the healing begins: Abraham

So what is God going to do about the mess the world is in? That is the central question that leaps out at anyone who reads the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, or who turns on the evening news. The first eleven chapters of Genesis begin well and end badly. Genesis begins with God's marvelous creative activity and God declaring that it is all good. Things begin to go south immediately thereafter. Adam and Eve want to be like God. One of their sons murders his brother. Evil expands so greatly that God decides to begin again with Noah and his family…though even after God saves them from the flood Noah gets drunk and his son…well let's just say the Bible does not go into all the details but it isn't pleasant. Finally humanity returns to the original sin of wanting to be like God and tries to storm heaven. With that kind of behavior (even in metaphoric story) little wonder the world is in the shape it is in.

As chapter 12 opens everything changes. We move from a world which seems almost mythic (meaning stories intended to explain spiritual truths) to a world very much rooted in history. While there has been an ongoing debate about the historicity of Abraham (just as there has been much debate about the historicity of much of the Bible) the language of the Abrahamic stories is ancient. Words and names which are used in this portion of Genesis are not used again. The cultural norms described fit well with what historians and archeologists have discerned about the time in which Abraham would have lived. In other words, I believe, we can with relative certainty know that by chapter 12 we have moved into the realm of the historic and out of the mythic. I believe that is important not only because of the role Abraham plays in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths, but because of the promises that God makes to Abraham.


The Abrahamic story begins with a call and a promise from God. God asks Abraham to risk everything in exchange for three things; land, offspring and blessing. While much of the world today focuses on the first promise, land (this is at the heart of the fight over the land of Israel in the Middle East), we ought to be focused on the second and third promises. We will begin with the third promise first. 
The third promise is not only that Abraham himself will be blessed but that he will be a blessing to the entire world. "And by you all of the families of the earth will be blessed." (Genesis 12:3) The concept of blessing is not simply that someone will be healthy, wealthy and wise, but that they will be whole in every aspect. This means they will be whole in their relationship with God, neighbor and creation. Thus through Abraham, God is going to restore this broken creation.

The second promise to Abraham, offspring, is one that offers us a glimpse into how great God's blessings will be. Abraham is told that his offspring will number more than the stars in heaven and the sands on the seashore. In other words, God's blessings which will somehow come about through Abraham will impact not just a small group of people (the Jewish people who are biological descendants of Abraham) but a massive swath of humanity. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Rome makes it clear that anyone who believes in Jesus is included in those offspring (more about that later). 

Where this leaves us then is with two important points. The first point is that God is not going to allow sin and evil to have the last word as regards God's great creation. Instead God will work toward the redemption of the world. The second point is that God is going to use ordinary human beings as the means of this redemption. God will neither start over (as with Noah) not will God simply wave God's "hand" and make everything better. God is going to get down and dirty with humanity in the process of redemption. Over the next several weeks we will look at the slow, yet steady work of God as God works with humanity toward the redemption of the world.

the healing begins: the law

Once when my wife Cindy was watching the 50s epic, The Ten Commandments and I was passing through the room (it is not one of my must see movies) I heard Moses (aka Charlton Heston) telling Pharaoh (aka Yul Brynner) that he needed to let the Hebrews go so that they could be ruled by Law and not by a tyrant. This is an interesting statement considering Moses knew nothing of Law until the people of God had reached the wilderness. God had not tipped off Moses that the 10 Commandments would be forthcoming. For those of you who may be curious about why the writers of the film would make such a gaff about the Law being mentioned so early in the story we need to remember that this film was as much about critiquing communism as it was about telling the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Interestingly enough however the writers got their theology right even if they got their Biblical history wrong...which we will get to in a few paragraphs…but first a few words about Law. 

While many of us may think of the 10 Commandments as something new and unique, it was not unprecedented. Over the more than a thousand years prior to the Exodus (usually dated in the 1200s BCE) various Middle Eastern rulers (Urukagina, Hammurabi, Ur-Nammu of Ur, and Lipit-Ishtar of Isin among others) produced law codes. These codes were designed to restrain governments (including kings) in their abuse of citizens and offer guidance in settling disputes between individuals. They point to an understanding that while the supreme ruler may be considered a god, as was often the case, this status was not an absolute license for action. It was a reminder that even "a god" needed a contract with his people or the "god" could be overthrown.

