Questioning Christ

time of year are we? But we can’t get around it. Everything I just said is written write there in the Gospel lesson. We have to talk about it. John the Baptist cannot be avoided. Not last week, and not this week either. But before we talk about this particular passage, let’s go back and talk a little about who John the Baptist is. First off, he’s not Baptist. He’s not Lutheran either. But he was a guy of whom the prophets had been foretelling centuries before he came.

If you go all the way back to 1 Kings, you will meet a prophet named Elijah who confronted Kings and the establishment of the day. His message was one of firey judgment and redemption. In the first chapter of 2 Kings we read about how he dressed, “He was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist.” We read about how Elijah was taken up to heaven on a chariot of gold, but the Bible makes it clear that this isn’t the last time someone like him will walk on the earth. At the end of Malachi, the last prophet, we read these stirring words:

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

Now this doesn’t mean that God is going to take Elijah down from heaven and send him back to work, that would be cruel! What it means is that someone like Elijah, with his same kind of spirit and power would come and prepare the way, prepare people’s hearts to receive the Messiah. And this promise is fulfilled in John the Baptist. We read about this in Luke 1. The barren Elizabeth miraculously becomes pregnant by her husband, and then God tells them who their son will be: And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” So John has the mantle of Elijah, and a mission from God himself, and when the time comes, he explodes onto the scene like a stick of lit dynamite.

John goes out into the wilderness like Elijah, and takes on the establishment, and preaches a firey message of judgment, and even wears the same getup, camel hair and leather belt. And with this spirit and power, people come out the woodwork to respond. Thousands repent of their sins, and are baptized in the Jordan River, and the highway for the Messiah is prepared. Then one day Jesus comes to John to be baptized. John calls him, “The Lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the world.” God the Father calls Jesus, “My Son, whom I love, and with whom I am well pleased.” And the starter pistol is fired to begin Jesus ministry. The Long anticipated activity of the long awaited Messiah.

But then something funny happened. This Jesus, this Messiah, doesn’t do things the way anyone would have expected God’s Chosen one to do. The first thing he does is disappear into the desert for 40 days. This is important, as Jesus is fasting and facing the temptations of Satan himself, but whether or not John knew that or not we don’t know. Then Jesus starts preaching in his hometown, where the people decide to try and kill him. There