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23 2 Come and See (John 1:19-51) = John twice notes in his Prologue that God began the process of opening eyes to the glory of Jesus by sending a witness—John the Baptist. His glory is not obvious, which is why someone must be called to direct eyes to him. Nor are the words obvious that the Baptist uses to describe what he has been shown. But what he has seen he expresses with such power that people are compelled to look, some with such hungry eyes that they cannot do anything but hold themselves before Christ’s slowly unfolding beauty, others walking away in baffled incomprehension. The reader, of course, also hears these words of witness, and if they are slightly less puzzling to us because of John’s Prologue, there is still much that is unexplained, deliberately so. We, too, are being called to draw close, to come and see. We, too, are being called to store things up to make use of later. The Baptist, 1:19-34 The Baptist delivers his testimony over the course of three days. On the first day, a group of priests and Levites, sent from Jerusalem, confronts him and asks the point of his unusual, attention-getting actions. Scholars note that the ritual washing of baptism was used to signify a new way of life and was reserved for Gentiles converting to Judaism.1 Who was John claiming to be by demanding such actions from his fellow countrymen? John’s answers are entirely self-effacing, as if to make the point that they are looking at the wrong thing. “I am not the Christ” (1:20), he replies, understanding that such a claim was probably what they had been sent to investigate. (Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Messiah or “anointed one,” a term used 24 John in the Company of Poets for Israel’s long-awaited, Davidic figure who, after being anointed king, was expected to lead Israel back to a position of power and glory. “I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom,” God had told David. “He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever” [2 Sam 7:12-13].) I am not claiming to be that great figure, John tells his suspicious questioners. Nor is he Elijah, whose return had been predicted by the prophet Malachi “before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord” (Mal 4:5) or “the Prophet” like Moses that Moses himself had anticipated rising up to direct his people (Deut 18:15). But surely, they insist, John must be claiming something of that magnitude, in so deliberately turning conventions upside down. Who are you then? they ask. The Baptist continues to point away from himself. I am merely a voice, he says: “a voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (1:23). Those questioning him would have recalled the words of the prophet Isaiah, charged with delivering the good news that God had declared an end to Israel’s long exile in Babylon. Get ready, Isaiah had said, God was about to lead his people home. Even now, if they listened, a voice could be heard calling for that path home to be prepared: Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; . . . . . Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, And all flesh will see it together; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isa 40:3, 5) I am that voice, John tells the delegation from Jerusalem: the voice Isaiah heard in the wilderness, all those years before—a truly startling statement. Who is he? He is the voice Isaiah heard crying “Make straight the way of the Lord.” His actions, there in the wilderness, are announcing the fact that, in some unexpected way, Israel’s captivity is about to end. The delegation ignores these words, our first example of the world’s failure to “comprehend” what would seem to be right in front of its eyes. John has pointed them to the “glory of the Lord,” but they want something with which to pin him down: “Why then are you baptizing, if you are not the Christ, nor...

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