You could probably read today’s Gospel text a hundred times and never realize that these words have been the source of a huge theological controversy for hundreds, even thousands of years. Listen closely as I re-read the first two verses: “When John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’” What you hear in these two verses is an expression of doubt – doubt as to whether or not Jesus truly was the Messiah promised for so long to the Children of Israel. But here’s where the controversy comes in: whose doubt was Matthew writing about here? Was it John the Baptizer who had doubts about Jesus – or was it John’s disciples who had those doubts?
Many of the great Church fathers felt that John the Baptizer simply could not have been the one with the doubts. After all, even as he was still in his mother’s womb, St. Luke tells us that he leaped in joy and recognition when the newly-pregnant Mary came to visit. Roughly 30 years later, when Jesus approached John to be baptized, John proclaimed: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” After John baptized Jesus, he saw the Spirit of God descend on Jesus, and he said: “I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” The evidence seems to indicate that John was pretty sure of who Jesus was and what He came to do.
So if John wasn’t the one with the doubts, then the doubters must have been John’s disciples, those who still followed him even after Herod had John thrown into prison – those who actually came to Jesus and asked Him the question. Some had remained loyal to John and out of that loyalty they may not have wanted to desert him following his arrest. Matthew, Mark and Luke all point to some friction between the two groups because John’s followers observed the Jewish laws for fasting, and Jesus and His disciples did not observe those rules. According to this line of thinking, John realized that he needed to reassure his disciples that Jesus truly was the Messiah, so he sent them to Jesus to learn their lesson first-hand.
When Martin Luther preached a sermon on this Gospel lesson he addressed this controversy by saying that “the question is unnecessary and of little import.” Quite honestly, the original texts just do not give us enough evidence to make a firm determination one way or the other. And the bottom line is that if we try to focus on a detail about who had the doubts, we may very well miss the big picture. What really matters is not who had those doubts – but how Jesus answered them.
To really understand all of this, we need to step back and look at what the role of the prophet really was. One pastor described it this way: “Prophets give people what they need, not what they want.” In other words, prophets are the vegetables on your plate and not the dessert. They are the socks and underwear under the Christmas tree – not the toys and the games. Unlike so many of today’s TV evangelists, they are never going to talk about self-affirmation, self-acceptance or whatever self-made self-help spirituality is popular at any given time. Prophets speak God’s timeless and eternal truths, His words of repentance. Prophets don’t tell you how good you are – prophets tell you how sinful you are. Prophets don’t tell you what to do to solve your problems – prophets tell you how God is going to solve your problems.
That’s certainly how it was with the last prophet, the prophet John the Baptizer. What was John’s message? “Repent.” John never told people how good they were – instead, he referred to the religious leaders as a “brood of vipers” and said that “every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” But the prophet – and this is true of every prophet recorded in Scripture – does far more than just proclaim hellfire and damnation. A prophet points to the Messiah. John, the last of so many great and faithful prophets, pointed to Jesus. As he repeatedly proclaimed, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
But remember that when today’s Gospel lesson took place, John was locked up in prison. He had been bold enough to tell King Herod what no one else had the courage to tell him – that it was a sin to steal your brother’s wife and make her your own wife. John publicly accused Herod and his brother’s wife of adultery – and to shut him up, they had him thrown into a dungeon. The days of preaching repentance and baptizing the crowds in the Jordan River were over. But John’s time as a prophet of the Messiah had not yet come to an end. Whether he had the doubts or his disciples had the doubts really doesn’t matter quite so much, because in this final event of his prophetic life he pointed to Jesus. Just as all of the other prophets had done for centuries before him. He sent his disciples to Jesus, and they asked: “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”
Two weeks ago, when our Gospel lesson focused on Jesus’ Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem, I explained how Matthew takes great pains in his Gospel to explain how Jesus truly is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophets. We see much more of that in these verses, but here it is Jesus Himself rather than Matthew who is doing this explaining. Listen again to verses 4 and 5: “And Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.’”
What Jesus is doing here is referring to Messianic prophecies of the great prophet Isaiah – Isaiah chapters 26, 29, 35, 42 and 61. John’s disciples would have immediately recognized what Jesus was doing. Jesus was directing them to Himself by referring them to the Scripture that they already knew and believed. In the simplest of terms He testified to prophecy and fulfillment. He never criticized either John or John’s disciples for their doubts or questions. All He did was give proof – absolute, undeniable proof – to the fulfillment of Scripture that was taking place right there before their eyes.
John himself was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. The prophet Malachi, who lived approximately 430 years before John and Jesus were born, had written: “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.” But soon after John sent his disciples to see Jesus, the life of the last prophet would come to an end. Herod’s adulterous new wife and her equally evil daughter Salome tricked Herod into ordering John’s death. The voice of one crying in the wilderness was silenced.
After John, there was simply no need for any further prophecy about the Messiah, for the Messiah had come. The Messiah, Jesus Christ, true God and true man, was fulfilling every Old Testament prophecy that had ever pointed to Him. He would continue to fulfill those prophecies through His ministry. He would continue to fulfill those prophecies throughout every remaining day of His life. He would continue to fulfill those prophecies in His death on the cross. And he would continue still to fulfill those prophecies by His resurrection on Easter morning.
John’s disciples asked: “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” Two thousand years later, people are still asking that same question. The doubts are still there, but the answer is still the same, because the answer that Jesus directed to John’s disciples is directed to us, too. That, really, is why we celebrate the liturgical season of Advent, the season of coming. John preached repentance and the coming of the Messiah, and our world desperately needs to hear that same preaching today.
When the acolytes lit the candles on our Advent wreath today, they lit two purple candles – representing the two previous Sundays of Advent – and they also lit a pink candle that stands at the front of the wreath. The reason why we light a pink candle today is that pink is a traditional color of rejoicing. Today has historically been known as Gaudete Sunday, and gaudete is a Latin word which translated means “rejoice.” Our Introit today began with these words: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice,” and we began our Gradual by singing: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion.” We rejoice not because we’ll soon be opening presents or celebrating just the birth of the Christ Child in our Christmas Services. No, we rejoice because that baby born in Bethlehem will grow into an adult who will fulfill each and every one of the Old Testament prophecies about Him. We rejoice not just because of His birth – but ultimately, because of His death and resurrection. We rejoice because that baby was born not just to spend the final three years of His life preaching and teaching and healing people, but to forgive us for our sins. We rejoice because the Messiah has come – and will come again. The prophecies have been fulfilled. To paraphrase the great Advent hymn: Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel has come to us, O Israel. When John or his disciples had doubts – or even if we have those same doubts today – that’s all we need to know.
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