look, I see a great light,” his message ouwld be lost, and his followers would suppose he meant the mundane light of day.
In a similar way, Buddhist temples always have fierce-looking door guardians; you must be frightened a fair bit before you reach the inner sanctum. St. Joseph's Oratory, in Montreal, like many other pilgrimage sites, must be approached by climbing a mountain—often barefoot, or on your knees. You are, in entering, dramatically and painfully withdrawing from the world below.
John's disciples, therefore, represent ourselves, as spiritual pilgrims and as Bible readers. We turn then, in our thoughts, to Jesus, and ask the question they must ask.
Jesus, in turn, perhaps frustratingly, does not answer. Instead of a simple “yes,” he says:
“Go and tell John what you hear and see:
the blind regain their sight,
the lame walk,
lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear,
the dead are raised,
and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.
And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”
Why can't he speak plainly? Why does he send us back to John? Is he trying to confuse us?
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| "I baptise with gin; but another comes after me..." |
But imagine if Jesus had simply said, “Yes, I am your man.” How convincing would that be? Any lunatic, or any con man, any Pharisee, could say the same. As a matter of fact, the essence of John's message, as seen in last week's gospel, is that those who put themselves forward as religious leaders, unless this involves some significant personal sacrifice, are almost certainly hypocrites. The truly religious puts himself last, not first. John therefore adds that, to determine whether a religious leader is legitimate, one must look at his fruits.
Jesus, speaking to disciples of John, answers in exactly these terms. He does not require or enforce obedience, as a leader does; only asks that one not “take offense.” He does not recruit them as followers, expressly sending them back to John. He does not make any claims about himself; instead, he points to the clear fruits of the spirit he produces.
Jesus must reply in these terms, for our benefit as well as for the benefit of the followers of the Baptist, and then go on to praise John as the greatest of men, because, his message of good news being starkly in contrast to John's message of repentance, it would be too e asy otherwise for listeners and readers to suppose that the good news can be got without the repentance.
So, he goes on to say that
among those born of women
there has been none greater than John the Baptist;
So long as we are born of woman, and so begin from within this social and sensual world, we cannot pass beyond it to the light without following John's way explicitly and completely. But once we do, Jesus is able to offer the true happy, comic, ending: the kingdom of heaven.
What is John's way? Jesus summarizes: no bending like a reed to every wind. No chasing after fine appearances, royal authority, or the physical comforts of palaces. Follow the spirit of prophecy instead.
Jesus's answer also models how God works in our lives; and the parable of Jesus and John illustrates why. How many times have we prayed, even in desperation, and heard nothing?
But God will not reveal himself directly and immediately. He will not generally come with thunderbolts, or descend from parting clouds into our garden. He will not, ultimately, because we do not want him to, and he respects us as individuals. All of us have free will—it is God's will that we have free will—and all of us have sinned, and we own that sin. Like Adam and Eve, faced with any truth or light, large or small, our instinct is to run away and hide. So Jesus holds back, and leaves us with John and repentance first, and only half-reveals himself, in riddles, playing a game of hide-and-seek, and waits for us to take the cue, which we will, when we are ready. Until then, we may well find ourselves circling back to John indefinitely.
Or perhaps forever. Perhaps that's hell--something we choose for ourselves rather than ever admit we were wrong, or are not God ourselves.
Hence the need to respond to grace.
This necessary progress of God's revelation of himself is apparent, too, in salvation history: revelation is step-by-step, through the covenant with Noah, the covenant with Abraham, then Moses and the Law, then the prophets, to Jesus and the New Covenant, then the Paraclete, then the New Jerusalem. Not all at once with a bang; each unfolds from the other, in context.
So too, we should not expect the Bible to always speak plainly, and insist on only the literal interpretation. It must have layers, like an onion. It is full of parables, and says so.
A word on miracles: in this passage, Jesus stresses then as something important. And they are important, but not at all in the way commonly thought. Miracles, counter to a lot of folks' reading of David Hume, are of no particular value for proving the existence of God. It is no argument against God's existence to say, as ignorant atheists often do, “we do not need God to explain the universe any longer; science can.” They have it backwards. The existence of definite, predictable, and humanly comprehensible laws of nature is the best proof of God's existence. They show a rational plan and hence an intelligence behind the universe. Their occasional suspension in a miracle neither adds nor subtracts from that essential insight.
Nor are miracles—miracles of healing, the blind seeing, the lame walking, the deaf hearing, the dead rising—of any particular value to those healed. We are better off turning away, after all, from the sensory world, and God, loving us, has already prepared our lives and our life experiences to be just what the world needs. Just as he has also done with the laws of nature.
No, the point of miracles is something else. They work just like these funny inconsistencies we keep finding in the gospel. Because they are by definition unexpected, uncanny things, God can use them as signs, to get our attention and to direct it at something. Miracles tell us that this action or that doctrine or that person is someone or something we should pay attention to; they are signposts lighting the path for us up the mountain. When God parted the Red Sea, it was a sign for the Hebrews that Moses was right, that this was the path they should take. When he sent plagues on the Egyptians, it was a sign to them that their policy towards the Hebrews was wrong. When he send miracles for Joan of Arc, it was a call to rally behind her in the same way. When he sends miracles in the name of some saint, he is advising us that their life example is worthy of study and emulation.
We should all be attentive for miracles, little miracles, in our daily lives.
By their fruits ye shall know them.
When John the Baptist heard in prison of the works of the Christ,
he sent his disciples to Jesus with this question,
“Are you the one who is to come,
or should we look for another?”
Jesus said to them in reply,
“Go and tell John what you hear and see:
the blind regain their sight,
the lame walk,
lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear,
the dead are raised,
and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.
And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”
As they were going off,
Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John,
“What did you go out to the desert to see?
A reed swayed by the wind?
Then what did you go out to see?
Someone dressed in fine clothing?
Those who wear fine clothing are in royal palaces.
Then why did you go out? To see a prophet?
Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.
This is the one about whom it is written:
Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you;
he will prepare your way before you.
Amen, I say to you,
among those born of women
there has been none greater than John the Baptist;
yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
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