In his 1964 book, Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan first coined his famous phrase,
“The medium is the message.” For
McLuhan, the medium used to convey a message affected the audience as much as
the content of the message itself.
Certainly, in today’s image-conscious world, we are as impacted by who is saying something, or how they are saying it, as we are the impacted
by the essence of what they are
saying.
Advertisers reach out to specific demographics by featuring
actors who bear the same physical characteristics of those they are trying to
influence. Political figures are
embraced, critiqued, or shunned as often for their personality or appearance as
they are for their ideas. The
super-model, idealized body image emulated by young women, often at the peril
of their own health and well-being, is the pursuit of the notion that “you are
how you look.”
Our images of Christ are largely influenced by the means by
which He was first introduced to us, whether as young children in Sunday school
or as adults through church, literature, or a spiritual retreat. Perhaps our understanding of who Christ was
and is finds its root in the personality of a loving parent, or the memory of a
Jesus portrait hanging in a church hallway…or in the stern, cold example of one
who distorted the loving message of Christ into one of scorn and harsh judgment. Indeed, how we know Christ today is linked to
how we were first introduced to Him, and by whom.
If the axiom, “The medium is the message” is indeed true, it
gives me pause to think of John the Baptist as “the medium” by which the message
of Christ’s approaching ministry was foretold.
By even the most cursory scan of scripture, we learn from Luke that John
and Jesus had a special connection as cousins—it was John who “leapt for joy”
in Elizabeth’s womb when young Mary paid her a visit, still contemplating the
incredible news that she was to give birth to Emmanuel. If Luke is to be believed, they must have
known one another as cousins in their formative years, though those stories are
unaccounted for in scripture.
But it is not until we encounter John in the Gospel of Mark
that we realize he was from the “radical side” of Christ’s family. He is described as wearing camel-hair
clothing and subsisting in the hinterlands on insects and wild honey. Maybe today we would see him as a “hippie” or
one of those “tree-hugging environmentalists” that folks are so quick to poke
fun at. Certainly, living out in the
wilderness, he was eccentric in the
truest sense of the word. Already amassing
a following of his own—and no doubt seen as a threat to the religious and
political establishment—John pointed to Jesus as one who was coming who would
shake things up in a radical and mystical way, someone so awesome that he would
not even be fit to tie his sandals.
I wonder how we would receive today the foretelling message
of Christ from the medium of a radical like John. Certainly, this would not necessarily be the comfortable
“suit and tie,” Sunday morning way we might encounter Jesus today. I wonder:
would we accept the message of Jesus as “radical” and “mystical” as
easily as we accept “baby in a manger?”
To accept all that Jesus means to the world, we must be as
willing to accept the radical, mystical nature of a man proclaimed by his wild
and wooly cousin as we are to accept a sweet and sleeping baby announced by a
Christmas chorus of angels. To do less
would be missing the entire mystery and power of how Christ changed—and changes—the
world.
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