#AbolitionLectionary: Third Sunday of Advent

Matthew 11:2–11

The appointed reading for this Sunday gives us the voice of an incarcerated person: John the Baptist, asking for confirmation of Jesus’ identity from prison.

As Liza Anderson has written, John’s question to Jesus might seem like a “pointed challenge” — as Jesus’ response to John “alludes to Isaiah, noting that the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. However, it is a selective quotation, omitting the promise in Isaiah 42:7 about bringing prisoners out of the dungeons and freeing captives. Given that John asks the question while in prison, this is presumably the part that he is the most concerned with, and it’s hard to imagine that he would have been comforted by the reminder that Jesus was doing everything else in the messianic job description! ” Anderson suggests that one way the church has historically addressed this challenge is by recognizing that Jesus’ mission to free prisoners includes freeing the spirits in prison (1 Peter 3:19) and that “it was part of the vocation of John the Baptist to be the forerunner and proclaimer of Christ not only among the living but also among the dead — even though this was by its nature a vocation that required him to die.” John precedes Jesus into criminalization, incarceration, and death.

In any case, I think the challenge offered by John the Baptist from prison is essential as we think about the nature of Christ’s coming and mission. How are we, in this world, to know that Jesus is the promised messiah who makes all things new? The answer that Jesus gives does not rely on his descent from David or his divine nature, but on the fruit of the work itself. The confirmation of Jesus’ identity comes about in the community of healing and liberation he leaves behind.

I’ve written elsewhere about how the key question regarding the world to come is not “What must I do to gain eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16) but “What is the nature of the life to which we will be raised?” and that Jesus’ answer to John here gives the answer. The renewed community Jesus brings — one which, we believe, includes the promise of freedom for prisoners and forms of justice which heal rather than punishing — is a picture of the “eternal life” of the age to come. Jesus’ identity, the renewed community around him, and the expectation of eternal life coalesce in the work of liberation and healing itself. John’s voice reminds us that those who are incarcerated continue to advocate for and demand their own liberation and inclusion in healed, renewed communities, and those on the outside must listen and act in solidarity.

Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for Abolition.