What is remarkable about the Torah, or the Law of Moses, is that it is a contract between God and humanity, not between human rulers and those they govern. The Law begins by clarifying the relationship between the people and God (including religious rituals), then goes on to deal with relationships between human beings in areas as diverse as hygiene and sexual activity (again from a religious point of view). 
As a series of laws formulated during the time when Israel was still a loose knit agricultural society they do not deal with many of the issues dealt with by other law codes such as large scale commerce and the rule of kings. At the same time however there are similarities between the Torah and the other law codes such as when they deal with civil penalties and divorce.

Now back to the ways in which the writers got their theology right. 

The first is that Law directs the allegiance of people towards God as the law giver. It is a reminder that no human being should ever be given ultimate rule over the people of God. The true "king" will always be God. This understanding in and of itself was always a restraint on the power of the Israelite kings. Thus the orientation of the people will be to worship God and not the kings (which was not the case in Egypt, Rome and most of Mesopotamia where kings were often worshipped as gods). 

Second, the Law restrains evil. The Hebrew Scriptures make it clear that the God of creation is a God of order and not chaos. Therefore if people are to be truly free and redeemed, they need to live within life giving parameters. Chaos, or the lack of law and structure, leads to death and so needs to be restricted by the use of law. 

Finally the law points us toward the good. It offers us models of appropriate behavior in difficult circumstances…thus insuring order in God's world. All three of these uses of the law move us toward being the redeemed people of God…which is why Jesus made it clear that the law would never disappear.

the healing begins: the judges

In the previous articles in this section we have been looking at God's movement toward the ultimate redemption of the world. Needless to say God is taking God's good time in bringing this about. If we consider that Abraham (the one to whom the original promise of redemption was given) lived about 1,200 years before Christ, that means God has been at this redemption business for about 2,300 years. In a society like ours where the only thing that matters is what happens today (or how things go this quarter) this long term transformation can seem a bit frustrating. The good news however is that along the way we can witness God at work in our midst advancing God's plan. We are able to catch glimpses of redemption. This is case with the time of the judges.

For those of you who are not familiar with the time of the judges, let me do a recap. The stories about the judges are contained in the seventh book of the Bible, appropriately named, Judges. The historical setting was the time between the arrival of the people of Israel in the Promised Land and the kingships beginning with Saul and David. This was a time of great trial for God's people. Though the previous book of the Bible, Joshua, implied that the Hebrews had completely conquered the Promised Land and could therefore live in peace, the reality on the ground was very, very different. The Israelites were no more than a loose confederation of tribes who had taken control of small parts of the hill country in what we would now think of as Israel. The plains and the coasts belonged to more established and well-armed nations including the Canaanites and Philistines. Those peoples had better weapons, better organization (kings) and better fortified cities. This made life very difficult for the lightly armed and disorganized Hebrews. What followed was several hundred years of conflict in which the Hebrews often found themselves "outgunned" and out guided. 
This is the point in the story where the judges appear and play their part in God's redemption story. The judges were both men and women. Some of their names are familiar to us; Gideon, Deborah and Samson. Others are not familiar at all: Otheniel, Ehud and Shagmar. What binds these people and their stories together is that they were charismatic leaders who received a specific call from God, in a specific moment in history to perform a specific task, the liberation of God's people. Without their efforts the Hebrews would have vanished into the mists of time, along with the redemptive task to which they were called. We can see this in the way that the writer of the Book of Judges always casts the call and efforts of the judges as part of God's long range plan for world-wide redemption.

The recurring theme of Judges is that "The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and worshipped the Ba'als." The Ba'als were the nature gods of the Canaanites and Philistines. When the people of Israel would go astray and follow the Ba'als God would give God's people over to their enemies. Ultimately the people would cry out to God (just as in Egypt) and God would send them a judge. These judges would then rally the people, defeat the enemies of Israel and bring the people back to God and to their true calling; being the people through whom God would liberate and redeem creation.

