Third Sunday of Advent

Dominica III
Adventus A

15 December 2019

 St. John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come?”  On its face value I have some real struggles with this Gospel passage.  I’m intrigued by John’s question and on its face value it doesn’t make sense to me.  “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”  Did St. John the Baptist NOT know the answer?  The Precursor of the Lord…is unsure?  The last and the greatest of the prophets…doesn’t know?  The one who lept in his mother’s womb when Jesus was present in his own mother’s womb…is unsure?  The zealous prophet dressed like Elijah, who endured the harsh desert and ate locusts and honey, he doesn’t know?!  How can he now be asking this question as if unaware of Jesus’ identity?  St. John is in prison awaiting certain execution.  Are we perhaps to assume that St. John is being worn down by the hardship of prison and that his prior knowledge about Jesus’ identity is now maybe lacking?  On its face value this Gospel passage seems out of place.  It needs more than face value understanding; it needs closer scrutiny.

  To dive more deeply into the intrigue of this passage we need to suspend an easy and natural assumption we make as Christians when we hear this passage.  So many centuries now after Jesus walked the earth, we know and accept that Jesus is BOTH the promised Messiah (the anointed one) and that he is God Himself.  It can be very easy for us to so link the “Messiah” and “God” in the one person Jesus such that we end up thinking the “Messiah” and “God” are synonymous terms or notions.  But this was not the mind of the Jewish people and so Messiah and God were not automatically linked by people like St. John.  The Messiah is the one who would redeem God’s people from their suffering and would be an anointed king and priest who would lead God’s people.  This notion developed in time to be an expectation that this anointed king-priest would be from the line of King David.  But God Himself is an entirely distinct notion.  Suspending our automatic Christian linking of Messiah and God we can then, I suggest, understand the great revelation of this passage and why John seems to be asking a curious question.  So, let’s hear St. John’s question again while also keeping clear that the promise of the Messiah and the promise of the coming of God Himself are not automatically assumed and linked by St. John in the one person of Jesus.  St. John asks, “Are you the one who is to come?”

  This does not simply and only mean, “Are you the Messiah?”  Notice, St. John doesn’t use that word, he doesn’t ask if Jesus is the Messiah.  He asks “are you he who is to come?”  This is an allusion to Old Testament prophecies about the coming of God Himself.  A prime Old Testament location of the prophecy of the coming of the Lord God is found in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 35.  And… no surprise the Church chooses Isaiah 35 as today’s first reading.  In responding to St. John’s question, Jesus indicates his own accomplishments that trace right back to Isaiah 35, from which we heard today: “Here is your God, he comes with vindication;… Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing.”  Jesus is making a direct allusion to Isaiah 35 where we find the prophecy of the coming, not of the Messiah alone, but the coming of God Himself!  In addition to that list of prophecy Jesus adds more that is not in Isaiah 35; I’ll comment on two of them: Jesus adds “lepers are cleansed” and “the dead are raised.”  In the Second Book of Kings surrounding the story of the leper Naaman we find the assumption that curing leprosy was something only God could do.  Likewise, in a rare Old Testament prophecy about resurrection, we find in Isaiah 26 that the dead being raised would happen when God Himself arrives.

  Are you the one, he, who is to come?  Jesus’ response causes St. John to see not only the fulfillment of what he clearly already knew – that Jesus is the Messiah – but also to see that Jesus fulfills the signs that accompany the arrival of God Himself.  And thus, it makes sense that Jesus goes on in this passage to tell the crowd about St. John using an allusion from the Book of the Prophet Malachi.  Jesus says that St. John is more than a prophet and indicates that the words of Malachi (Mal. 3:1) apply to St. John: “Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way before you.”  That entire context in Malachi is about the messenger that would come to announce, not the Messiah, but the coming of the Lord God.  I suggest that St. John clearly already knows that Jesus is the promised Messiah.  But from prison St. John learns in this passage that Jesus is more than the Messiah, but a Divine Messiah, that Jesus is the one who is to come, that He is God Himself.

 On this Sunday the change of color and the liturgical theme call us to rejoice!  We are invited to rejoice by receiving what St. John learned in Jesus’ response: Namely, the great revelation that in the advent of Jesus God Himself is with us!  We are nearing the annual celebration of the birth of our God.  We still await His final return in glory at the Second Coming.  It is time to rejoice for He is near to us.  It is time to lift to Him our blindness, our lack of vision and spiritual sight, our deafness, our flagging speech, our lameness, our leprous impurity and afflictions, our deadly sins and the prospect of our bodily death.  It is time to live the rejoicing that God is near and that His presence means something for how we live.  “Blessed is the one who takes no offense” at Jesus.