Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me

Now it came to pass, when Jesus finished commanding His twelve disciples, that He departed from there to teach and to preach in their cities.  And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, "Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?"  Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and tell John the things which you hear and see:   The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.  And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me." 

- Matthew 11:1-6

On Saturday we read that while Jesus was speaking to John's disciples, a ruler came and worshiped Him, saying, "My daughter has just died, but come and lay Your hand on her and she will live."  So Jesus arose and followed him, and so did His disciples.  And suddenly, a woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years came from behind and touched the hem of His garment.  For she said to herself, "If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well."  But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, "Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well."  And the woman was made well from that hour.  When Jesus came into the ruler's house, and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd wailing, He said to them, "Make room, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping."  And they ridiculed Him.  But when the crowd was put outside, He went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose.  And the report of this went out into all that land.

Now it came to pass, when Jesus finished commanding His twelve disciples, that He departed from there to teach and to preach in their cities.  And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, "Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?"  The lectionary skips over several verses in chapter 9, and also chapter 10, in which the disciples are sent out on their first apostolic mission and Jesus preaches extensively about the nature of His mission on earth (see these texts here).  We note first of all about today's reading that John the Baptist is in prison.  According to patristic teaching, John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask this question so that he may guide his disciples to Jesus.  Undoubtedly, John' own faith was strengthened through Christ's response.  As we note also, in chapter 10, Jesus has just sent out His apostles on their first mission, also extensively teaching them what the mission of the Church will be like.  It is a time of transition, a new covenant, as exemplified in Christ's response to John's disciples in Saturday's reading, above.

Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and tell John the things which you hear and see:   The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.  And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me."  These signs were predicted to accompany the coming of the Messiah by the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 61:1).  Jesus performed these miracles, my study bible says, in the presence of John's disciples (Luke 7:20-21), so that they could see with their own eyes works that only the Messiah could do.

Coupled with our previous reading (above, in which Jesus preaches to John's disciples about the need for new wineskins to hold new wine), we get a taste of what is happening, a shift in history, an intervention in time that is a bold revelation of God's work in the world.  Christ comes into time as the divine/human "Theanthropos" (to use the theological term for our Messiah who is both God and human).  The Logos becomes Incarnate in order to intervene in a world under the power of the evil one.  Patristic teachings conclude that whether or not our world had been a "fallen" one, the Incarnation of Christ would have taken place.  Our Lord and Creator condescends to us from love, and in so doing brings Himself in order to heal and bring us closer to Him.  John the Baptist is considered the last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets, and Jesus' word to his disciples conveys the idea that the time of the Messiah has come, the fulfillment of prophecy is at hand.  We live in the time Christ announces has come, and so we still keep in mind what it is that we serve and the faith in which we seek to live.  It is a time of healing and correction:  "The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.  And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me."   It is essential that we keep in mind this mission, because it is ongoing.  The ministry of Christ is here to heal.  But what that means is that we take note, in our world, of what needs healing.  We should keep in mind that Christ did not come simply to "fix" everything, but to invite us into this struggle of a change of leadership, so to speak.  He is Liberator, but we still live in a world awaiting a judgment, in which its prince is still effective in seeking to hold captive, to blind, to make lame and ill and deaf, and most particularly to inhibit life.  From the earliest apostolic teachings, we are given a contrasting way of life and a way of death (see for example, the Didache, the oldest known teaching document in the Church).  In Judaism also, there existed this tradition.  But what we as moderns tend to lose sight of is that all of this spiritual battle cannot simply be fixed by what we think of as progressive advances.  Christ as the Person who is Truth, as Logos, certainly gives us the impetus for a search for truth, for an improvement in all forms of healing the ailments of the world.  But separately from our spiritual source of light, how do we use and implement whatever material tools we have in the world?  Abstraction alone cannot give us spiritual wisdom and insight.  Most of all, our own limitations still apply.  We need to seek what it is we don't know, and the help available to us.  We remain with our blindness and limitations, and we remain distinctly human as the examples in the Gospels constantly remind us of all we need to learn and how we need to grow, especially in wisdom, just as the disciples do.  Let us consider that our Liberator seeks our participation in His spiritual battle, with the weapons of prayer, love, and virtue -- and the power of faith -- as those we need for His mission for us.  The theologian Fr. John Anthony McGuckin writes, "When Truth is a living person, we can  no longer try to make it synonymous with mere accuracy."  In other words, through our faith, we are given a fullness of truth in which we seek to participate and which will always pull us forward into what we do not yet know, in which truth also embodies the good and the beautiful.  Rational abstraction cannot give us such a mission, but only Christ the Logos who has become one of us can do so; and through our faith this mission continues now.