For example, it became
increasingly less clear to me what people meant when they said to Jesus “You
are the Messiah.” The writer, John, does not expand on what did they meant by
this or what they thought that the Messiah was going to do.
If this is an omission,
then either it must be deliberate or the answer to this can be derived from
elsewhere. I will not expand on this
here, but put forward a hypothesis later.
In my notes, I separated
the types of people (or in one case, a single person) that Jesus encounters
into five groups. All are recognisable from John’s gospel. You may categorise
them differently, or find sub-types, but in whatever way they are categorised,
it is sometimes easy and sometimes not so easy to see the corresponding people
in the 21st century.
In this blog, I will
further expand on just one of these “types”.
1. John the Baptist – Here is the “Lamb of God,
who takes away the sins of the world”.
2. Ordinary people, who begin to understand (a
glimpse, a shadow of) the truth
3. Ordinary people, who want to see an earthly
King and expected that the Messiah was an earthly liberator
4 Pharisees generally, who didn’t want to see
any change
5. Some Pharisees who did want to change
(Nicodemus / Joseph of Arimathea)
As this blog is only
allowed to run to 800 words (a self-imposed restriction), I will limit myself
to describing further just one of these types. However, before I do this, I
will make the observation that none of the people (with some notable
exceptions) who declared Jesus to be the “Messiah” or “The Son of God” were
there at the crucifixion.
John the Baptist
I found it interesting
that there was only one person, John the Baptist, who understood so profoundly
who Jesus was and expressed it so concisely. He had an advantage that, as
Jesus’ cousin, they had known each other for 30 years. The Bible does not tell
us how his views were formed and at what point in his life, John the Baptist
understood who Jesus was and what his own role was to be.
One thought from this
perhaps is that it takes many years to know Christ / God. Our initial encounters
are important (and are meaningful) and it is hard to accept that those views
will be incomplete. But they are incomplete and they take years to grow and
mature.
John’s message was totally
uncomplicated. Firstly to the Pharisees (the religious leaders) and people
generally was “Turn away from your wrong-doing, and be baptised as a sign of this”
and regarding Jesus, it was “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of
the world”.
There is something
enviable about a faith that is so uncomplicated. I suspect that our religious
opinions and faith become cluttered with various views that are not central to
the plot. This may be because that it probably takes 30 years (if it ever
happens), to discern what is important and what isn’t.
However, I was
disappointed by my failure to identify a corresponding person in today’s world.
I may have been looking in the wrong place, of course, or having seen him, simply
failed to recognise the person. Actually, I am not sure if I would recognise
him if he came. How would one recognise him?
I was not sure whether
John’s lifestyle was important. On balance, I think that it was. His lifestyle
was so simple that his message was unspoiled by accusations of ripping people off
or exploiting his followers, and the other types of accusations that can contaminate
a spiritual message.
Was John the Baptist a
one-off, never to be repeated? In the sense that his mission was to announce
the coming of Jesus, and to proclaim who Jesus was, then it was definitely a
one-time event. Perhaps that is why I cannot find the 21st century
John the Baptist. Alternatively, one could consider that the role of the Church
collectively has that role. To point out to men that God is there and to insist
that we turn to him is similar if not identical to John the Baptist’s and is an
admirable calling.
