Saturday in the Second Week of Advent, December 11, 2021

Matthew 17:9a, 10-13

As they were coming down from the mountain, the disciples asked Jesus, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” He said in reply, “Elijah will indeed come and restore all things; but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.

God’s revelation that he would send a Messiah, an anointed Savior, into the world was made gradually through the Scriptures.  The pattern of a savior sent by God was revealed in the lives of the judges who ruled various tribes of Israel in the years before King Saul: a tribe would be overcome by a neighboring king as a result of its sins; the people would cry out to God for help; he would raise up a person to defeat the enemy and then take up the rule of the tribe.  During the years of royal rule, God raised up prophets to warn the people to give up their idolatry and to live justly or they would be conquered by enemy armies.  Even as the God warned them through the prophets with increasing vigor and urgency, he promised that he would eventually bring them back from the exile they would suffer.  It is during this period that Isaiah prophesied of a Prince of Peace, and also of a “servant” who would suffer for the people.  After the Jews returned from the Babylonian exile, God sent them prophets who spoke of a great judgment to come and of a “Son of Man” whom God would send to rule the earth.  Jewish books written after the death of their last prophet elaborate on this ruler and judge who would come at the end of the world.  Although the prophecies of the one whom the Jews came to call the Messiah were scattered in the biblical books, by the time Jesus was born the scribes had pieced together their own model for how he would appear and what he would do.  The scribes opposed Jesus in large part because the people regarded him as the Messiah even though he did not fit their model.

“Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”  The Lord’s disciples know him to be a powerful worker of miracles and a superb, if often puzzling, preacher.  His way of life was beyond reproach as far as they were concerned.  Yet they also wondered about him because the scribes had told them all along that the Messiah would be military leader and Jesus showed no inclination at all for this.  Here they ask a question that plagued them as they tried to reconcile what they had seen and heard and what the scribes had told them.  They allude to a teaching by the Prophet Malachi: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” (Malachi 4, 5).  Since Elijah was said to come before this day, he would necessarily come before the Messiah.  It seemed odd to the disciples — and certainly to many other Jews — that the Messiah would need a herald, as Elijah was evidently meant to be.

“Elijah will indeed come and restore all things.”  The Lord’s answer also replies to Malachi 4, 6, where it is said that Elijah would “turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.”  The Greek word translated here as “restore” can also mean “to reestablish”, “to reinstate”, “to return”, and “to deliver”.  That is, Elijah would come and begin the work of restoring creation — severely damaged by the original sin — to the state in which God had intended it.  This restoration or reestablishment would be completed in Christ: “[It is God’s will] in the dispensation of the fullness of times, to reestablish all things in Christ, that are in heaven and on earth, in him” (Ephesians 1, 10).

“But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased.”  As St. Matthew remarks at the end of the reading, “Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.”  It seems so obvious to us today that John the Baptist was the herald, the fore-runner of Christ, fulfilling the office of Elijah, but for the people of the time, this came as a great revelation.  The Lord makes it to them as he is about to enter Jerusalem for the last time.  The announcement that Elijah had already come told them that the “great and terrible day of the Lord” was about to dawn, though they had little idea yet as to what this really meant.  “So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands.”  John had been rejected by the Pharisees and the scribes because they had thought he might be the Messiah and he had told them he was not.  Thereafter they had no time for him.  They also found his lifestyle incompatible with their ideas for how a righteous Jew should live.  And finally he was arrested and killed by Herod.  Jesus tells his disciples that he, the Son of Man, would suffer similarly.  Now, this was a teaching they were not prepared for.  In Daniel 7, 13-14, the Son of Man is shown in his glory.  There is no hint that he would suffer.  What the Lord said seemed to contradict the Prophets and the scribes.  Still, the disciples had their answer and they continued to follow him even as they struggled to understand.  Even at the point of the Lord’s Ascension into heaven they showed confusion: “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom of Israel?” (Acts 1, 6).

How grateful we ought to be that the Lord in his mercy established his Church so that we might be taught the full truth about him.  And as we have received this knowledge freely, let us be prepared to share it with those who do not have it.