Jesus and John

The scriptures referred to are Matthew 11:2-11.

When you watch an action film these days, it usually builds to a final confrontation between the good guys and bad guys and the good guys beat and often kill the bad guys and then the film ends and we are happy that good triumphed. We don't like to think about the aftermath of all the death and destruction that took place. In Skyfall, the villain destroys a subway train in a trap to kill 007. How many people died in that trainwreck? In Man of Steel, Superman and his Kryptonian enemy General Zod destroy a good deal of downtown Metropolis before Zod is killed. Star Wars fans have debated if the deaths of all the contractors and support staff on the Death Star should be laid at the feet of Luke Skywalker. At least in Avengers: Age of Ultron the non-superpowered heroes spent most of their time saving the people of the city as the superpowered ones fought the evil robot army who were destroying it. And the sequel seriously considered the legal and global consequences of letting such people unilaterally decide to unleash their powers.

In the real world, there is a debate among historians as to whether Winston Churchill knew beforehand that the Nazis were going to bomb the English city of Coventry. And if so, did he not evacuate the city to protect the fact that the Brits had broken Germany's code? It was reasoned that protecting this secret this would help the Allies win the war. But at what cost to the unsuspecting citizens of Coventry?

One reason why the US had a huge post-war boom in the 1940s, 50s and 60s was that much of the rest of the world was devastated and had to rebuild. Some have argued that the Marshall Plan, wherein the US provided $13 billion to help rebuild Europe, was one of the most influential events of the 20^th century. By refusing to let the countries of eastern Europe take the funds, the Soviet Union not only kept tight control of them but also doomed them to decades of economic struggle, despite coming up with their own version called the Molotov Plan.

Unfortunately we did not learn from our own history and after supplying the Afghans with the arms to defeat the Soviet invasion of their country in the 1980s, we did not help them rebuild, giving extremists like the Taliban the opportunity to take over the shattered nation and offer Bin Laden a base for his terrorist operations.

My point is that we tend to see the defeat of evil as the ultimate triumph of good, and we rarely consider the fact that this is not enough. If you weed the garden but don't sewn seeds of what you want and water and nurture them, the weeds will come back.

If you pair last week's gospel passage with this week's, you can see that John the Baptist was really into the “evil must be defeated” idea. And it is something we see in the prophets of the Old Testament. And it is a legitimate concern. Before rebuilding Europe the Allies had to first defeat the Third Reich. An oncology patient can't get better until you rid them of cancer. So the Baptist is not wrong about the eradication of evil being necessary. He just doesn't realize that Jesus was going about it in a different way.

In a war you decide who is your enemy and you try to eliminate as many of their people as you can. But you can't do that surgically and as we mentioned a few weeks ago, many more civilians will die than soldiers. The enemy will not put their munition factories so far from their cities that you can blow up the factories without harming the cities where the workers live. And if you are fighting to retake a city street by street, the people living on those streets will lose not only their homes but some will also lose their lives.

Jesus told a parable about this, which again we touched on recently. A farmer sows wheat in his field but at night an enemy sows weeds. When the 2 kinds of plants grow up, the farmer's workers want to try to weed the entire field. But the farmer knows some of the wheat will be uprooted as well. So he tells them to wait till the harvest to sort the good from the bad. (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) To Jesus saving good people is more important than rooting out the bad.

Of course it is more complicated than that. Nobody is all good or all bad. Whereas in action movies, the good guys eliminate the bad guys by killing them, Jesus wants to eliminate the bad guys by turning them into good guys. Jesus saw sin as a spiritual disease. That's why he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” (Mark 2:17) As a doctor doesn't kill the patient but treats the disease, Jesus didn't come to kill sinners but to cure them. That's why in parallel with healing physical ailments Jesus often forgave the person's sins as well. (Luke 5:20) Not that disease was always caused by sin (John 9:3) but sickness is a good metaphor for sin. Sickness usually requires an internal susceptibility to the disease as well as an external trigger. Which is why some people get cancer and some don't; some get heart disease and some don't; some people get addicted to a drug and others, even if they try it, don't.

By the way, the word “addiction” comes from a Latin word that means “bound or assigned or delivered” to someone. In Roman law to be addicted was to become enslaved due to a court ruling. To be an addict is to be a slave, to be controlled by something. And Jesus compared sin to slavery. Jesus said, “I tell you the solemn truth, everyone who practices sin is a slave of sin.” (John 8:34) In other words, sin is in the driver's seat; it is in control. So how do you end slavery? By killing the slaves? No, but by freeing them. And that was what Jesus came to do. As he says, “...if the Son sets you free, you will really be free.” (John 8:36)

The problem is that by letting something control us for so long, we make it hard to live freely. People who were enslaved and then freed after the Civil War often had trouble adjusting to being free: to making their own decisions, finding jobs and setting up their own businesses. Some continued to work for their former masters, supposedly being paid but not much. They were technically free but not mentally and so not really. In the same way a person who comes out of rehab, having kicked their addiction, still has to work not to fall into old habits that will bring them back under the control of the substance or activity that enslaved them.

