I am not interested in tracking down the quotation, like an uncited quote is really the thing dragging my writing into the gutter, but somewhere Calvin says that although we usually talk of God as being in the Heavens, we usually talk about seeing the glory of God in the glorious parts of nature, or the parts that seem glorious to us, that it is important, if somewhat distasteful, to remind men that God is everywhere, that He is as present in the sewer as the Heavens. What is his reason for wanting to remind men that God is in the sewer? Because it is no strange thing for the saints to find themselves in sewers, like Jeremiah who was once locked in a sewer, and the only comfort in such a place is the reminder that you are not separated from God. Calvin himself lived most of his life as an exile and some of it as a fugitive so he probably knew what he was talking about. Now the shores of the beautiful Lake Geneva might not seem like such a terrible place but the knowledge that you can never go home might make anyplace seem a prison. But our story today is not about Jean Calvin but about a man who could almost be called the mold from which Calvin was taken, a man who we will find in prison, a man who calls out to Jesus from his prison, and about the answer he gets.
And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?”
Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.” Matthew 11
John had been sent to prison for telling Herod that he was a murderer and an adulterer. He was protected in prison from all those who wanted him dead because Herod believed John was a righteous man and so did most of Herod's subjects. He would eventually be killed in prison because Herod's lust for his daughter in law made him once again exactly what John had called him to begin with, a murderer and an adulterer.
But it is at John's call for help that I want to look at, and that is what this is. There is some sarcasm, some bitterness, and I think that I am understating the case when I say some impatience, but make no mistake this is a cry for help. But that isn't how it reads at first blush, "Are you the Coming One, or do we look for another?" Why do I say it is a cry for help and why do I read John's pain and anger at Jesus into it? Well, to put it plainly John was not, could not have been asking for information. John knew better than anyone who Jesus was. This was John who recognized Jesus as soon as Mary walked into the room despite the fact that neither of them had been born yet. When John recognized Jesus, Elizabeth was only 6 months pregnant with John, he was just barely big enough for her to feel him kicking yet he did something, I can't imagine what, so profoundly startling that his mother took it as a sign from God. We always imagine that if we were near Jesus when he was on the earth that we would just see him and somehow know. I don't think that that is true for most of us, but John knew. John was the man who did not need to ask. With John, who Jesus was wasn't a matter of faith, doubt couldn't have entered the picture. John was not asking for information.
And I don't think that this was some sort of religious ritual, some passing on of blah blah whatever that John and Jesus were playing at, that is an unsuitable thought for either of these two most iconoclastic of rabbis. No, I am going to try and paraphrase what I think that John meant when he asked, "Are you the Coming One, or do we look for another?" He meant, I think, "How long before you start acting like a Messiah? How long, Oh Lord, will you sit back and let the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper? As Elijah said to You, I have been very zealous for you and now the king seeks my life. Just when are you planning to hold up your end of the deal, and get me out of this hellhole?"
I don't think, BTW, that this was the first time that John asked Jesus a question like this. I don't think that John's frustration with Jesus' footdragging, hiding in the shadows, noninterventionist ways began when he went to the pen. It is a funny fact that for a lot of Jesus' ministry most of the people in the crowds probably thought he was just filling in until His cousin got out of jail. John was Mr. Fire and Brimstone. John was Mr. In Your Face. John was, well he was like Elijah. He was like Jean Calvin, the kind of moral earnestness, the kind of integrity, that makes a man a leader of a reformatory movement and a real pain in the ass for establishment types, kings and such. With Jesus there was never that cold certainty that really gets the crowd fired up. He was certainly clear on His ability to work miracles but He seemed very sceptical about the miracle actually doing anybody any real good. With Jesus there weren't the short concise statements about moral absolutes, but rather puzzling, paradoxical parables that didn't incite the crowd to anything except impatience with Christ, both as the teller of the parable and the God that he told the parables about. Not long after John was locked up, Jesus was incited into His most public miracle, the Feeding of the Five Thousand. He did it in such a lowkey way that most people were probably halfway done eating before they knew that there was a miracle or who was responsible. But the backlash, the movement to try and make Him a king was so strong that He went so far on the downlow that even the Twelve don't seem to have been sure where He was for awhile. His warnings to keep the miracles secret seem to take on ever more urgent tones.
