Jesus had just finished his long apostolic discourse to the twelve apostles, now “he moved on to preach and teach in the towns.” It may have been months, or even years, into Jesus’ ministry when John the Baptizer sent a message from prison. “Are you he who is to come,” he asks, “or do we look for another?” “We have heard this story before, yet it still surprises us, even unsettles us. Why is John asking such a question? Is it not well past the time for him to wonder whether Jesus is the coming one?

To most people, John is a somewhat shadowy figure. He is glimpsed only in the background, and then forgotten as interest concentrates on Jesus. This is strange in view of the fact that Jesus praised no one more highly than his precursor. The messengers had come asking who Jesus was, now Jesus asks the crowd of onlookers who John is.

“What did you go out to the wilderness to see?” For the Jews listening to Jesus, “the wilderness” was more than just a geographical location. The “wilderness”, the desert, was the place of Yahweh's great acts that formed the Hebrew people. It was there that God manifested himself. The covenant was presented and accepted in
Sinai. The people had enjoyed his special care and protection as they wandered there before entering the Promised Land. The prophets had gone to the desert to find the Lord. Those who went after John were following a long tradition in seeking repentance and pardon in “going out to the wilderness.”

“...much more than a prophet.” This was the highest praise Jesus could give. A prophet is one specially chosen by the Lord to speak for him. Because of this he enjoyed a special intimacy with Yahweh whose judgements and messages he gave to the people. John is “more than a prophet” because he actually sees the One for whose coming he was sent to prepare the people. Could it be that he now had second thoughts?
Although he did recognize Jesus from the first, John may well have had a different set of expectations about what the messiah would do. A stern man living in the wilderness, he spoke of the coming retribution, of trees axed at the roots and a new baptism of fire. He likely thought that, with the arrival of Christ, the world would be transformed before his very eyes.

Instead he lay in prison and looked out on a world that seemed to be totally unchanged. In that context, his question is quite understandable and, while not fully certain, shows an openness to hearing the response.

In his answer, Jesus helps make the connection between the unexpected things he is doing and the traditions that undergirded John. He recalls the healings Isaiah prophesised, and points to what is going on in his ministry. Through him, healings were happening, showing the working of God in their midst. While some things about this Christ who feasted and partied with publicans were not quite what John expected, the signs of God’s presence, echoing Isaiah, offered a response the Baptizer could recognize.

This might be just a curious Advent season story—the account of how, long ago, one person grappled with the work and person of Jesus. We may understand the healings Jesus mentioned as miraculous proof of his divinity, a testimony to his incarnation. Certainly, at Advent we look back to the first coming, and give thanks that God’s beloved Son entered the world. But if we see this story and its meaning as wholly in the past, we will miss the way it speaks to our lives here and now.
“Are you the one, or do we look elsewhere?” This in fact is the question that puts our whole lives into focus. If Jesus is the one, we will see the world and our place in it in a certain way. If, instead, we are busy looking elsewhere, what we see will be quite different.

Of course, where we look depends on what we are looking for. If it is for things that makes us feel good about ourselves, so long as they still shine or do not get dented, then we can keep looking at commercials. If its is for degrees or careers, exciting friends or hobbies, then society can tell us just where to look.
But, if we shift our focus within and listen for a moment, we may discover a need deeper than the thousands of distractions that surround us. We may realize that it is not just the disabled people in the Bible who longed for healing. We, too, yearn to be freed from what handicaps us.

You and I need healing. We have all had plenty of suffering. For most of us who are not physically disabled, that pain is largely hidden from view. It may be an addiction to alcohol, to food or to relationships that hurt us. It may be growing up in a family where we were abused or ignored, and living with that pain into adulthood. It may be losing a loved one to death or divorce, or never having had a loved one at all. No one can judge anther’s injury; usually, we never even see it. But we can take the risk to look at our own inner handicaps and acknowledge that we do need to be healed.

Then the readings in the scripture may have something more to say to us. Rather than just proving that he was the Messiah, Jesus’ restoring of sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and wholeness to crippled bodies stood first and foremost as outward signs of the inward miracle. They pointed to God’s coming to his people.

Jesus’ preaching good news to the poor and the healing he performed were signs of the Father’s presence among them. This, indeed, answered their deepest longing, echoed in Isaiah: “to be touched by their God who reaches out to them with love and joy.”

It may be that, even in the midst of this festive season, we are not feeling much love or joy within. We may be feeling more like John, imprisoned, sending words to Jesus, “Are you really the one?” But here we touch on the paradox of the Advent message, that Christ’s healing of the world is both “already” and “not yet”.

While we may still need to endure hardships, we can be as confident as Isaiah that God’s healing vindication is at hand. Meanwhile, we can see the signs of Christ’s presence in our lives—if even just our longing to be healed— and recognize them as his answer to our questioning. Is it any wonder that Jesus said to the onlookers, “Yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

This sentence may seem a contradiction to the high praise Jesus has given the Baptizer. What he is saying that those who know and accept Jesus and his message are more blessed than John because they posses in actual fact what John prepared and looked forward to. It is as if John remained only on the threshold while they entered into the full enjoyment and blessing. Do we really appreciate the gift and the grace we have in Jesus?

***