Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?
This question of St. John the Baptist is a very good one for us to pose as we prepare to celebrate Christmas. If Jesus is not the one - if he is not the promised Messiah of Israel - indeed if he is less than God Incarnate - then we should cancel Christmas, close the monastery, and give up coming to Mass.
Coming from St. John the Baptist in prison, the question seems quite puzzling. How could it be possible for the Baptist to have any doubts about who Jesus is? John is the most important of all the witnesses to Jesus. We know from St. Luke that John the Baptist acknowledged the identity of Jesus even from his mother’s womb. They were cousins, and must have known each other well: surely to a greater or lesser extent they grew up together? Then again, St. Matthew’s Gospel makes perfectly clear that John knows who Jesus is. When Jesus comes to him for baptism, John says: I should be baptized by you, and do you come to me? (Mt 3:14) And if that weren’t enough, he then witnesses the descent of the Spirit like a dove, and he hears the voice of the Father: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (3:17). As for the 4th Gospel: St. John the Baptist has a place even in its sublime opening words. There was a man sent by God whose name was John. He came in order to bear witness... so that all might believe through him.
But then, a bit later on in the 4th Gospel, we read similarly perplexing words, and these seem to corroborate the perplexing question from prison we read just now. Having already decisively pointed out Jesus as the Lamb of God (1:29), John the Baptist twice says: I myself did not know him (Jn 1:30,33). How so?
Surely it’s because his study of Old Testament prophecy led John to expect a cataclysmic intervention of God through Jesus. Speaking of Jesus the Messiah in Matthew Chapter 3, John says: His winnowing fan is in his hand, he will clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn in a fire that will never go out (3:12). In other words: once he has manifested himself, the world as we know it will be at an end. The whole earth will be renewed; in Israel, and among the whole human race, the good will be separated from the evil. The virtuous and godly will be rewarded, and the wicked sent to punishment. As for suffering and sorrow: they will flee far away (Is 35:10).
Actually that’s all true. It will happen. But not yet. So yes: all the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah are most certainly and truly fulfilled in Jesus. John is right about all that. Jesus absolutely does not in any way fall short of prophetic expectations. Rather, the prophecies themselves fall short. What God has done through Jesus so far surpasses what could ever have been imagined beforehand, that it baffles even a great prophet like John. No wonder sometimes we ourselves can feel a bit baffled! As not just the Messiah, then, but as God Incarnate, Jesus both reveals and communicates God to the fallen human race: God’s life and God’s love; God’s presence, God’s holiness, God’s goodness, God’s self-outpouring, in a previously unheard-of way. How does he do that? In power, yes of course: power to heal, power to raise up, power to give life, power to forgive. Power to move hearts, power to convince. But Jesus will not solve the problems of the world by waving a magic wand. No: what he does is far far better, more wonderful than that. But its mystery is very deep. For the whole mission of Jesus – astonishingly - is marked by humility; and it’s fulfilled above all through his Cross. There we see God’s answer to the problem of evil, and of sin. There we see God’s response to the problem of our alienation from Him, and from one another. There above all we see God’s love - or we might say, the Heart of God – revealed, communicated, poured out. There above all is manifested the mystery of Christ, which the Baptist with his Old Testament eyes had not yet understood. Blessed is the one, says Jesus, who is not scandalised in me. So precisely this mystery is what at Christmas time we must reflect on, contemplate, marvel at, rejoice in, try to enter.
John in his prison has to understand that, for now, Jesus will not abolish evil. The world will carry on much as before. Herod, Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas remain in charge. The Temple in Jerusalem remains full of corruption and un-holiness, and will soon be utterly overthrown. The wilderness remains barren and dry. Wolves and lions still prey on lambs; snakes still have poisonous bites; there is still sickness and injustice and poverty and death. But John does receive a message of comfort. Tell John what you see and hear. Not a manifesto, not an excuse, but objective reality. It’s the same for us. We believe in Jesus because of what we have seen and heard: what he has done; what he has said; what the witnesses say of him; how the witnesses have been prepared to lay down their lives in testimony; how faithful disciples of Jesus have manifested divine holiness goodness and love in the midst of our world. Of course the most important thing that we have seen and heard is that Jesus died for our sins, and then 3 days later he rose again, for our justification (cf. Rm 4:25).
Surely we are sometimes driven to ask why Jesus does not intervene more obviously to put an end to the troubles we endure. But we’ve to be careful here not to stray too close to the words of the blaspheming thief on Good Friday: If you are the Christ, save yourself and us! (Lk 23:39). Better to ask with the Baptist, let it be in bewilderment, or anguish, but also in humility: Are you really the one? And then to receive his consoling response. Yes, I’m the one. I’ve come, fear not, to save. I came into the world, sent by God the Father, and I communicate to you the Holy Spirit. I do intervene and work miracles, at will, so always feel free to ask. But my work of redemption was to be with you where you are, in order to draw you to be with me where I am. Out of sheer unmerited love I came to offer you a share in the divine life, in my own Sonship, in my own eternity. And your way to that is through sharing in my sufferings, in my humility, in my humanity. Now it’s for you to carry on my work. You have to bear my life on this earth, amid all its woes, and you have to bear witness to me. For in a way denied to John the Baptist, you have been washed clean in my saving blood, and through my glorious resurrection have already received eternal life. So please understand that even now you, although the very least in the Kingdom of heaven, are nevertheless greater than he, though he was the greatest of all the prophets (Mt 11:11).