21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”
24 Now the Pharisees who had been sent 25 questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
26 “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”
28 This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
(New International Version)
This story begins the narrative of the Gospel of John, following the prologue, and opens with a scene consisting of two main characters, John the Baptist and members of a Jewish sect known as the Pharisees (according to v. 24). To begin to appreciate the former we must understand the latter, so a bit of history is in order before we get under way.
The Pharisees. As we will see it is of significant importance that the priests and Levites who were sent to question John the Baptist were of the group known as the Pharisees and not, lets say, members of the Sadducees or the Essenes. The story of the Pharisees begins back in 161 BC at the Maccabean Revolt. The Jewish Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC and, from then clear up to 161 (426 years!) the land of Israel was oppressed and dominated by foreign, blasphemous, pagan rulers. Israel existed throughout this time of ironic exile (remaining in the land while enduring a state of exile) in a state of growing confusion and tragic tension: if Israel is THE elect of the ONE true god, THE people through which He plans to save the world, how can so many nations so easily and thoroughly oppress them? How can they continually be defeating by pagans who believe their gods are the greatest? Their circumstances challenged not only their military strength but also their entire tradition, theology, and way of being. Eventually one of these subsequent rulers committed the single most heinous crime one could commit against Israel and Yahweh: he established worship of himself in the Temple. His arrogance was his downfall. He severely misjudged the fervor of the Jewish people and, by a group led by Judas Maccabaeus, was defeated and run out of Jerusalem (this event is celebrated annually, to this day, at Hanukkah). IT had happened! Israel and her God had finally been vindicated like the prophets said they eventually would be! But things did not turn out how they were supposed to. The government set up by Judas and his followers was a perversion of that which God ordained in the times of David and Solomon. Its perversion lay in its uniting of the separate offices of priest and king. Israel, though seemingly vindicated, was not ruled how God intended at all. Things, then, had not changed very much.
This is where the Pharisees come into the story. There were three general means of response to this perverse Israel: 1) play the power game, win favor among the elite, and more or less sell out 2) desert Israel, deem it corrupt beyond repair, and establish an independent community, a private and “true” Israel 3) remain faithful to Israel despite her corruption and do one’s best to reform her from within. Option one will at least later come loosely to be known as the Sadducees. Option two would come to be known as the Essenes. The sect who established the community at Qumran and wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls is a classic example of the Essenes. Option number three would come to be known as the Pharisees, the very same group who approached John the Baptist by the river Jordan in 28 AD.
Long-story-short, Rome walks into town in 63 BC and takes over without meeting any resistance and now things are really back to the way they were a hundred or so years ago, with at least one additional negative aspect. Israel has been in exile for over half a millennium, but at least in the past they understood why. Throughout those periods of exile God rose up prophets to announce to the people that they had rebelled against Yahweh in whatever number of ways, and that He would re-establish them once they became repentant and changed. But by the time Rome comes to town Israel has not heard from a prophet in hundreds of years. All signs, everywhere you looked, pointed to His absence and desertion. And then, out of the wilderness walks John the Baptist. Dressing in the manner of a prophet, speaking like a prophet, acting like a prophet, and multitudes of people begin treating him like a prophet. One can imagine the excitement. Hundreds of years of (apparent) silence on behalf of Yahweh now broken. And John’s message? “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven has come near” (Mt. 3:2, NIV). There wasn’t a message more thrilling to the people of Israel. Vindication was just around the corner, and in order to be a part of it one must repent (signified by baptism).
To Pharisaic ears John’s message sounded oddly familiar. Israel, existing in a state of subjugation to Rome, was not a nation in a political or geographical sense. She did not have her own physical borders or national government, making the questions of who is “in” and who is “out” much harder to answer (this question, who are the true children of Abraham, dominates John 8). Ideally, members of the nation of Israel could be easily identified- they walked the streets everyday. Israelites were those living under Israeli rule and within her borders. But, having no rule or physical borders, some serious redefinition needed to take place for her to survive the military, cultural, economic, and political imperialism of Rome. Of course the sell-outs (Sadducees) weren’t very worried about this. And neither were the Essenes. The former didn’t have reason to worry very deeply about Israel’s existence, because it didn’t really affect their own. The latter chucked the whole project and started over in the desert. No, it was predominately the Pharisees who shouldered the burden of at least trying to sustain Israel’s traditional identity, and they did this by emphasizing, in the everyday life of the people, the three national symbols they still had: the Temple, the Torah, and the festivals. The strict observance of these three symbols in the everyday lives of the Israelites would be the means of preservation of national identity. This is why we see Pharisees so deeply concerned when Jesus seemingly violates the Sabbath, or eats with his disciples with unclean hands, or talks about destroying the Temple. Jesus is (very knowingly) threatening the very identity of Israel, at least in the Pharisaic mind. Also, it is paramount that we understand that the means by which national identity was being preserved were also the means by which the Pharisees sought to demonstrate their faithfulness to the God of the covenant, so that when He did vindicate His people, when the kingdom of Heaven did come, He would have no doubt about who were His own and who were not.
