I WAS CALLED “John the Baptist” because of that great revival movement we had down by the Jordan River. We were all so hopeful then, especially after my cousin Jesus showed up. I suspected he was The One to save our people, even after he asked me to baptize him. But when I heard that heavenly voice announcing, “This is my Son,” I knew. Judgment was coming! Jesus would know how to separate the wheat from the chaff and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire (Matthew 3:11-17)!
I was on a roll. We Jews would live by Yahweh’s law, Rome’s yoke would be cast off, and everything would change. I kept preaching and baptizing, and I even chastised Herod Antipas for his unlawful marriage (Mark 6:17-18), confident he was part of the “chaff.” Jesus was our Messiah, the Anointed One of Israel—and I had been his forerunner (Matthew 3:2-3). Yet here I am—chained to a wall in Herod’s dreary prison cell. What went wrong?
I assumed Jesus would gather and train disciples to prepare for a revolution. But rumors from my own disciples tell me this is not happening. He’s sending them out on missions to Jews, but not as I expected. They don’t even carry a backpack or a staff. Their only weapon is against physical diseases. And their promised rewards are arrests, floggings, and trials (Matthew 10:1-25). This sounds like a parody of what I was hoping for! Jesus acts more like a teacher and healer—even a prophet—but not like a king, not like an anointed Messiah!
When a few of my faithful disciples brought me food, I was feeling so disillusioned that I sent them to search for Jesus and ask him one simple question: “Are you the one who is to come—or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3). What will he say?
An alternative path
Jesus didn’t waste words. “Go and tell John what you hear and see,” he replies. “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. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (Matthew 11:4-6).
John’s disciples leave to report back to him, and that’s the end of the exchange. Jesus isn’t threatened by John fearing he might be the wrong person for the job. Instead, he challenges John’s messianic expectations and describes an alternate path for “the one who is to come”—universal health care and the prospect of a better life for the common people (Matthew 11:4-5).
I confess I never paid much attention to this pericope about Jesus and John in Matthew 11:2-19 until I was asked to write a column on it for a Sunday school curriculum. The lessons were on wisdom, and this text was chosen because it ends with a pithy and rather puzzling comment by Jesus: “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds” (verse 19). What can that mean?
Another interpretive hurdle is that this text demands a larger literary and historical context. So, hang in there with me for a few background paragraphs.
The anointed one and “Woman Wisdom”
John’s expectation of “the one who is to come” refers to the Messiah, a Hebrew term meaning “the anointed one,” or the legitimate king of Israel. Later, during the centuries after the return from exile when there was no king on the throne, “Messiah” meant a coming descendant of King David who would restore the kingship. The Greek term is Christos (“anointed”).
When John baptized Jesus (Matthew 3:13-17), he realized that, unlike the others he was baptizing, this act was not for repentance but to anoint Jesus for his messianic calling. Ever since then, John had pinned his hopes on Jesus as the promised Davidic king of Israel. To John, the Herods were only evil client-kings subject to Rome. Therefore, Roman rule of Israel must be overthrown.
Another figure from the Hebrew Bible and Apocrypha unexpectedly climaxes this passage—Woman Wisdom. In the gendered languages of Hebrew and Greek, “wisdom” is always feminine, so hokmah (Hebrew) and sophia (Greek) are typically personified as a woman. In the book of Proverbs, she is the first of Yahweh’s creation, who then partnered with him to co-create the earth and the heavens (8:22-31). The actions of Lady Hokmah are often contrasted with those of her opponent, Dame Folly.
Two Greek intertestamental books—Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach—also center around Lady Wisdom. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s book Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet opened my eyes to the way Jesus identifies himself with Sophia throughout the gospels. (For example, in Matthew 11:28-30 we find the famous text “Come to me, all you who labor,” which derives directly from Sophia’s speeches in Sirach.)
More than a prophet
As John’s disciples leave in verse 7, we find Jesus surrounded by crowds. They evidently overheard his words to John’s disciples, so Jesus preaches a mini sermon on John. He does not treat John as a political rival or disparage his pointed question. Since the listeners revere John as a prophet (Matthew 11:7-9), Jesus affirms him as even more than a prophet; he is the messenger prophesied in Malachi 3:1 “who will prepare your way before you” (Matthew 11:10). John is Elijah chastising Herod, just as the first Elijah prophesied against King Ahab (Matthew 11:11-15; 1 Kings 17-19; Malachi 4:5).
