So When They Asked, "Who Are You?" John Replied Who He Was NOT.

John 1: 20                                           February 10, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            John the baptizer knew who these priests and Levites from Jerusalem were looking for.  If you know the story of King Arthur and the Britons, you know, Merlin, Sword in the Stone, Excaliber, Britain when Britain was both tough and cool, you probably know the end of the story.  He is mortally wounded in battle and his body is taken off to Avalon on a magically powered raft/funeral barge.  The promise is made that Arthur will return again at the hour of Britain’s greatest need.  Which apparently has not happened yet.

            What Britain has is a Savior that is going to return in time of greatest need.  Sound familiar?  You are probably thinking about Jesus, and you would be right, but that is not what I am going for.  I am going for ‘the Messiah’.  Now you might tell me to wait because Jesus is the Messiah, and I would agree, but before Jesus was the Messiah, the Messiah was Legend.

            The Messiah is built into the Old Testament, a champion to be sent by God in the time of Israel’s greatest need.  See the parallels to Arthur?  But there is far more.  There is an expectation of this Messiah that lives in the hearts and the minds of the people.  I am not an Englishman, more of a hybridized North American, but I cannot imagine that there is a feeling in the hearts and minds of the Brits that pines for the return of Arthur.  Because the Brits are VERY proud of the fact that their island has not been successfully invaded since 1066. 

            But what if they had been?  What if Hitler had conquered Britain in World War 2?  What if they were not a free and democratic people struggling with the economics of the present time, but a conquered and subjugated people?  The idea of Arthur, the idea of the deliverer, the idea of liberation at their moment of greatest need, I could see that in the hearts and minds of the UK.

            Which is very much the expectation of the Messiah in the time of John the baptizer.  The people are oppressed, they are conquered.  But in the Old Testament narrative there is a Messianic promise, one who will rise up in the mantle of King David, the Warrior King, to liberate them.  Which provided an opportunity for any number of religious ‘fanatics’ to rise up, justify their terrorism by claiming the title of Messiah, thus gaining God’s justification for what they were doing, and starting trouble.

            So it does not surprise me that a blue ribbon panel of religious leaders were dispatched by the Jewish leadership to investigate these claims of ‘Messiah’ being propagated by John.  I wonder if there were any long-timers in the Temple who remembered back some thirty years, when some strange “magi” suddenly showed up in Jerusalem one day, looking for the King of the Jews.  Maybe their mysterious disappearance after headed to Bethlehem had put the leadership on high alert for anything that might smack of supernaturally “sanctioned” liberation figures.

            All they had to ask was “Who are you?” and John knew what question they were really asking.  He confessed, did not deny what he had already said, about the one coming after him who was before him and greater then him.  He went straight to the heart of the matter, “I am not the Messiah.”  He is not seeking the sanction of the Old Testament’s expectation of a Messiah.  That role did not belong to him.  It belonged to Jesus.