Did that man come?

“John had some seriously mistaken ideas about who Jesus was and what he came to do…” writes Sarah Dylan Breuer. “John spent his life teaching and baptizing to distinguish wheat from chaff, and he expected that Jesus would be dealing out blessings and punishments accordingly. John had it half right: Jesus came to bless…”

How does this expectation of the Messiah, which John presents the people, prepare the way for the Lord? Doesn’t it bear the confusion that the Messiah would be a warrior freeing them from Roman oppression? That he would immediately destroy those who didn’t line up for him?

John’s call to repentance is certainly inline with an apocalyptic coming of the Messiah. Cliff asked at our ministerial today, “Did that man come?” The Jesus we read about seems very different from the Jesus John describes.

Following the line of apocalyptic inversion that makes mountains low, raises valleys, and brings order to Chaos, John cries out, “an age is ending! One is coming who will baptize with Spirit and Fire!” Everyone was looking for the mountains to crumble and mighty terrible signs. They flooded to the Jordan to repent before this Righteous and Just one came.

And he came, this rod of Jesse. Embodied in him was the essence of apocalyptic inversion. He brought a state of being for mankind to a close and ushered in a new life, an event that continues moment by moment, devoid of time and space. He turned Jewish thought of what Messiah would be on its nose. Even John was surprised by the way he lived. Jesus was the inversion of John eating and drinking. He was the inversion of society proclaiming radical idea. He was the inversion of the religious system bringing grace, Spirit and intimacy to the impotent millions.

All these things John foretold were hidden in Jesus, and expressed themselves in ways no body but the heart of the Father could have guessed. We can only see it in the way the scriptures have been opened to us in light of the resurrected Christ. A suffering servant, a man of sorrows, a King of kings and a Lord of lords, God clothed in human flesh! Who could have guessed?