John knew who Jesus was. But Jesus was deliberately hiding from pretty much everybody. The Gospel writers make that very clear. He told everyone to keep His miracles under their hat. He disguised His teaching in parables, and when He spoke clearly He was so deliberately offensive that getting people away from Himself is the only imaginable goal. Just see the John 6 discourse on cannibalism following the feeding miracle. He was hiding and I think He was hiding in John's shadow and for various reasons John was tired of it. There is a fact that is clear to Christians in the twenty first century, it has always been clear to Jesus, and it was clear to John, but I don't think that in 27 through 29 AD it was clear to much of anybody else. We know that the source of John's teaching was his quiet backpew sitting cousin. John knew that all the best parts of his sermons came from Jesus, but even more than that John's confidence came from Jesus. John was convinced that when the chips were down he had the real ace in the hole. He was convinced that eventually Jesus would come out of hiding, that when the chips were really down He would go all Shark on the bad guys. And John just wanted to know when. When another John asked Jesus a similar question, "Should we go rain fire on the bad guys?" He was told, "You don't understand the Spirit that you have been given." And that brings us to Jesus' answer to John the Baptist.
When the men had come to Him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to You, saying, ‘Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?’ ” And that very hour He cured many of infirmities, afflictions, and evil spirits; and to many blind He gave sight.
Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and tell John the things you have seen and heard: that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.” Luke 7
I have said that John's question wasn't a question for information, it was a somewhat sarcastic reminder to Jesus of what John thought He, Jesus, ought to be doing. Jesus, I think we can take it for granted, understood what John was really asking. And when John's messengers got to Jesus, Jesus continued doing exactly His usual thing. He kept healing the sick, he kept casting out demons, he kept raising the dead, he kept preaching the gospel to the poor. It seems He even stepped up those things just to underscore the point of what He kept NOT doing. The most important thing He did was that He kept not getting John out of prison. He closes His message to John in a tone as acerbic as John's message to Him. "You are offended at me, but it would be better if you were not." Jesus meets us where we are, He comes down to our level because we cannot rise to His.
Jesus was hiding when He was baptised. John wanted Him to announce Himself as the Messiah where everybody could hear. But it was the sweet elusiveness of Jesus' "Let it be so. Baptise me like I am just one of the crowd." that made His Father burst out in a display of pride and satisfaction in His Son, which He hid in the sound of thunder. It did John's heart credit when He said of Christ, "He must increase, and I must decrease." But he still didn't understand that it was Christ's plan to decrease. It was Christ's plan to do more than get John out of jail. It was His plan to go to jail Himself, not as a visitor but as a criminal. It was His plan to be executed, so that John wouldn't be separated from Him as the ax came down. John's heart knew that the whole of salvation consisted simply of being with Jesus, but his head couldn't grasp that Jesus' plan was to be with him more intimately by being physically separated. Jesus left John in jail so that John could learn that being in jail couldn't separate him from Christ. Jesus left us, so long ago, that we might learn that even in His absence He has not left us as orphans.
Blessed is he who is not offended at Christ's seeming absence, at His seeming indifference to the suffering of His people. Blessed is he who knows that when Jesus is not visible and local He is hidden and catholic. Blessed is he who is imprisoned in a cistern-a swampy sewer, because he will be able to see the great faithfulness of Christ even in the destruction of Jerusalem. Blessed is the exile, for he will be given a home in the Temple of God and he will go out no more. And if your head or your mind causes you to be offended at Christ, blessed is he who loses his head or his mind.