Thursday in the Third Week of Advent, December 15, 2022

Luke 7, 24-30

When the messengers of John the Baptist had left, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John. “What did you go out to the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind? Then what did you go out to see? Someone dressed in fine garments? Those who dress luxuriously and live sumptuously are found in royal palaces. Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom Scripture says: Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, he will prepare your way before you. I tell you, among those born of women, no one is greater than John; yet the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he.” (All the people who listened, including the tax collectors, who were baptized with the baptism of John, acknowledged the righteousness of God; but the Pharisees and scholars of the law, who were not baptized by him, rejected the plan of God for themselves.)

Looking back from two thousand years and considering how little is actually said about St. John the Baptist in the Gospels, it is hard for us to understand his importance at the time the Lord Jesus walked the earth.  For evidence of this, we need to recall the fact that all four Gospels deal with him, and that he is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles.  We should also note that the Gospels tell us more about him than about any of the Apostles.  And if we read the accounts about John closely, we see that the Gospel writers are at pains to show that not only was John not the Messiah, but that he did not claim to be him, and even pointed out Jesus rather emphatically as the Messiah when he came.  There is also the case of Jesus going to John for baptism. St. Matthew, who wrote the first Gospel for the Jews at a time when many of John’s adherents were still alive, felt compelled to make clear that John was submitting to the will of Jesus rather than Jesus to John’s.  The Evangelists also tell of how, after his arrest by Herod, John sent his disciples to Jesus, and of how Jesus praises John.  All of this seems to indicate that even years after his death, John’s followers kept his memory alive and continued to play an important part in 

Jewish life for some time.  As a measure of his significance, St. Luke, writing for Gentile Christians for whom John the Baptist would have been an asterisk in the story of Jesus, spends much time rendering an account of his conception and birth.  In Acts 18, 24 - 19, 6, Luke writes of the eloquent Apollos, an Alexandrian who did not know the Baptism of Jesus but only that of Christ.  Luke then tells us of a group of believers in Ephesus who had received only the baptism of John.  This would have been perhaps twenty years after John’s death.  That there were still followers of John this late and this far afield from Judea helps us to see the range of his influence.  The attention paid to him by the Apostle John is such that the question must be raised as to whether one of the reasons for the writing of this Gospel was to convince the remaining followers of the preeminence of Jesus.  The birth of John the Baptist has been celebrated since at least the 500’s, and it is notable that he shares the distinction with the Blessed Virgin Mary as the only saints whose birthdays are celebrated by the Church.

In today’s Gospel Reading, the Lord has answered the messengers whom John the Baptist had sent to him, intending for these disciples would see for themselves that Jesus was the one of whom he had spoken and that they were to follow him from then on.  We can imagine the Lord hazing for some time down the road after John’s followers had left, knowing that he would only see him again when he went to preach to the dead after his crucifixion.  

“What did you go out to the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind?”  The Lord challenges the crowd, much as John had challenged the Pharisees who had come out to see him.  All had gone out into the wilderness looking for John, perhaps journeying for a few days, sleeping on the grass in the cool spring nights.  It could not have been mere curiosity that brought them to take such trouble.  It could not have been to see something they knew to be ordinary.  No one goes to such lengths to see a reed blown by the wind.  One could see such a thing around one’s house.  “Then what did you go out to see? A prophet?”  John caused them to come out to see him, for the work of the prophet was to draw sinners away from their complacency and their sinful habits.  And John was “more than a prophet”.  He was The one of whom the last prophet had spoken: “Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, he will prepare your way before you.”  Notice how the words are spoken.  God, speaking through the prophet, is speaking to someone who is not the prophet nor the prophet’s audience: I am sending my messenger ahead of you — not him, but “you”.  God is speaking to one who is his equal.  That is, his Son.  The crowd, listening to Jesus quote the prophet, could hear him claiming to be divine, while teaching that John was his duly appointed messenger.  Therefore, “among those born of women, no one is greater than John.”  But the crowd knew that Jesus surpassed John in power because John performed no miracles while Jesus performed them regularly. “Yet the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he.”  That is, the one reborn in the baptism of the Holy Spirit and who enters heaven after a life of faithfulness.  

We must not be weak reeds that blow this way and that according to the whims of the wind, letting others tell us what to think and to be liege and how to act, but to be “like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither” (Psalm 1, 3).  That is, watered by the grace of God and steadfast in doing his will, as seen in leaves that never fade.  Nor can we be “those who dress luxuriously and live sumptuously . . . found in royal palaces.”  Let us live simply, faithfully, and fruitfully, following only the Lord, leaving the opinions and expectations of all others behind.