3rd Sunday of Advent
Mt 11:2-10
December 12, 2004

Our passage marvelously summarizes the whole Matthean rendition of Jesus’ early Galilean ministry. For Jesus began his preaching right after learning about John's imprisonment (4:12). Beforehand, while baptizing and preaching, John spoke about "the One who is to come" (3:11). When Jesus came to him and asked to be baptized by him, John seemed to be certain that this person was the one by whom he, John, must be baptized, and he saw the heavens split open. But now John experiences not only the dark hour of his approaching death but also confusion and mixed emotions about "the works of Christ" -- the claimed messianic deeds of which his disciples inform him during his imprisonment.

What is there in Jesus' first ministry that emits "mixed signals" and can cause conflict in the mind and heart of the Baptist? We already saw that by his participation at a banquet with sinners Jesus aroused scandal not only among the Pharisees but also among the disciples of John. They inquired why he did not expect his disciples to fast, as the Pharisees and the Baptist did. What is quite disturbing is that in their question (9:14) we find an explicit grouping of the Pharisees and the Baptist’s in contrast with the disciples of Jesus: "Why is it that we and the Pharisees frequently fast, while your disciples do not?"

Se we can see how John had received such ambiguous information about the man with whom he had had such a marvelous, inspired and miracle-filled encounter before his imprisonment. This was the person in whom he had put his hopes, the one who left Judea and returned to Galilee after John's imprisonment and who began, it seemed, to resume the mission left unfinished by the Baptist. But he was reported to be doing two things that the Baptist never contemplated: he went around as a wonder-working healer and the friend of "tax-collectors and sinners" (cf. 9:11; 11:19). Moreover, his life style was reported to be dissolute: "eating and drinking wine" (cf. 11:19) at the parties of the sinners who have no regard for the dietary laws and customs of the Mosaic religion. The Baptist finds himself in prison because he took a stand against Herod's scandalous disregard of the law, while his disciples report to him that the one he has recognized as his "anointed" successor is carrying out his ministry in unexpected and unexplainable ways.

Jesus' response is a marvelous "apologia pro vita sua" in a collage of scriptural quotations, all from Isaiah. He does not call himself "Messiah." Instead, he wants his deeds to speak for him. Just as we read in John's gospel, "The works that I do bear witness on my behalf" (5:36). In one sentence Jesus makes a resume of his whole initial ministry. Those deeds curing the blind, the deaf, the lame and the leper, and the speeches in which he welcomes, hails and uplifts of the downtrodden populace provide fulfillment for the prophecies of Isaiah's book. They literally constitute a continuation of the message of John's own preaching who used to quote the first words of Isaiah's Book of Consolation: "a voice is crying in the wilderness… " (Is 42:1). Now Jesus' words and deeds provide the rest of the message. The miraculous cures are luminous signs that God restores sight, hearing, purity, inner health to those ready to repent. “Go back and tell John what you see”: a springtime of faith with the rebirth of a new way of living surrounds Jesus wherever he offers his friendship to the sinners. For friendship with Jesus means a "return to God," so that as friend and healer of sinners, He brings to unexpected fullness the Baptist’s program of the Baptist: "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near!" Through their friendship with Jesus, God's kingdom begins to reign in their hearts.

The Baptist in the prison, a harsh and ascetic man of the desert, a critic of priests, rulers and politicians, receives a message that strikes him like a bolt of lightning, opening the heavens anew and revealing the ways of God with even more clarity than a year or two earlier when he had baptized Jesus at the river Jordan. Among the "poor" of Galilee, now even this poor and humiliated prisoner is "evangelized”: he sees, hears, is cured and liberated from his doubts, finds a way to a new life, and is risen before the hour of his martyrdom arrives.

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