A number of years ago I encountered the uncommon experience of conducting a wedding and a funeral on the same day. Although I was able to wear the same suit and tie to both events, the radical emotional swing was from one event to the other left my head spinning. On one hand, weddings and funerals share some key similarities: they both involve a large gathering of family and friends, formal dress, flowers, food, and a religious ritual at a church.
But on the other hand, these occasions are polar opposites. A wedding is a celebratory ceremony where a man and woman pledge their love one another and commit to spending the rest of their lives together. The service is filled with bright smiles, loud applause, and tears of joy. It is usually includes a festive reception with lively music, vivacious dancing, cake-face smashing, and a lot of laughing. Weddings are almost always a ton of fun.
A funeral is a sorrowful ceremony where people gather to honor the life and mourn the death of a loved one. The service is filled with gloomy frowns, quiet reflection, and tears of torment. It usually entails somber music, depressive demeanor, and not much laughing. Even with our modern attempts to make funerals a celebration, they are almost never fun.
How many of you had “The Old Rugged Cross” played at your wedding? When was the last time you heard Bob Seeger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” played at a funeral?” (Can’t you just picture the pall bearers strutting down the aisle and singing, “Just take those old records off the shelf, I’ll sit and listen to ‘em by myself.”) Yes, weddings and funerals have some similarities, but they are really different.
The same is true about the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ—some similarities, but many differences. Even though they both experienced miraculous births, were raised in religious families, lived virtuous lives, were called by God to be prophets and preachers of the kingdom of God, and were persecuted and executed by the Jewish religious authorities, their manners and methods were polar opposites. While John the Baptist was fasting and teetotaling alone in the wilderness by the Jordan River, Jesus was feasting with sinners and replenishing the wine at the wedding in Cana. In today’s Scripture reading, Luke compares and contrasts the ministries of John and Jesus, and teaches us some lessons from both of them.
John Questions Jesus’ Ministry (18-23)
John the Baptist’s style of ministry was straight-forward, bombastic, and in-your-face. He was a man’s man—he wore the rugged attire of camel’s hair and a leather belt (he wasn’t fond of skinny jeans) and lived on a diet of locusts and wild honey (the ancient equivalent of Slim Jim’s and trail mix). He had untamed eyes, a fiery posture, and brimstone in his throat. He didn’t mince words and he wasn’t afraid to tell it like it was. He was passionately outspoken about moral and spiritual corruption in the culture and he didn’t care about who he offended. His favorite sermon topics were “repentance” and “the wrath of God” and his favorite pastime was dunking people in the river.
It was precisely this manner of ministry that landed John the Baptist behind bars. He preached one too many sermons against the hypocrisy of King Herod and the Jewish leadership. John accused the Pharisees and Sadducees of being a brood of slippery snakes and he publically called out King Herod for shacking up with his brother’s wife Herodias. Herod hated John for exposing his affair, and he had him shackled and imprisoned in his fortress.
While John was incarcerated, he commissioned some of his disciples to carry on his ministry and to give him periodic reports about Jesus’ ministry. These disciples followed Jesus around and witnessed his teaching and all of the miracles he was performing, and they told John everything that the saw and heard. At this point, John still wasn’t sure if Jesus was really the Messiah, so he sent his disciples to directly ask Jesus if he was “the one who was to come or if they should expect someone else.” (v.19)
To modern Christians, it is somewhat surprising that John wasn’t fully convinced of Jesus’ identity yet, but then again, Jesus’ style of ministry challenged his expectations for the Messiah. John, like the rest of Israel, expected a Messiah who would grab the bull by the horns, become a great public figure, rally the troops, amass a great army, and lead the charge to liberate Israel from Roman oppression. He expected the Messiah to use his divine power to take the instant road to glory. But Jesus wasn’t doing any of these things. John’s broken expectations led to some feelings of doubt.
The same thing still happens in our lives today. When Jesus isn’t the kind of Messiah that we want him to be, we often experience doubts about who he is. When he doesn’t meet our expectations, we wonder if he is really God. When he doesn’t answer our prayers or heal our bodies or deliver our personal desires, we often question his power or his love. When he doesn’t give us what we want, we sometimes doubt if he can do it or we struggle to understand why he would want to do it. Has Jesus ever broken your expectations? Has you disappointment with him ever caused you to doubt his true identity?
Well, even as John the Baptist’s disciples posed this question to Jesus about his identity, in that very hour Jesus was already engaged in the ministry of curing diseases, driving out demons, and restoring sight to the blind. This presented an object lesson for Jesus’ answer. He told them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” (22-23)
At first glance, it appears that Jesus danced around their question. While it is true that he did not explicitly say if he was the Messiah or not, he did answer their question. John the Baptist would have recognized that Jesus’ words came straight out of the Old Testament, from the messianic promises of Isaiah. By echoing these words, Jesus was giving John biblical and practical proof that he was the Christ. As he preached the gospel and performed miracles, Jesus was doing the very things the Bible promised that the Savior would do.