Jesus is more critical of the crowds around him than he is of John. Although he and John have opposite lifestyles, they both come from God. John is ascetic, but Jesus will eat with anybody. Yet neither approach pleases this generation, laments Jesus (verses 16-19). They are like stubborn children who won’t cooperate to sing together either happy or sad songs. “In this way,” comments Mark Allan Powell, “Jesus castigates not only the powerful people who have attacked John and opposed him, but the common people as well.” And yet ...
Yet Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds!
The context makes clear that Jesus sees himself and John as representatives of Woman Wisdom, enabling them to accomplish their missions. Wisdom’s deeds in Jesus’ political platform are clear: a healing, teaching, organizing ministry among the poorest citizens of Galilee (Matthew 11:4-6). But how far can an anointed messiah get if he focuses on those at the bottom of the socio-economic pecking order? No wonder John was losing hope for a revolution.
Times were tough for ordinary Israelites in the first century. The Romans ruled a mighty empire and controlled conquered peoples through armies and high taxes. Failure to pay was viewed as rebellion against Rome. Ninety percent of Israelites were peasants living off the land. When taxes (up to 70 percent of income) were not paid, the upper classes took peasants’ land, reducing them to sharecroppers or slave labor for roadbuilding. Mostly illiterate, peasants survived at a subsistence level. The ill and disabled who could not work would beg—or die.
How might Sophia advise Jesus in such a dire situation? What did Jesus mean when he told John that “the poor have good news brought to them”? (11:5).
We glimpse an answer to this in the preceding chapter where Jesus sends out his 12 disciples to duplicate his own mission throughout the small towns and villages of Galilee. As they walk from village to village, they carry nothing with them, no money or food or protection (Matthew 10:9-14). They will depend on reciprocal sharing: food and lodging in exchange for healing and introducing the coming reign of Yahweh.
In Excavating Jesus, John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed explain that good news to the poor involves communal sharing of food instead of private hoarding. Jesus realistically promises plenty of hardship and persecutions, but with shared resources—even “a cup of cold water”—no one will lose their reward (10:40-42). Good news means that Yahweh cares for the least among them; “even the hairs of your head are all counted,” and not a sparrow falls unnoticed (10:26-32).
The secret Messiah
Paging through Matthew’s gospel, I realized that Jesus’s political wisdom also included secrecy. So far, he has not announced his identity, and no character has called him a messiah. It was too dangerous. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus writes of various would-be messiahs during this time who got nowhere. Rome would never tolerate a political challenge. Jesus can draw crowds only as a healer and prophet.
But in Matthew 16:13-20, Jesus takes his disciples to a private place in northern Israel and pops the question: “Who do people say I am?” The disciples rightly name what I had observed: “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets,” (16:14). It’s only when Jesus pushes harder—“Who do you say that I am?”—that Peter names Jesus “Messiah.” Even so, the concept of messiah-as-king is downplayed. Messiah Jesus will not build his kingdom on Peter’s statement, but a church, an ekklesia, a nonmilitary communal gathering.
When the meeting is over in verse 20, Jesus “sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.” He is wise enough to know that as soon as this becomes public in Jerusalem, he will pay for it with great suffering (verses 21 and following).
The wisdom of the Messiah, then and now
Will Jesus’ ancient wisdom work today when so much has changed since then? At that time, neither capitalism nor socialism existed. Chattel slavery enabled kingdoms and great empires to rise. The Roman emperor was considered divi filius—son of a god. Social class structure was rigid, and the poor remained at or below subsistence, no matter how hard they worked.
In that world, Jesus declared that Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds as he defined them in Matthew 11:5. First, she desires universal health care. Second, she has good news for the poor—she can help create a shared community where everyone’s basic needs are met.
But despite enormous economic, political, scientific, and technological advances since then, many millions of people still lack the same things: access to affordable health care and a decent living standard. The gap between rich and poor in America grows wider every year. Can disciples of Jesus today vindicate Woman Wisdom by imitating Jesus’ methods?
As I wrote columns about biblical texts on Woman Wisdom last summer, I often despaired of finding her in my own world. A poorly managed pandemic has brought suffering, death, and growing economic inequality. Our warming climate increased disasters of wind, fire, and water. Racial tragedies produced a stronger Black Lives Matter movement, but will it last? A presidential campaign increased our political polarization. If there was ever a time for world and national leaders to call upon Lady Wisdom, it’s now! Yet why does Dame Folly so often prevail?
Sadly, Christians also polarize when political ideology trumps theology. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” How did Jesus answer? Should his mission be ours too?
Reta Halteman Finger, a retired associate professor of New Testament and freelance writer, lives in Rockingham, Va.
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