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“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matt 11:3)

During Advent, John the Baptist is found in two interesting places: the wilderness and jail. He asks a question from jail that I think is one of the all-time biblical classics. “Are you the one? Are you the one we’ve been waiting on all this time?” We cannot know exactly how John asked this question. The Bible is limiting in that it doesn’t always reveal a speaker’s mood or tone—whether it was timid, bold, or sassy, for example. We can’t always know how a person’s voice may have sounded; its inflection or pitch. And both are major players in how we interpret meaning from a biblical text.

When we read the Bible, or any book for that matter, we are making decisions about tone and tenor (rather unconsciously) by the clues the author gives the reader. One of the most overlooked and important tools in biblical interpretation is slowing down, slowing way down, and making some educated guesses about how characters in the Bible may have actually sounded in various situations. How did Mary sound when the angel brought the news? How about Joseph, even though the Bible tells us he never speaks? How did Jesus sound when he knelt and prayed that night in Gethsemane? How about Jeremiah in a cistern? Paul when he was struck blind on a Damascus road? Hannah when she learned she was pregnant? Or John the Baptist here in jail?

Practice this out loud, make some educated guesses about tenor and pitch, and I guarantee the Bible will come alive for you in ways silent reading cannot touch. In preparation for a sermon, I’ll read aloud dozens of times the text I’m preaching on—at traffic lights, in nursing homes and hospitals, in my office, even in the bathroom—listening for nuance that comes alive; details long ignored that leap forth with new meaning.

Here’s how I think John the Baptist probably sounded: “Are you the one? Are you of all people the Messiah we’ve been waiting for all this time? Or should we now wait on somebody else?” How do I know he sounded this way? Well, I don’t know for sure. But it’s a pretty good guess given the following: a) We already know John is fairly outspoken given his preaching track record in the Jordan River wilderness; b) We know that John is in prison and such a state makes anybody a little edgy; and c) We know (and John knows) that he is about to lose his head for exposing Herod’s adulterous fling with his own brother’s wife (Matt 14:1–12).

John’s question from prison cannot be timid or posed just to pass the time of day. Given his situation there behind bars, John is a little miffed; beginning to doubt Jesus just a bit. “Are you the one? Are you the messiah? Are you the one who was supposed to come with spirit and fire and burn away injustice? Are you supposed to be the Savior of the world or something?” The obvious answer to all these implied questions is this: “Then act like a Savior, bucko.”

I spend some time on voice inflection because until we take an educated guess at tone and tenor, the Bible will remain a dusty old book of dusty old stories printed on a page, and the words will have a hard time finding voice in our hearts. When we play around with how a biblical character may have actually sounded, however, we find the words forming in our own throats and gut and hearts. The stories are now portable.

Isn’t this true of the story of John in jail? When we say Are you the one? and try to decipher how it was first said, it’s not too long before John’s question becomes our question. Whether we are new to church and just starting out on the journey of faith, or whether we are seasoned pew veterans, John’s question posed to Jesus will always be a live, not-entirely-settled question for those with a vibrant faith—a faith that really matters in a world such as ours.

With myriad religious options set out for us like candy in the “spirituality” section of most any bookstore, we ask of Jesus: “Are you the one amid so many choices?” In a world of cancer, hunger, agony, and great suffering, we ask of the sufferer hanging on the cross, “Are you the one who will help me find meaning in the face of great paradox?” In a nation where it’s far easier to center our lives around materialism and comfort, we ask of the Lord who calls us to self-denial, “Are you the one who will help me discover my true self?”

Until a Christian asks questions like these and risks boring in like John the Baptist, faith may remain static or perhaps immaterial and have little real impact on our lives. “Jesus died and rose. Yeah, I believe that. What else is new?”

It’s possible that people who ask questions like John’s may be closer to the kingdom than those who seem smugly certain of Jesus. In a lecture titled, “Why I Am Not a Christian” (1927), Bertrand Russell, the twentieth century’s most famous atheist, described why people believe in God and what they expect of God. “Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason . . . the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you.”9

One can never know all of anyone’s reasons for believing in God and they may not match Russell’s at all. But in my experience, his answers are pretty typical for many, many believers as we face a new and different century for the church in this country. It’s what we’ve been taught. And we need a Big Brother. Is it okay to have these reasons? Maybe. But I’ll say it again. I can’t help but believe such a faith will eventually become simply immaterial to our daily lives and have no real impact on how we live.

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The big question is not whether God exists. Not really. The big question (and this is the Bible’s central question) is: What is God like? That was John’s real question from prison. He wasn’t questioning God’s existence or the fact of the coming Messiah. He was confused about the nature of this Messiah. Jesus, after close examination, didn’t seem to square with John’s expectations of how a Messiah should act and behave.

I’ll never forget a letter I received from a good friend in Maine. He doesn’t believe in God. But in all his letters he never asks me to try and prove God’s existence. He wants to know what sort of God I believe in. “What do you mean by God?” he once wrote. “Who God? What God? Where God? Define God.”

We, of course, can never “define” God, but Christians should be prepared to say how Jesus reveals God’s nature for them. “Are you the one” asks John. “Are you the one?” asks a lively person of faith. If our answer is “yes,” we should be able to say how and why Jesus is one who reveals God. If we can’t, then it is very doubtful that our “faith” will have any real impact on how we live. We simply believe in Jesus because we need a big brother.

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“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” How did John say that from prison so long ago? What was his tone, the inflection of his voice? John’s question, when we really hear it, gives us permission to ask the same thing. “Are you the one, Jesus? Are you the one?”

The choice to throw my hat in with Jesus cannot be based on proof or certainty. Jesus says, “Go and tell John . . . (Go and tell Frank) . . . Go and tell those who would follow me what you hear and see” (Matt 11:4).

What do you hear and see in these days of Advent? What is Jesus doing in and through your congregation? Recall Jesus’ answer to the disciples of John. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (Matt 11:5). I know people who are seeing with a brand new pair of eyes. I know folk who are walking in a whole new way. Others who are cleansed from a past that held them in bondage far worse than leprosy. Some, right in my home church, who have been raised from a dead end.

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“Are you the one, Jesus? Or should we shop around for another?”

What a great question for Advent, for life. Let it roll around on your tongue, in your mind, in your heart this season.

“Are you the one above all others?”

A faith that truly matters may very well begin right here, with this question.

For further reflection:

1. Is God’s existence or God’s nature more important in your faith journey these days? Why?

2. In your Scripture study this week, try reading a Bible story aloud and making decisions as a reader concerning tenor and inflection. If you’re in a group with others, how do the various oral readings shape the story’s interpretation?

9. Russell delivered this lecture on March 6, 1927, to the National Secular Society at Battersea Town Hall in London.