If you have a feeling of déjà vu at this morning’s liturgy, what might be the cause? Obviously, it’s not the rose vestments, which we haven’t worn since March.
Do you remember what the gospel was last week? It was John the Baptist, the voice crying out in the desert, and, Matthew says, “All Judea and the whole region around the Jordan were going to him.” Today, John is no longer in the desert, but is in prison. And it is in prison that he hears about the works of Christ, which he had predicted last week.
Except there is a difference.
Last week, when speaking of one mightier than he, John said of the Messiah, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand….the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” So, it’s interesting that this week, when he asks Jesus whether He is one, Jesus doesn’t quite answer directly.
And it’s not an invalid question. After all, we don’t see—or we seem not to see—Jesus with a winnowing fan in his hand, even metaphorically. Where is the wheat and the chaff?
Instead, Jesus responds with a strong paraphrase of Isaiah chapter 35, today’s first reading. And this is interesting. Who is effecting these cures in Isaiah? The first two verbs are in the passive voice: eyes will be opened, ears will be cleared. This is what is sometimes known as the divine passive. Isaiah does not specify who is opening the eyes of the blind. It magically happens.
But we know that this happens when God comes to save His people. “Here is your God…he comes to save you.” That’s when eyes get opened.
So that’s Jesus’s response: if eyes are opened and the lame are walking, then God must have come to save His people. So, was John wrong? Did he have the wrong Messiah?
Of course, this can’t be the case, because the gospels go out of their way to underline the Baptist’s importance as the one who prepares the people and gives witness to Jesus.
The Fathers of the Church struggled with this passage, where John doesn’t seem to know whether Jesus is the Messiah. Did he not hear the voice from heaven pronouncing Jesus the Son of God at His baptism? What they noticed about this episode is that John is not asking Jesus a question directly; he is sending his disciples with the question.
Is it possible that they were the ones who were taking offense? That the Messiah appears bearing mercy, healing, and forgiveness rather than condemnation? This is a good explanation, I think, but it just shifts the burden.
If Jesus is the one who is to come, when are we going to see the winnowing fan, the wheat gathered and the chaff burned?
This is the second surprise. If the first is that the Messiah is not only a human king, but is God Himself, the second is that baptism by the Holy Spirit makes us not only human, but sons and daughters of God by adoption.
The chaff that is to be threshed out and burned is our sins, our worldliness, all that would make us unfit to be God’s heirs.
What about the wheat? Would this not be everything good that God has given us, and every effort, however small, that we have made to say, “Yes,” to do God’s will?
Oftentimes it feels as if our good deeds go unnoticed. Or when they are noticed, others respond with mild cynicism or outright cynicism.
We do good, hoping to build up all that is good in the world, and it seems like evil goes on its way unconcerned. It is as if our good deeds limp, a good word meets a deaf ear. God’s beautiful creatures are obscured, eyes are blind to the stars hidden behind streetlights, living things perish and decay.
This is where Jesus comes to set things right. In His kingdom, which is not of this world, he will have gathered up all those efforts at fidelity. They will no longer Iimp, but will dance before us, and all good words that were uttered will become a song of joy and praise. The dead will be raised, and there will be no tears or pain in that new world, which God wishes to be ours, that world in which even the least is greater than John the Baptist.
Why would we take offense at this? Why would John’s disciples have taken offense?
I believe they were hoping to divide the world between the good people, namely the people of the covenant, and the bad people, like the Romans and their collaborators. Would we not at times also like to see our opponents get burned—at least a little bit—for causing suffering to others?
If we do not see ourselves as lame and blind, at least in some sense, are we not prone to rancor when the undeserving receive mercy and healing? We will answer this with the words of Saint James: “Do not complain, brothers and sisters, about one another, that you may not be judged.”
If we can welcome each other as Christ has welcomed the least deserving, we will have that much more wheat to bring to God and that much less chaff to be burned away.