besquared.org Blog

Today’s Text

Here are a few insights from Tom (N.T.) Wright about this text.

Pull a coin out of your pocket and look at it. What does it tell you?
I don’t mean, how rich does it say you are. Nor am I thinking about the actual words that are engraved on it. I’m referring to the pictures, the symbols.
The last two countries I visited before writing this were Greece and the United States; as usual, some of their coins came home with me. The Greek ones have pictures of ancient heroes: Alexander the Great on a 100-drachma coin, Democritus the philosopher on a 10-drachma one. On the other side they have symbols: the sun with its bright rays on the first, the sun and the solar system on the other. The American coins have heroes, too, though not quite so old: Abraham Lincoln on one, George Washington on another. And the symbols, for those who bother to look at them, are powerful too: Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia, on the back of the 1-cent piece) the great eagle on the quarter, and so on.
Now imagine that you had never seen a book, a newspaper, a photograph or even a stained-glass window. The only pictures you would know would be occasional paintings, carvings, mosaic floors (if you were, or worked for, someone very rich) – and coins. And coins were the only ones you would see regularly. They were the only mass medium in the ancient world. They were the principal way of getting across a symbolic message to ordinary people. For Jews, who (at least in theory) weren’t allowed to make pictures of human beings, the choice of symbols for coins was very important indeed.
When Herod Antipas chose the symbols for his coins, just a few years before the time of Jesus’ public ministry, his favouritc was a typical Galilean reed. You would see whole beds of them swaying in the breeze by the shores of the sea of Galilee. A reed would symbolize the beauty and fertility of that area.
‘What did you go out to see?’asked Jesus to the crowds who had gone to be baptized by John, and were now following him. ‘A reed swaying in the breeze?’ They would have got the message. Were you looking for a new king – another one like old so-and-so up the road? If they missed the point, the next line brought it closer home. Were you looking for someone wearing the latest splendid fashions? If so, you were looking in the wrong place: the royal palace is the place for luxurious clothes. Well then, what were you looking for? A prophet! Yes indeed, but something more than just ‘a’ prophet. This was a special prophet indeed. This was the Advance Guard, the Preparer.
This whole long passage, the discussion between Jesus and John’s messengers, and then Jesus’ cryptic comments to the crowd, highlight one question in particular: who does Jesus think he is? To talk about Herod on the one hand, even by implication, and to talk about John on the other, arc ways of talking about the figure who stands in between them. Is Jesus just a powerful prophet? Is he the new king, God’s anointed, destined to replace Herod? Or what is he?
John, in prison, was clearly puzzled. Jesus wasn’t doing what he had expected. If Jesus really was the Messiah, why wasn’t he establishing the sort of messianic kingdom John wanted – presumably including liberation for prisoners like himself Jesus is far too astute, with listening ears all around, to say openly, ‘Yes, I’m the Messiah’. We hear a few chapters later that Herod wanted to kill him (13:31), and a clear statement would have been an unnecessary risk. Instead, he heals all sorts of people before the eyes of the messengers, and suggests that they draw their conclusions – with a helping shove in the right direction provided by the quotation of various passages of Isaiah. (Some Jews already saw this sort of list as a prediction of what the Messiah would do when he came; one such list occurs in an ancient scroll found in Qumran.) This is the kind of Messiah Jesus intends to be: not a straightforward rival to Herod (though his kingdom will eventually challenge and outlast all the Herods
in the world), but a kingdom operating in a different mode altogether, healing people and the world at every level.
But if Jesus is a different sort of king, John is a different sort of prophet. He isn’t just one prophet among many. He is the one spoken of by Malachi, the one whose task is to prepare the way for the coming Lord. In Malachi 3:1, the messenger clears the path for the Master to come to the Temple and cleanse of all unholiness, to bring God’s judgement and mercy to bear on Israel as a whole. And in this passage the Master in question doesn’t seem to be simply the Messiah; he is YHWH hims( Israel’s God in person. That, we may suppose, is why (thou initially it sounds surprising) the least in God’s kingdom greater than John. The least of those who belong to the new movement initiated by Jesus is greater than the greatest in who was ever born up to that time. This is a strong claim indeed, though still too indirect for anyone to take it back a hostile report to Herod. Those who sat down and chewed it over, though, would realize what was being said. Those who didn’t would still look and look but never see the point.
Many of Jesus’ contemporaries were like that: complain’ that John was too austere, complaining in the next breath that Jesus was too much the life and soul of the party. But wisdom will out, and those who had understood what was going on would see that this was how it had to be.
People today still judge Jesus by their expectations, instead of pausing and probing into the evidence to see what was really going on. They do the same, often enough, with Jesus’ followers – criticizing some for being too strict, others for being too soft, some for being too intellectual, others for being down-to-earth. Yet wisdom can still be glimpsed by those with eyes to see. Following the Messiah who is different to what we imagined is always demanding; but this is the only way to the kingdom of God.

I told you it was good.

-Ethan