"Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?"
The scribes may have used the fact that Elijah was supposed to come first as an excuse to dismiss Jesus as a possible Messiah. After all, Elijah's first apperance had been dramatic, shattering the staff of breaad of his enemies and in his zeal reducing them to straits. He shut up the heavens by his word and three times brought down fire. The scribes hadn't seen the return of any chariot with fiery horses. They assumed that such an event would be unmissable. But they were mistaken.
He said in reply, "Elijah will indeed come and restore all things;
but I tell you that Elijah has already come,
and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased.
Their expectations for both the Messiah and his forerunner were incorrect. They thought God was going to act through such figures with definitive displays of irresistible power. What he in fact did was to appeal through them with an all too resistable invitation.
You were destined, it is written, in time to come
to put an end to wrath before the day of the LORD,
To turn back the hearts of fathers toward their sons,
and to re-establish the tribes of Jacob.
The return of Elijah was not promised so as promised to begin the conquest of the external enemies of Israel. He was to come to help the people prepare their hearts for the coming of the Messiah. He was to give guidance for them to correct the fact that they had been failing to live their most basic relationships in a Godly way. Thus John the Baptist was not known for miracles but for profound moral clarity. Had he performed miracles the scribes might have been able to love him and appreciate him from a distance. But his moral insight offended those who believed themselves to be good enough already. His words made Herod curious. But they were not so interesting that Herod would spare his life on account of the fact that he sensed truth in his voice. In these ways he not only prepared for the coming of the Messiah but also prefigured the ways in which Jesus himself would be misunderstood and rejected.
If the message of John the Baptist helped prepare for the first coming of Jesus so too can it help us to prepare. From him we can be drawn out of our selfish ways consider how we can live our relationships with others in a more loving way. His message can help us even more than his original audience because we have already received baptism of the Spirit and fire by one mightier than he. This baptism has given us the grace to do well and consistently what his original audience could only strive after imperfectly. And it is by no means trite or trivial to suggest that doing what we can to live more virtuously with our family and friends can easily lead to a better experience of Christmas. Christmas is all about family, after all, as God himself became a part of the human family and began to invite women and men to share in the divine life of his own Triune family.
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