John to Jesus
All four gospels begin the story of Jesus with reference to the prophet John the Baptiser; indeed, the gospel of John refers to him almost immediately in the familiar, beautiful opening hymn: “There was a man sent from God whose name was John.” The entire opening chapter of Luke is all about the birth of John; the birth of Jesus happens in chapter two. The season of Advent focuses much on John and his mission.
Advent is about readiness to acknowledge, receive, and participate in the revolution that clusters around Jesus. As followers of the way of John and Jesus, our discipleship is to call the prodigal home, to call all God’s children to return from their exile, to call all mankind to turn around, to radically centre their lives in God’s love and to reach out with compassion to their brothers and sisters, that they might all know they are beloved of God.
This introduction of John the Baptist helps us to understand Jesus more clearly. John was an important first century prophet acting in the tradition of OT prophets; indeed, his appearance is compared to Elijah. He echoes the OT in his call for repentance: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his path straight.” He comes offering “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”; in doing so he openly challenges the temple authorities who saw themselves as the only authority to mediate between God and mankind. He pronounces judgment on the rulers of his time, and this opposition lands him in jail and eventually costs him his life. This anti-temple prophet, in the OT tradition, has a tremendous influence on Jesus of Nazareth.
If John and Jesus were indeed cousins, as implied, they may have played together as children, grown up together. In any case, Jesus was obviously attracted to John the Baptist; he must have heard John’s “crying in the wilderness,” and came to join him, to learn from him. We have no idea how long Jesus sat at John’s feet as a disciple, but it is logical to assume it was a good length of time for Jesus to learn from interaction with John. At some point John must have realized that his student surpassed him in wisdom and stature, for John after a time points his own disciples toward Jesus; in the first chapter of the gospel of John, Jesus’ first two disciples are plainly identified as John’s disciples. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus begins his ministry “when he heard that John had been put in prison.” From that moment Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” the very same words the writer of Matthew placed in John’s mouth: “In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Jesus picks up where John leaves off.
The gospels have John announcing clearly that Jesus is the “coming one,” echoing the language of the prophet Malachi, the last book of the Jewish Bible in Jesus’ time. The gospel writers, writing several decades after the events of Easter, portray John as the forerunner of Jesus. However, when John the Baptist is imprisoned by Herod, he sends messengers to Jesus asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John is obviously unsure at that point. Both the gospel of Matthew and Luke have allowed considerable time to pass before this incident, several chapters in fact, during which the reader has seen Jesus in action, preaching, teaching and healing. And Jesus answers John’s question in the language of the OT: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them.” Jesus answers John in the metaphoric language used to describe the kingdom of God, taken primarily from the book of Isaiah, chapter 35, and also echoed in psalm 146. Jesus is not so much giving a literal summary of his ministry, as he is announcing, in his imagery, that the kingdom of God is near. The gospels of Matthew and Luke present Jesus as the fulfilment of OT messianic prophecy, as the new Moses through whom God will save his people. The OT references remind us that the gospels were written to make theological points, to interpret the experience of Jesus in light of OT understandings of God. Jesus’ actions declare the kingdom of God is at hand and he is telling John in code, through the Biblical imagery he recites, that the kingdom of God is here, that he is “the one who was to come.” Jesus reassures his teacher that he has learned his lessons well, that he is a prophet in John’s tradition, that he will build on John’s foundation.
And that foundation, as all the gospel writers make clear, is the OT prophetic voice. “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his path straight” (Luke 3:4): the gospel writers put into John’s mouth the call for repentance used at the start of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year. Repentance means to turn around, to alter one’s direction, to align one’s life along the righteous path that God desires. It is a call for the exile to return, for the wandering one to come home. Furthermore, John the Baptist’s words in the fourth gospel apply the imagery of the exodus to Jesus: “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.” The reference is from the feast of Yom Kippur which ends the ten days of fasting during Rosh Hashana, when the sacrificial lamb was slaughtered and eaten. It also refers to the Lamb of the exodus which was killed and roasted, the blood smeared over the lintel to protect the inhabitants from the angel of death; however, it is important to remember that the rest of the lamb, the cooked lamb, was packed away as food for the coming journey out of exile toward the promised land. The Lamb of God as food for the journey: the emphasis can be placed not so much on the blood of the lamb to avoid death, as on the feast of the lamb to bring life. The Lamb of God travels with us, to nourish us on our way. Emmanuel: God with us. Following Jesus is about following the way—a commitment to a path of personal transformation and of confrontation with social systems which dominate and suppress people: “Make straight the way of the Lord.” Jesus learns this way from John. John the Baptist’s ministry connects Jesus to a rich OT prophetic tradition, and Jesus models himself very much after his mentor. The parallels between them are striking: both men call for repentance, both challenge the temple authorities, both pose a threat to the secular powers, and both are executed. The disciples of Jesus follow this example and they too are all executed.
The background in the introductory material of all four gospels is the mission and fate of John the Baptist. We encounter during Advent the story of the hopes around John’s birth and his proclamation: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” No one in that time had seen anyone quite like this man John with his wild wilderness garb, his diet of locusts and honey, his language, his fierce and unaccommodating judgement and condemnation: “Oh you brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” The gospels show how John dared to challenge the way things worked at every level–religious, personal, economic, political and social; he told all these people how to change the way they lived in light of what God was about to do. His message was so powerful and convincing and inspiring (if also fearsome!) that the people, which here implies not just those who came out to see him, but people in the region generally, started considering the possibility that John might be the Messiah. We cannot understand the way of our Lord revealed in these passages apart from the context of challenge and threat—and good news, too–posed by the message and ministry of John the Baptist. To do so is to distort what Matthew and Luke want us to hear clearly. The birth and ministry of Jesus constitute a social revolution that keeps reverberating through every time and place.
Advent is about readiness to acknowledge, receive, and participate in the revolution that clusters around Jesus. As followers of the way of John and Jesus, our discipleship is to call the prodigal home, to call all God’s children to return from their exile, to call all mankind to turn around, to radically centre their lives in God’s love and to reach out with compassion to their brothers and sisters, that they might all know they are beloved of God.