FINDINGS II

Advent III - A - December 12, 2010

Matthew 11: 2-11

Matthew 11: 2-11   

When John heard while in prison what the anointed one was doing, he sent word by his followers and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus sent this reply: "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are made approachable, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news brought to them, and happy like the gods are those who take no offense in me." As [the Baptizer's followers] were leaving, Jesus started to speak to the crowds about John, thus: "What did you go out in that wilderness to see anyway? A reed shaken by the wind? What really did you go out there to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? See: those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. So what did you go out there to see? A prophet? Well, yes! And more even than a prophet. It is the one of whom it is written: "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you." In truth I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist, yet the least under the rule of heaven is greater than he."  (Translated and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook)

RUBRIC

Our Advent time with John the Baptizer is extended as the lectionary skips to the eleventh chapter of Matthew and to Q material shared to some degree by Luke. Matthew locates John in prison where the latter has heard about the "deeds of the Christ" (erga tou christou). Not "works of Jesus" but "works of the Christ." That renders the Baptizer's query (borne on the lips of his own coterie) irrelevant.

Even though John, Jesus' supposed contemporary, was uncertain if Jesus was "the One," plenty of people since that time have believed that he was. And plenty more have believed that he was not. A Gnostic sect known as the Mandeans, which practiced baptism, regarded the Baptizer as messiah. The messianic quibble has been often at the heart of Jewish-Christian conflict, though, save for the most orthodox of Jewish sects and their counterparts in ultra-fundamentalist pre-millennial dispensationalism, that conflict is a matter of history rather than current events.

WORKSHOP

It is possible that Matthew 11: 2-11 represents a late first century C.E. effort which in a way we may call "ecumenical" in that it depicts one charismatic figure asking after another in a way that was, while curious and guarded, not unrespectful. J. Dominic Crossan has observed that Jesus and John came to public attention in the first third of the first century C.E. in response to the urbanization of the Galilee with its accompanying economic dislocation among the peasant class. Their approaches were different, however. John looked out at the world and thought it doomed beyond redemption and so called people to "repentance" (a changing of the mind) to make ready for its end. Jesus, at least as appreciated by Luke, offered the idea that that human beings had within them what it took to deal with the world ("the rule of God is amongst you"). The ethic based on a culture of forgiveness ("forgive 70 times seven") and, no doubt based on the wisdom of Hillel the Elder ("what you hate do not do to another") was that "rule."

The question to which the Baptizer's people wanted an answer was, "Are you the One?" Matthew depicts Jesus as deflecting the question. Matthew does not have him claim to be "the coming one," but has him, instead, talking about what he had been up to as evidence of his intentions and identity. "The deeds of the Christ" about which the imprisoned Baptizer had heard were the goods. So: "Go and tell John what you see and hear." Then comes the catalog of the works: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are reclaimed for society, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and the poor have good news brought to them. Matthew, who never missed an opportunity to insert a fulfillment clause, might well have footnoted Isaiah 35:5-6 and 61:1-2. A line from the Q document ends this section: "Happy like the gods are those who take no offense in me." "Offense" is the Greek "skandalisthā" from "skandalon," i.e. that which, when touched, springs a trap and changes things for the worse.

In first century terms, this may be Matthew coaxing members of the Baptizer's posthumous following to sign on with emergent Jesus Judaism. Perhaps the Baptizer's followers found Jesus' way too accommodationist. But don't let that trip you up and trap you, is the plea. Post-70 C.E. Jews of whatever stripe did not need to be divided and thereby conquered.

Thus in a passage from the Q document, the subject turns to an exaltation of John. Jesus is made to ask who it is the crowds thought who they were seeing when they saw John. The Greek there is "theasasthai," whence our English word "theater." Appropriate because the reference was to the setting and costume in which the crowds would have found not one in royal garb but, as Matthew first described him at 3:4, one in clothing made of camel's hair. He was on no account a reed shaking in the wind, but a man of staunch principle, not a weather vane. To John the Jesus of Q applies the prophecy of Malachi 3:1, viz. that John was the one who would prepare the way for the One who was coming.

That leaves John still in a position subordinate to Jesus, but that seemed to have been the position taken by the late first century C.E. emerging Jesus movement. It had chosen to follow Jesus rather than John, but it found it neither desirable nor maybe even possible to make the Baptizer a non-person. So the text cements John's place by putting on Jesus' lips these words: "In truth I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist." Not content to leave it there, the text goes on to observe that, nevertheless, "the least under the rule of heaven is greater than he." What that may have meant was that the Baptizer, long dead, did not live to see the emergence of the movement of which he had originally been one of the instigators and that, unlike his Nazarene counterpart, he was not celebrated as having survived death. Or the text is merely a put-down of a figure with a threatening posthumous following thought by Jesus Jews to be endemic to their movement.

HOMILETIC COMMENTARY

Whatever to do with this text as basis for a homily or a class discussion? Beyond the tangled skeins of history intermixed with revisionism one can glimpse what may have been conditions among members of Jesus Judaism communities in the last third of the first century C.E., viz. still trying to decide which of their early leaders (John or Jesus) had been right about the communities' correct approach to the world outside of themselves. Was the world ending and therefore should their constituencies take the Kool-Aid up a mountain and get ready to swallow? Or was the world to be the arena for working out the ethic of Jesus in the process of which, with the turned cheek, the second mile, the loving of enemy and the dependable culture of forgiveness at the fore, a messianic kind of shalom would descend upon an otherwise conflict-riven society?

Depending on the homilist's orientation or the class leader's or the students' predilections, it will be possible to choose up sides: John or Jesus?

In any event, those seriously considering this passage should note that the "works of Christ" include bringing good news to the poor. That is right up there with the usual healing of the leper and the deaf. For the courageous homilist, the text at hand might be the basis for a sermon that cites facts and names names in the war being waged by the haves against the have-nots in the United States and around the world. Bloody enough!