Paul in Romans 7 tells about how hard it is to fight a sin we are especially susceptible to. He describes it as being “sold into slavery to sin.” (Romans 7:14) After talking of how he did the evil he did not want to do, he cries out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25) Freedom from our addiction to the destructive and self-destructive habits called sins comes from Jesus, if we trust and rely on him as we would a doctor who has a prescription and regimen that can save us from the disease of addiction.

But when John the Baptist heard that Jesus was not, as he expected, bringing down God's wrath on sinners and hypocrites, he wondered if he had been right in thinking Jesus was the Messiah. He was expecting a holy warrior who would cleanse the earth with fire. (Matthew 3:11-12) So from his prison he sends some of his own disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” Jesus replies, “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 is destroying evil, just not in the way John imagined. He is liberating people from diseases of the body and the spirit. And as with the paralyzed man lowered through the roof, Jesus realized that it is often easier to see the physical effects of his spiritual work.

So the blind see again: not just those who couldn't see the material world but also those who were blind to spiritual realities. Those who were crippled can not only walk by themselves through the physical world but those hobbled by sin are now able to walk with God wherever he leads them. Not only are lepers cleansed but those who were treated as moral pariahs are now made clean and able to join the assembly of God's people. Those who were deaf to the sounds of this world can hear again but those who were deaf to God's word now hear his call. Jesus restored life not just to those whose bodies died but to those who were spiritually dead. And good news was reaching not only those who lacked material goods but those who were spiritually impoverished.

Jesus adds, “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Jesus doesn't say this as a warning to John so much as encouragement. Jesus is essentially saying, “Don't stumble, don't fall away because of what I'm doing.” In other words, “Have faith in me. I know what I'm doing and God will vindicate me and how I am going about fulfilling the mission he gave me.”

And then Jesus tells the crowd that John is indeed a prophet and more than simply a prophet. He is the herald of the Messiah, God's anointed one. But John's part is just stage one in this part of God's plan.

But what does Jesus mean when he says, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he”? John is fixated on God's justice. He has not really considered the extent of God's mercy. That's why Jesus healing and praising peacemakers and commanding people to turn the other cheek and love one's enemies doesn't make sense to John. And he will be executed before seeing the ultimate act of mercy on Jesus' part: his sacrifice of himself to wipe away not sinners but their sins. This threw Jesus' disciples as well. They also thought that Jesus would usher in the kingdom of God by throwing the Roman empire out of the land of God's people. They saw Jesus' crucifixion as a contradiction of the Messiah's mission. They didn't see it as the paradoxical yet foreshadowed fulfillment of God's plan. Not until the resurrection. But now even the least in God's kingdom knows what the cross means: Jesus came not to punish sinners but to save us by taking our punishment upon himself. He defeats sin not by means of severe justice but through his loving self-sacrifice.

Sadly there are churchgoers who still don't see it. Like John they are looking for a Christ who is all about inflicting divine punishment on sinners. In her appropriately named book, Jesus and John Wayne, historian Kristen Kobes Du Mez documents how American Evangelicals have for more than a century been less in love with the pacifist Jesus found in the Bible and more enamored with stereotypically strong and even authoritarian leaders. Quoting their own words in articles, sermons and books, she shows how they have been willing to overlook abuses of power both within and outside the church by men who were perceived to be their side and fighting for their agendas. This dovetails with what Jeff Sharlett details in his book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, about a group that runs Bible studies for elected officials and even subsided the rent of members of Congress. During his time as an intern with the group, Sharlett was exposed to their model of leadership which admired strong people like Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden and Hitler for their power to command absolute commitment. When asked about Jesus saying stuff like the one who wants to be first must be the slave of all (Matthew 20:27-28) and how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom (Mark 10:23), the leader of this group dismissed such verses with a chuckle about Jesus sometimes saying strange things.

John never went that far. In fact, when people responded to his fiery warnings about sin and asked, “What then should we do?” he said, “The person who has two tunics must share with the person who has none, and the person with food must do likewise.” He told tax collectors not to collect more than they should and soldiers not to extort people by violence or intimidation but to be content with their pay. (Luke 3:10-14) Like we said, John was keyed into justice and that is not confined to punishment but also includes being equitable and treating people fairly.

But as we've said before, justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting all of what you deserve. Grace is getting what you can't possibly deserve. If John is about justice, Jesus is the face of grace. He is about freeing those who are enslaved, even if it is through their own fault. He is about forgiving sinners, including criminals executed with him and even those who were crucifying him. He is about identifying himself with the diseased, the disadvantaged and the despised. He is about healing the spiritual sickness that afflicts us all.

John delivered the dismal diagnosis. Jesus delivered himself as the cure. John did his part well. We need to open our hearts and lives and let Jesus do his.