The problem did not lie with Jesus’ ministry; the problem was John’s expectations. Jesus’ mission was not to bring political, military, or social salvation. Although he healed some people and even raised the dead, his primary mission was not to bring physical salvation. The mission of Jesus’ ministry was to bring spiritual salvation to the world. If Jesus’ primary mission had been political salvation, he would have become a lawyer, politician, or military commander. If his goal had been social salvation, he would have started a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, or an orphanage. If his primary purpose had been physical restoration, he would have opened a hospital or medical clinic. But he didn’t do any of these things!
Jesus’ mission went far beyond delivering people from the temporary oppressions of society. The primary purpose of his ministry was to deliver us from the greatest oppression of all—sin and death. He came to offer eternal life. His preaching and miracles were meant to set the stage for his greatest work of all—his death and resurrection! And blessed is the one who is not offended by Jesus’ true mission!
You see, Jesus was warning John—and us—not to be offended by his saving work. Do not stumble over Jesus because he is not meeting your expectations, or because you are having spiritual doubts, or because you are disappointed with God. Do not get the wrong idea about Jesus, as John did. He is the one! If we try to find another savior, we won’t be saved at all. But if we accept Jesus and what he has done for us by dying on the cross and rising from the dead, he will bless us with everlasting salvation! Instead of getting disappointed with Jesus when he doesn’t meet our expectations, let us conform our expectations to who he really is and his plan for our lives! (Ryken 332)
Jesus Affirms John’s Ministry (24-28)
Jesus said these things because he loved John and wanted to help him be more sure about his faith. He also wanted to make sure that people did not get the wrong idea about John. So, he goes on to validate John’s ministry in verses 24-30. He asks the crowds why they originally went to see John in the wilderness. It wasn’t because he told people what they wanted to hear. It wasn’t because he was making any fashion statements on the red carpet. It wasn’t because he was keeping up with the Kardashians. No, they went to see and hear him because he was a genuine prophet from God; something Israel hadn’t see for 400 years.
Jesus went on to call John more than a prophet. He was the one who would be send ahead to prepare the way for the Messiah by preaching repentance and baptizing people. In verse 28, Jesus makes the staggering statement, “I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John.” Despite his strange clothing and crude style, Jesus ranks John as the greatest among mortal men. (Now that is what I call a ministry endorsement!)
Isn’t it ironic how John doubted Jesus’ ministry and identity, but Jesus affirmed John’s identity and praised his ministry. One of the things this shows us is Jesus believes there are a lot of different ways and styles of doing ministry. Some people today prefer John’s loud prophetic in-your-face form of preaching; others prefer Jesus’ more didactic and story-telling model. Some people prefer John’s confrontational tell-it-like-is approach to evangelism; other people prefer Jesus’ more relational evangelistic methods. Some people like to sing the old hymns with the organ in church; others favor the contemporary worship songs led by screeching guitars and pounding drums.
All I can say is that, even though they had vastly different styles, God used John the Baptist and Jesus the Son to build the kingdom. Their methods were different, but their mission and message was the same. I hope you catch the lesson in here for us!
Responding to the Gospel (29-35)
Regardless of the ministry style or method, people always have to respond to gospel of Jesus Christ. When some people, like the tax collectors, who heard the message of salvation—whether they had heard it earlier from John or later from Jesus—they accepted it by faith and declared that God was just. But there were other people, like the Pharisees and lawyers, who did not accept the good news, did not confess their sins, and did not receive John’s baptism for repentance, and therefore did not gain forgiveness.
As Jesus expressed his frustration with those who rejected the gospel, he used an analogy from a popular childhood game and nursery rhyme. In those days, children loved to play weddings and funerals. These were common events, and it is not surprising that children imitated the rituals they saw. Sometimes they would play weddings, dancing around pretending to be brides and grooms. Sometimes they played funerals, singing sad songs and pretending to cry. But some children were bored with all of that. They didn’t want to play weddings and funerals. In fact, they didn’t want to play anything at all. So the other children would singsong the old taunt from the Jewish playground: “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge for you but you did not weep.” (32)
Some people are never satisfied! Like little children, the Pharisees refused to play with John and Jesus. They would rather just sit around and criticize while everyone else is having fun.
How easy it is to be critical about everything and everything. Some people are always finding fault. They say “God didn’t answer my prayer the way I wanted…the church is too judgmental…the pastor didn’t visit me…the preacher preached too long…the music is too loud…and so on!” It is just like children with crosses arms and smug faces saying, “I don’t want to play with those kids!” Remember, there are many ways to do ministry. Instead of finding fault, why not just sing along and join the dance!
John the Baptists’ and Jesus’ ministry were as different as a wedding and a funeral, but both are used to accomplish God’s purposes.