Mistaken Identities

Psalm 119:145-176 • Psalm 128, 129, 130
Micah 2:1-13 • Acts 23: 23-35 • Luke 7:18-35

Today’s reading from Luke is, to me at least, more than a bit mysterious, but it does fit with something that the gospel often reminds us of—that we should be careful in our expectations of how God and God’s word will come to us. First it is John the baptizer, in the slammer on his way to execution, who is confused. Hearing what Jesus has been doing, he sends a messenger to ask, “Are you the one?” In proclaiming that Jesus was, in fact, the one, his predictions had been apocalyptic and violent, with winnowing forks and axes applied to the roots of trees and broods of vipers deserving to be smote. But Jesus was not into smiting vipers but curing the sick, healing the lame and deaf, and bringing good news to the poor. That’s what “the one” had come to do.

Then, having in effect rebuked John, Jesus turns to those around him, calls John “more than a prophet,” and then challenges them about what they are expecting with statements that seem awfully puzzling. John was a great man, but the one who is least in God’s kingdom is greater than John. People who saw the great man eating locusts in the wilderness figured he was demon-possessed, and now they see the one John proclaimed as “the one” eating and drinking with sinners and they say he is a drunk and a glutton.

As I said: more than a little mysterious. What I take away is that, perhaps, we are all supposed to remain both vigilant for how God is acting in our world and yet also resigned to being confused, in the sense of being always ready to be surprised at what we discover in our vigilance.

Written by Elliott West

Elliott teaches history at the University of Arkansas. He has been a member of St. Paul’s for more than twenty-five years.