Third Sunday of Advent; 11 December 2022; Advent 3A (RCL); Isaiah 35:1-10; Canticle 15; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11.
Matthew sets up the exchange between John’s disciples and Jesus with a fair amount of irony. John hears in prison what the Messiah is doing, telegraphing Matthew’s understanding of who Jesus is. John’s disciples ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Remember, John had preached that a more powerful one was coming who would baptize with Holy Spirit and fire, and begin the judgment between wheat and chaff. Apparently, in Matthew’s telling, John is beginning to have his doubts.
But Jesus doesn’t answer the question. He tells John’s disciples to go and tell John what they hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them. This is not the judgment John was expecting — no unquenchable fire here. Jesus’ answer alludes to the passage from Isaiah (and others) that we hear on this Sunday. This passage speaks of a royal highway through the desert on which the scattered of Israel will return to Zion. There is very little judgment in it (although chapter 34 has some pretty harsh things to say about Edom). We hear the God will come with vengeance and terrible recompense, but none of that is described in the lovely imagery about the desert blossoming with crocuses.
Acts tells us that the early Christian community was called “The Way,” or perhaps better, “The Road.” I believe this to be a reference to precisely this imagery in Isaiah. Christians were those on the journey along the royal highway back to (a figurative) Zion. What’s missing from John’s expectation (and that of those like him, such as the Qumran community with their War Scroll) is that terrible recompense to the nations. There will be no violent overthrow of the powers-that-be (despite Mary’s hymn). In fact, any judgment is going to look like Jesus on the cross. No wonder Matthew has him add the phrase, “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”
Matthew is imaging a kingdom coming from the bottom up. The blind, the lame, the lepers are on their way into this new kingdom, on their own without any change at the top. This helps make sense of the already/not yet tension around the eschatology of the New Testament. The followers of Jesus have set out on the Road, but, of course, haven’t arrived yet. John in particular, but even hidden in Paul’s letter to the Romans, is the sense that Christians are the new people on the wilderness way (Paul’s language about freedom from slavery to sin lines up with the Exodus story, and his explicit use of that imagery in 1 Corinthians 10 reinforces the connection). This time, there is no getting lost and wandering in the wilderness, but traveling with joy along a road through a blooming landscape and the assurance of arrival at the kingdom.
In Matthew’s telling, John was a prophet and more than a prophet; he was the one announcing the highway in the wilderness. But the least of those traveling along that Road is greater than John (see the Beatitudes). We can live the kingdom now as we make our pilgrimage toward the promise, and live it with joy as we travel singing along the royal highway.