Inventive Midrash about John the Baptist

This past Sunday I preached a sermon about John the Baptist and used, what I thought would be creative license, to better explain his situation in prison. In the lectionary reading from Sunday, John the Baptist asks his disciples to go ask Jesus, "Are you the Messiah or should I look for another?" Given John's close relationship with Jesus, and his baptism of Jesus where he heard the voice call down from heaven, and given the fact that John had been preaching Jesus as the Messiah, what brought about John's doubts and what lesson might we learn from it?

And so, I thought I'd do something creatively different. I created a midrash story. Midrash is a Jewish literary art form in which a story is taken from the Old Testament and certain details (usually fictional or historically accurate) are added to the story whereby a moral is gleaned that remains somewhat consistent with Hebrew Scripture. This form of storytelling is as older than them Jewish hills- heck, even the Talmud is full of midrash.

Anyways, I applied some inventive midrash to the story of John the Baptist. And certainly, I told everyone I was doing it- I just did it to help clarify John's situation. Some folks absolutely loved it... others though were clearly offended. You'd think we liberal Christians would have more licenses but I guess there are always those who don't want anyone messing with their Christian history- even if that history isn't as complete as we'd like it to be.

Here is a sample of the sermon and the link to read the rest of the sermon at the bottom of the post.

And so, John went to live and study in the desert with a bunch of very bright religious zealots who wore long white robes. The Essene community, as we understand it from the translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, was comprised of men who had escaped the city life to dedicate themselves to monastic and ascetic spirituality. These Essenes were waiting for certain signs to usher the known world into a new age of religious practice and belief.

I can just imagine the eagerness of John was well received by this community of scholarly but perhaps seemingly very boring men compared to John. With John’s vigor, he delved into his studies with excitement.

As John studied and learned the teachings of this community, something began to come together for him. As the teachers spoke about the true Messiah fulfilling the prophecies of the prophet Isaiah, having been born of a virgin, suddenly a light began to dawn in him. His cousin Jesus was born of a virgin! And doesn’t Jesus’ name mean ‘God with us’? Excitedly, he told his brothers in the commune about his cousin Jesus and that he was the chosen Messiah!

Casting sideward glances to one another, the Essenes nicely but firmly told John that this couldn’t be. “The Messiah would come to set things right, not rise up from the within it,” they said. Or, “The Messiah would bring about a new world order—in a way that crushed the enemy. How could a carpenter’s son accomplish this?” Angered and thwarted, John knew his brothers had to be wrong. As much as he pestered them to reconsider, the angrier they became until they decided that John was no longer stable enough to consider becoming a brother of the Order. They asked him to leave.

You may read the rest of the sermon here.