“I
do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish,” writes C. S. Lewis in the
preface to The Great Divorce, “but
their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put
right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh
from that point, never by simply going on.”
That
was John’s essential message to Israel. He came “preaching a baptism of repentance,” a loaded theological word,
a real eraser of a noun. Israel, he declared, had put two and two together and
gotten eleven and only a good soaking in the muddy Jordan could expunge the
miscalculation and offer a fresh start. That involved going back a long way,
because John’s baptism essentially re-enacted the nation’s original amphibious
invasion of the Promised Land under her ancient hero Joshua. (Joshua 3)
He tosses in a
construction metaphor from the prophet Isaiah to say that shoveling a little
hot-mix into the potholes won’t suffice; Israel must completely rebuild the
road. Washing the car, he warns the crowds, won’t fix this engine; it has to be
completely rebuilt.
Start over! Only this
way, John argues, can Israel open a superhighway for her new ruler and find
true peace.
Luke
sets this message in the context of a rival method: He names five political
leaders in descending order of power, then a couple of local religious rulers.
All of this seeming order in fact speaks of impermanence and turmoil: Herod and
Philip had snatched scraps of their father’s turf and now quarreled over
control. Ananias and Caiaphas couldn’t both be high priest at the same time
since the Law said the high priest served for life; but the Romans didn’t like
anyone holding power for too long so they instituted a rota. If the key to
peace was more government, Israel should have been the most peaceful place on
the planet. Instead the people groaned under ruinous taxes, Tea Party patriots
hid weapons caches in the hills, and Roman crosses dotted the skyline. John’s
message says that more human effort amounts to an exponential multiplication of
the wrong number.
Sometimes peace comes
only through the messy business of tearing everything up and starting over.
Sometimes “peace” comes at the expense of “quiet.” Reworking the sum is
troublesome and time-consuming, but wrong calculations count when the answer is
eternal.
Peace Out!
Doug
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