Today’s blog provides a meditation on the Reformed Church daily reading along with a headline fro world news:

BANGLADESH GARMENT WORKERS DENOUNCE CONDITIONS 

another victim pulled from the rubble

Luke 7:18-35

J.B. Phillips New Testament (PHILLIPS)

Jesus sends John a personal message

^18-19 John’s disciples reported all these happenings to him. Then he summoned two of them and sent them to the Lord with this message, “Are you the one who was to come, or are we to look for someone else?”

²⁰ When the men came to Jesus, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you with this message, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or are we to look for someone else?’”

^21-23 At that very time Jesus was healing many people of their diseases and ailments and evil spirits, and he restored sight to many who were blind. Then he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind are recovering their sight, cripples are walking again, lepers being healed, the deaf hearing, dead men are being brought to life again, and the good news is being given to those in need. And happy is the man who never loses his faith in me.”

Jesus emphasises the greatness of John—and the greater importance of the kingdom of God

^24-27 When these messengers had gone back, Jesus began to talk to the crowd about John. “What did you go out into the desert to look at? Was it a reed waving in the breeze? Well, what was it you went out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? But the men who wear fine clothes live luxuriously in palaces. But what did you really go to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, a prophet and far more than a prophet! This is the man of whom the scripture says, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you’.

²⁸ Believe me, no one greater than John has ever been born, and yet a humble member of the kingdom of God is greater than he.

^29-30 “All the people, yes, even the tax-collectors, when they heard John, acknowledged God and were baptised by his baptism. But the Pharisees and the experts in the Law frustrated God’s purpose for them, for they refused John’s baptism.

^31-35 “What can I say that the men of this generation are like—what sort of men are they? They are like children sitting in the market-place and calling out to each other, ‘We played at weddings for you, but you wouldn’t dance, and we played at funerals for you, and you wouldn’t cry!’ For John the Baptist came in the strictest austerity and you say he is crazy. Then the Son of Man came, enjoying life, and you say, ‘Look, a drunkard and a glutton, a bosom-friend of the tax-collector and the outsider!’ Ah, well, wisdom’s reputation is entirely in the hands of her children!”

There’s a complex history behind this material. Historically the relationship between the Jesus movement and the John Baptist movement is unclear but at one point they seem to have been rivals for allegiance. Disciples of John were  found as far away as Ephesus. The gospel writers all agree in presenting John as a forerunner of Jesus, and Luke adds that he was a relative. But there are indications in all gospels that John’s recognition of Jesus was doubtful at  best. Here Luke presents John’s doubt and interprets it as based on the much less rigorous life-style of Jesus. Can such a person be the Messiah? Jesus answers by referriing obliquely to prophecy: surely what he’s doing for people matches the ancient prophecies?

We don’t know how John received this answer. Luke reports Jesus’ respect for John. A man who draws people out to the desert as John did is a mighty prophet indeed. Indeed Jesus claims that he is the greatest prophet-because he is the last! Prophets foretell the coming of God’s rule in the world, but when God acts decisively to establis that rule- as He does in the ministryof Jesus-prophecy is at an end. A new time has come and those commit themselves to God’s rule, however insignificant are greater than the greatest prophet.

Jesus’ comparison of the religious leaders to sulky kids who won’t play either funerals or weddings-that is, who refuse the austerity of John and the sociability of Jesus- is very pointed and telling. God’s wisdom will be proved right in the lives of those who trust it.

Jesus shows his own greatness by refusing to compete with his great predecessor. He understands John’s costly prophetic service, while also believing that his own ministry expresses a new movemement of God’s being: in Jesus he comes to rule the world by persuasion.