Back to the comment on familiarity. The message of John the Baptist: repent, for the kingdom of Heaven has come near. The message of the Pharisees: don’t act like that, but act like this so that you can be a part of the kingdom whenever it comes. Now there are many minor differences that I need not point out, which are immediately apparent, but the main difference between the two messages lies in their style of presentation. Basically John the Baptist is dressed, speaks, acts, and is treated by the people, as if he were a prophet sent from God. The Pharisees aren’t, don’t, don’t, and aren’t, because they’re not. And, obviously, they know this, hence the depth and severity of their curiosity when their representatives come face-to-face with the Baptist.
This depth and severity of curiosity is evidenced in the type of questions they pose to him, and John completely understands. He knows what people are saying about him despite the content of his message and he responds accordingly to question #1 which is simply “who are you?” He responds, “I am not the Christ” (Jn. 1:20, NJB). Questions #2 and 3 address the other (almost equally) exciting possibilities of John’s identity: “are you the prophet promised by Moses in Deuteronomy 18 who is to appear prior to our vindication? Or are you Elijah come back to us from heaven as it was promised you would in order to reveal the Messiah to us?” To both of these (paraphrased) questions John adamantly replies “No”. They press him further, “well you must be somebody because you’re causing an enormous uproar, and times are such lately that we can’t afford to be ignorant of your identity, so who are you?!” John reluctantly gives in (bringing us to v. 23) and quotes a passage from Isaiah, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’” Though he still doesn’t say much about his identity, he does testify to his intention/purpose, to literally prepare the way for the Lord who is coming. This passage John quotes (Isaiah 40:3) originates in an ancient practice. Say you live in a fairly large city that is far away from the heart of your nation or kingdom, and it is common knowledge that your king or ruler was on his way to visit. People would literally go out to the road or highway or whatever, and prepare it for his coming. This meant lowering the high spots, filling in the low spots, and doing one’s best to smooth it. John is evoking this exact image. He, via proclamation and baptism, is preparing the way for the Lord who is near, nothing more, nothing less. What is interesting is that the other Gospels have no problem identifying the Baptist as Isaiah returned, but John avoids this. Why? Because, to a degree greater than the other Gospels, the Gospel of John is Christocentric (a fancy term meaning “Christ-centered”). His emphasis on the person of Christ is also why he never refers to Jesus’ mother by her name, Mary, and only as “Jesus’ Mother”. The chief aim of John’s ministry is to ready the people of Israel for their soon coming Lord (not that the Baptist or anyone has any idea what this means).
The Pharisees (v. 25): “so if you aren’t anyone special how do you justify your actions?“ They were right in posing this question to John, because the ritual of baptism was most often reserved for proselytes (another fancy word, denotes gentiles who fully converted to Judaism). So despite the increasingly vague similarity- content-wise- between the message of the Baptist and the Pharisees, the former is undeniably distinguished from the latter in the quality of his message (given explicitly in the prophetic style) and the required response to his message (“repent and be baptized”, versus “adhere more fiercely to the national symbols”). But the question of authority remains. And the Baptist’s response subtlety turns the question back onto the Pharisees: “you’re worried about the authority, or lack thereof, behind my radical behavior, but the one coming after me is standing among you right now, and I am not worthy to perform even the most humbling of favors for him”. Again, the supreme humility of John: the undoing of someone’s sandal strap (v. 27), in the first century, was so servile that servants alone were permitted to do it (foot-washing lower still…), and John, whose presence and actions are viewed by some as messianic and earn him comparisons to Moses and Isaiah (the two greatest figures of Judaism), confesses his radical inferiority to the mysterious figure in the crowd. Note also the implication of John’s response. This entire episode with the Pharisees is taking place after John’s baptism of Jesus- John has already had the Messiah revealed to him, though Jesus has yet to begin his ministry. And note also the recurring theme of Christocentrism: John answers their fifth enquiry pertaining to his person by pointing beyond himself to the coming Lord. He is incapable of more or less.
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