In today's gospel, John the Baptist has been arrested for criticizing
Herod's marriage to his living brother's wife and is looking at Christ
and His ministry; he is having doubts. John the Baptist is having doubts.
He sends a messenger to Christ to ask if
He is whom John thinks He is.
“Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”
Was he really having doubts or, like the rest of us, was he hoping Christ would give him a declarative sentence defining Himself?
Christ, typically, asks John to look at his actions. Then Christ says something strange; he says "And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.” Christ places Himself as an inconvenience, a hindrance and annoyance in the human, material world.
Then, amazingly, rather than defining Himself for John, He defines John for them! And to finish the abstraction from human life, Christ says this: "among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
After praising John, Christ reverses the the physical world and places it in the shadow of the spiritual, as if the material world was a non sequitur.
John, unshaken by the wind:
Was he really having doubts or, like the rest of us, was he hoping Christ would give him a declarative sentence defining Himself?
Christ, typically, asks John to look at his actions. Then Christ says something strange; he says "And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.” Christ places Himself as an inconvenience, a hindrance and annoyance in the human, material world.
Then, amazingly, rather than defining Himself for John, He defines John for them! And to finish the abstraction from human life, Christ says this: "among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
After praising John, Christ reverses the the physical world and places it in the shadow of the spiritual, as if the material world was a non sequitur.
John, unshaken by the wind:
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