You’d think John would know. After all, when Jesus came down to the Jordan to be baptized, John had just finished saying, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” [Mt 3:11] After that, Scripture tells us, John saw “the heavens . . . opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.” [Mt 3:16] And yet just a few months later, John is sending messengers to Jesus asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” [Lk 7:2]
But John had doubts. You see, he came from a long tradition of prophets. With a few exceptions like Isaiah, prophets were all outsiders. They were strange, wild people who caught the people’s imagination with their appearance as well as their words. Also, John may have been taught by the Essenes, a sect that usually withdrew from society and preached a radical message of separation from society and purification to prepare for the imminent coming of the Day of the Lord. He dressed like Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet, and came out of the desert like Elijah. John may even have taken the Nazirite vows, which forbade cutting his hair or drinking wine. All of these clues would have been familiar to the Jews of Jesus’ day.
And John was part of that same culture.
He probably expected Jesus to conform to the same pattern, to look like prophets were supposed to look, only more so. But Jesus wasn’t following the traditions. At the same time, Jesus was more than a prophet. If he was who John had thought he was, Jesus was the anointed one, the king from the line of David, the prince of peace. David was a military man, who had conquered their enemies and established an empire. And yet Jesus wasn’t challenging Roman power. If his message was prophetic, he sure didn’t look like a prophet, and if his mission was liberation, he sure didn’t act like a liberator. So John, being a simple and straightforward man, came right out and asked him.
John wasn’t the only one to question Jesus’ identity and credentials, of course. The ordinary people were flocking to Jesus, just as earlier they had flocked to John. And the Pharisees came to check Jesus out, just as earlier they had come to watch John for signs of danger. Some of Jesus’ hearers came to be baptized, or healed, or taught. Some went home again, other became part of the movement. Some were disturbed, and others were frightened.
People are the same today. If they weren’t, there wouldn’t be so many “seeker” services. There are almost as many reasons as there are people. They come for entertainment, enlightenment, answers. Some come for a quick fox, others for a real change. Some, like the Pharisees, come to criticize, or to gather information to discredit the movement. All have some kind of expectations. And when their expectations aren’t met, either they go home disappointed or even angry, or they stay and listen and change.
John’s question was legitimate. He really wanted to know. If Jesus really was who John wanted him to be, the one sent from God, John was prepared to accept the answer and get on with the program. So Jesus answered him. Well, to be precise, Jesus pointed him to the evidence so that John could answer the question for himself. “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard,” he said to the messengers, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” [Lk 7:22-23]
The others have seen all these things, as well. And some find their answers in the evidence; others are convinced as they recognize “one with authority.” [Lk 4:32] These who understand and welcome what they have seen are blessed, Jesus says. But the Pharisees cannot accept the testimony of their own eyes, and they cannot tolerate the challenge to their own authority. And many of the ordinary people found Jesus’ challenge too different, too disturbing, too demanding. They take offense at Jesus’ words, because he is not like what they expected to see, and he does not say what they wanted to hear.
And so Jesus challenges them. “What did you come out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind?" [Lk 7:24] "Did you come out here, all this way, to see something as ordinary as a reed blowing in the wind? Of course not! Why then should you be astonished or disappointed that what you are hearing is not just the same old, same old?” Some people think that the reed blown by the wind means a person who is easily swayed by peer pressure or popular opinion, but since these were the same sorts of people who had come out to see John, and they liked John’s preaching, that can’t be it. John certainly wasn’t someone who wavered in his beliefs; he never went off message! It was just what the Jewish people expected from a prophet, and they got their religious itch scratched by getting baptized and then going home feeling safe again - much like many churchgoers feel when they go home from church. We’ve done our religious duty, even though we haven’t been changed.
But Jesus! Jesus isn’t like John. Even some of those who had truly accepted John’s message of repentance had trouble swallowing Jesus’ more radical invitation. And the ones who wanted their comfortable, traditional beliefs confirmed were even more upset by what Jesus had to say. They were disappointed that Jesus did not do the standard prophet thing, the hellfire and brimstone message that resemble our own previous centuries’ tent-meeting revivals.
They should have expected something different. And some did, of course. They expected the return of the King, a new David.
Jesus’ second question is for them.
