High Expectations

Have you ever had someone expect something of you that you could not do for them? It’s not that you wouldn’t want to; it’s just that their expectations are too high. John the Baptist found himself in just such a situation.

• [15] The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ. [16] John answered them all, "I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. [17] His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
  Luke 3:15-17 (NIV)

The people were eagerly looking for “the Christ” or in the Hebrew “the Messiah.” Literally they were anticipating God’s anointed one, the person God had consecrated to save Israel; in other words, they were looking for a powerful king to establish a new and better kingdom. John spoke as a prophet with the power of the Holy Spirit; this is what made him different from everyone else and why the people wondered if John might be the Christ.

John knew that he could not deliver what the people were hoping for in him. Instead John pointed them to someone else, someone far greater than he was. While John told them to look for someone else to be the Christ, he did not change their expectation of what the Christ would be and do for them.

What did John and the people think it meant for the Christ to baptize with “the Holy Spirit and fire” or to hold his winnowing fork in his hand to clear the threshing floor? Was this not just a picture of the judgment the Christ would bring as he would bring his people into his kingdom and destroy his enemies with “unquenchable fire?”

Jesus redefined what it meant to be God’s Christ or Messiah. We read into what John said using Jesus’ definition, but could it be that not even John fully knew what the one whose sandals he was unworthy to untie would be like? Is it possible that even John had the same mistaken expectations for the coming Messiah to establish a new and powerful kingdom in Israel?

What about you and me? Is it possible that we have some wrong expectations about Jesus? We know that Jesus was a suffering Messiah, that He died a cruel death so we can be forgiven and set free from the power of sin and death. We know that Jesus is the Son of God and that nothing is impossible for Him. But are we holding onto some expectations like John and the people of Israel that are misplaced? Are we thinking too small, too much of the here and now? How might Jesus need to redefine our understanding of Him as our Messiah? What do you think?