What Sort of Messiah? Reflections on Matthew 11:2-11. Third Sunday in Advent, Year A
by John C. Holbert on Saturday, October 11, 2025
It is a commonplace when dealing with the coming of Jesus to suggest that among the ideas surrounding that coming is a clear redefinition of just what kind of Messiah Jesus was thought to be. I have said in sermons more than once—perhaps you have, too—that Jesus’s Messiahship was to be contrasted with the “familiar” Jewish understanding of the coming Messiah. We have described this Jewish Messiah as the ideal Jewish King who was primarily a military and political leader, one who would confront and defeat the Roman occupiers of the land and reinstate the power of the cleansed Jewish state, rather on the lines of the great David, albeit without the sinful baggage that David carried during his kingship (see 1 Samuel 2:16-1 Kings 2). It is true that such a portrait was known in Judah in the first century as the first-century contemporary book Psalms of Solomon makes plain. However, simply because we have this one rather obscure witness to this sort of messianic notion hardly implies that the ideas it presents were widespread.
The reality was surely that many kinds of messianic portraits were active during the first century CE. Another sort of picture may be found in the scriptural text from the Hebrew Bible that the lectionary collectors often pair with this Matthean Gospel passage, as they have done in this year A—Isaiah 35. It may be that Matthew, rather than contrasting Jesus with a military/political Messiah, instead has the words of Is.35 in his ears when he has Jesus in his discussion of John the Baptizer repeat some of that text.
Matthew sets the scene as follows. John is in prison (Mt.11:2), perhaps due to his purported run-in with Herod Antipas, whom John apparently rebuked due to his marriage with a brother’s wife (see Mark 6). Mt.4:12 noted John’s arrest, though Matthew does not say there just why John has been incarcerated, though his fiery sermons at the Jordan would surely be reason enough for the discomfort of the authorities. Whatever the reason for John’s life in a cell, he sends a question through some of his own disciples for Jesus, a question that is of utmost importance for Matthew, and finally for us, too. “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we wait for another?” (Mt.11:3) As usual, Jesus does not answer John’s question directly, an irritating habit that Jesus appears to present throughout the gospel! “Go! Announce to John what you hear and see. The blind see and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised and the poor have good news preached to them” (Mt.11:5).
This answer may be heard in one of two ways—or perhaps in both of two ways. 1) Jesus does indeed do the works of the Messiah, as those are laid out in Is.35, though Isaiah does not mention Messiah in his litany of miraculous deeds in vss.5-6. John’s question is thus answered in the affirmative. But at the same time Jesus may be demanding that the evidence by which one may know for certain that “the one who is to come” is in fact Messiah must be reinterpreted to mean deeds of healing rather than any sort of military or political exploits. Either way one hears Jesus’s reply to John, he, through Matthew, redefines just who this Messiah will be. Not merely a wise one, not only a grand politician, not only an unbeatable warrior, but a healer, one who seeks the well-being of all.
Matthew then adds an important phrase to Jesus’s answer to John. “Blessed is the one who does not take offense at me” (Mt.11:6). The crucial Greek verb for “offense” is skandalizo, from whence English gains its word, scandal. This word is a very important one in many places in the New Testament. Its meanings include: “causing one to sin” in numerous places in Matthew (5:29ff; 18:6, etc.); “be led into sin” again regularly in Mt. (13:57; 26:31,33); “temptation to sin, apostasy (Mt.18:7; Luke 17:1). Prominently in Paul, it often refers to the cross of Christ (I Cor.1:23; Gal. 5:11). For Matthew praticularly the phrase expresses the theme of the next few chapters of his Gospel in which many sorts of people (Pharises along with Jesus’s own family) DO in fact take great offense at him; Jesus tries to explain this offense in parables in Mt.13. Perhaps Jesus also implies that John himself will find Jesus offensive.
And what about us in our time. Do we find this Jesus Messiah offensive, some sort of scandal? Many Christians down the ages have remodeled Jesus into something they find more palatable for their own tastes: a sweet and loving Messiah who could never be offensive; a powerful and furious Messiah who will come one day to avenge those who have made us uncomfortable, and who will whisk us to heaven while those miscreants will spend their eternity in the fire; or even the social activist who stands against the forces of power, setting them straight and leading us to truth and right. It could well be that this healing Jesus is not the Jesus for us. Yet, for Matthew that feature defines the Messiah he presents and celebrates. Exactly what sort of Messiah are we about to welcome at Christmas is a crucial question that all must answer. Is Matthew’s answer one that resonates with you, or is it for you a scandal?