“What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who put on fine clothing and live in luxury are in royal palaces.” [Lk 7:25] Obviously, the pampered rich do not traipse around in the desert. Okay, the people might have expected a military man, camped with his men in a defensible location - but wearing fancy armor, and draped with a purple velvet cloak trimmed with gold. Jesus’ garb was as simple as John’s - although it probably wasn’t camels’ hair tied with a rope. In any case, even though people might come out to see something denoting wealth and power, they should have known better!
There are a lot of people who go to the biggest church with the most popular preacher, the one where society’s movers and shakers can be found. More networking is done in the pews than most of us might imagine! But the message is not likely to be prophetic, not likely to shake up the people’s values and purposes. Nor will the congregation be called to a desert experience of cleansing and self-denial. No, you don’t go to the desert to hang out with the rich and famous.
“What then did you go out to see? A prophet?” [Lk 7:26a] asks Jesus. Well, maybe they really were expecting a prophet. That probably is the likeliest explanation, since prophets were most likely to be found in the desert. So Jesus answers his own question, but adds an unexpected twist. “Yes, I tell you,” he says, “and more than a prophet.” [Lk 7:26b] And that’s what stuck in their craw. Jesus’ message is much more difficult than “repent and be baptized,” although that’s part of it. Jesus’ message is “Come, follow me.”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting a prophet. In fact, Jesus has only the highest praise for John: “I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John.” [Lk 7:28] The only problem is that they wanted a prophet in their own style, saying the old, comfortable, familiar words - just like comfortable American Christians prefer preachers who say what they’re used to, whether it’s “Jesus loves me” or “prepare for judgment day.” Hundreds, if not thousands, had responded to John’s message, understanding the need for repentance, anxious to be clean before God, willing to be baptized. “And all the people who heard this, including the tax collectors, acknowledged the justice of God, because they had been baptized with John’s baptism." [Lk 7:29] They were familiar with the prophets’ call to be kind to the poor, to honesty and fair dealing. Indeed, they welcomed the reminder - except the Pharisees, of course, who were sure they were too righteous to need baptism.
What they didn’t understand that John was the last of his kind, and that a new day was about to begin. John was preparing the way of the Lord, and many of them were too set in their ways to understand that the new road they were to travel was a freeway. From now on, being baptized with water was not going to be enough. That is why Jesus added, “even the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” As good as the old way was, the new covenant would be even better.
And so many people “took offense at him.”
Jesus is disappointed, though not surprised.
“To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.’” [Lk 7:31-32]
What on earth does Jesus mean?
These are people who want Jesus to dance to their tune, to live up to their expectations.
If they wanted a prophet who would yell at them and make them feel scoured clean so that they could go home and get on with their lives - because after all, they were basically good people - they didn’t get it in Jesus. Weeping and wailing was cathartic, after all, and they’d feel better afterwards. I suppose you could think of this approach to the human addiction to sin as spiritual bulimia, with the prophets providing for the purge.
On the other hand, although the Pharisees probably welcomed Jesus’ warning words to the common folk, the ones who didn’t obey all of the laws they insisted must be followed to get in God’s good graces, they wanted to have their own exceptional virtue recognized and their service to the crown rewarded. They played the flute for Jesus - I’m sure that if he had joined their party he would have been welcomed, and flattered, and maybe even deferred to. As long as he realized that he owed them.
And both groups expected that when the Messiah did come, he would get rid of the Romans and fill all the positions of power with God’s chosen people; wasn’t that what they’d been chosen for? Wasn’t that what they had been promised?
There’s a wonderful line in Tom Clancy’s Clear and Present Danger - at least in the movie version. Our hero, Jack Ryan, gets involved in a complicated mission taking out some drug lords in Colombia, and gets left in the lurch halfway through the program in order to cover the administration's collective butt. When Jack unexpectedly survives the debacle, the President offers Jack a particularly juicy political plum in return for keeping his mouth shut, saying something about "doing the Washington two-step."
Jack’s response is, “I’m sorry, Mr. President. I don’t dance.”
Jesus doesn’t dance. At least not to our tune.
Jesus has not come to punish us, to beat us up, to threaten us. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world.” [Jn 3:17] At the same time, he did not come to flatter us, to affirm us, to hand out medals, or to tell us that we’d earned our way into the throne room.
Jesus invites us to dance to a new tune, to his tune. The Lord of the dance invites us all - but we have to let him lead.
