13 December 2025 - not a victory lap

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

"Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?"

The book of Sirach, in giving praise to Elijah, taught that he would "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 prophet Malachi also mentioned that Elijah would return before the great and terrible day of the Lord. The scribes understood this, but they didn't recognize the coming of the one who fulfilled that promise. No doubt, for someone like Elijah they were expecting a victory lap, complete success without effort or opposition. John the Baptist, who came in the spirit and power of Elijah, had much about him that made his connection to Elijah evident. But we do not hear that he called to fire or destroyed the prophets of Baal or raised the dead. Yet what he did do seemed to be more important from God's perspective. He was very much interested in restoring the tribes of Israel through his message of repentance. It wasn't enough for them to rest on their laurels, as though their Abrahamic ancestry would automatically solve their problems. Rather, they were called to justice and to mercy. But it seems the scribes where hoping for something else, something that addressed the external problems in the world whilst leaving their souls untouched and unhealed. The idea that the proud in Israel had moral and spiritual work to do was probably part of why tax collectors and prostitutes believed the message of John but the professionally religious were more reluctant.

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.

The ministry of the forerunner shared in the polarizing nature of the one he came to make known. Neither the forerunner nor the messiah himself met with immediate unmitigated success. They both proclaimed such a provocative message that all of the systemic powers of darkness in the world came against them to silence them. Even their deaths may not have looked that remarkable to an external observer. The one died as a prisoner of a tyrant, the other as a criminal. Yet it really was the truth for which they stood that made them intolerable to those for whom it was uncomfortable. John did come to proclaim restoration, but only such as was available through individual moral reform. Jesus did come to proclaim the Father's everlasting love for his lost sheep. But the shape this took was not what everyone desired or anticipated, and so they did not all welcome it.

So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands.

Even Christians are sometimes tempted to look only for obvious and world-changing miracles to convince ourselves that we are not wasting our time. But Jesus never wanted to convince the crowds merely on the basis of special effects. He desired them to come to faith, not only in what he could do, but in what he himself desired to do. Hence the real transformations were and are often hidden. Those things would not be convincing to those looking for physics defying events that hold up to scientific scrutiny. Yet we know that the transformation of human hearts is even more difficult and improbable than merely physical healings. And, whether we often remember it or not, we do in fact know of the marvelous ways that those we know and we ourselves have become, through faith in Jesus, what we could have never been alone.

In summary, we need to believe Jesus and John about the need for us to die to self, through the power of the cross of Christ, through the blood of the lamb of God, so that we may then, and only then, experience the fullness of the resurrection.

 Choir of King's College, Cambridge - On Jordan's Bank