A second way for us to see the importance of the judges is to see them as prefiguring Jesus. Jesus would be the one called and sent by God to liberate humanity from the powers and principalities of this world. While the manner of liberation would be different, a sacrificial death rather than war and armed conflict, the results would be the same; God's people would be free to once again turn their lives over to following the living God and the way of life God offers. My hope is that both of these stories, that of the Judges and that of Jesus will encourage us to look for signs of God's redemptive work in the world, and be an encouragement for us to do our part in this amazing work.

the healing begins: the kings

Two of the most prominent characters in the entire Bible are two of the Kings of the united nation of Israel; David (1000 – 961 BCE) and Solomon (961 – 922 BCE). David is famous not only because he occupies a transitional role in the story of God's people but because he also had a great biographer. There were kings who reigned longer (Uzziah 783 – 742 BCE) or were more famous in their day (Most foreign nations referred to the people of Israel as the people of Omri (876 – 869 BCE) and not David) but never rivaled David in terms of the sheer volume of material in the scriptures. If we include the many Psalms which are attributed to David his hold over the Bible is even greater. David's son Solomon also manages to occupy a significant section of the book of I Kings. He is noted for his wisdom (supposedly having written both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes) and wealth. With so much material devoted to these two figures, as well four entire books to the other kings, we might assume that the Bible considers their appearance on the scene as a positive event. If we did we would be only minimally correct.

While the rise of the kings plays a pivotal role in the road to redemption their appearance is not one that is whole heartedly endorsed by the tellers of our Biblical tale. There are two schools of thought (within the Bible) about the kings. The first school is anti-monarchy. This school is clear that God is the only king that the people of Israel need. Any other kings are mere pretenders who will abuse the people through taking their sons for the army, their daughters for serving girls and their money in order that the kings live a lavish life-style. The pro-monarchy school implies that it had been God's plan all along to name kings who would be the earthly representative of God. While God would still be in charge God wanted there needed to be an earthly ruler to guide and direct the people. These two conflicting views are held in tension throughout the books of Kings and Chronicles. 
Fortunately there are two places where these schools converge and provide for us a way forward on our road to redemption. The first convergence is that they are each clear that the kings do not have absolute power. All Kings rule under the authority of God and the Law of Moses. In other words there is no divine right of Kings to do whatever their please. The kings only possess limited power. This is a significant step in the life of the people of God. It is significant first because it makes clear that there is only one God. Unlike most of the nations around them Israel and Judah (the two nations which came into being after the death of Solomon) never assigned divinity to their rulers. While Egypt, Babylon and Rome among others worshipped their leaders as gods, the children of Israel would never do so. There was a clear delineation between the One True Living God and human beings. This allowed the people to continue to focus their worship on YHWH and YHWH alone.

The second convergence where these schools provide for us a way forward on our road to redemption is that the kings were to understand themselves as servants of the people. Their role was to care for and provide for the welfare of the people. The kings were to insure that there was proper worship. The kings were to insure that the people were protected. The kings were to insure that syncretism did not overtake the people. In other words the kings were to model for the people what a savior ought to look and act like. Thus the image of David as the liberator and protector of God's people became the archetype for the coming messiah. This is one reason why the Gospel of Luke takes such great pains to locate Jesus' birth in the city of Bethlehem, David's ancestral town. This image of the servant ultimately shows up in the writings of the prophet Isaiah and in Jesus' understanding of his vocation as messiah.

Though the road to redemption was a bumpy one with many twists and turns, it was ultimately made possible by the work of very fallible kings who none-the-less insured that it was YHWH and not themselves who were at the center of the life of God's people.

the healing begins: the prophets

So who were they? So who were these men and women that we call the prophets? For many of us the names that come to mind are the big three: Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. On occasion we recall that there are the other Minor Prophets such as Daniel and Joel. The interesting thing about the Biblical story however is that is chocked full of prophets. There are groups of prophets who wandered the countryside in the time of Saul and David. There were professional prophets who worked for the king (telling him exactly what he wanted to hear) and short term prophets like Amos who took a few weeks' vacation from their vocation (shepherding) to deliver a message of truth to the powers of the time. Their stories are buried deep in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, Kings and Chronicles as well as being highlighted within books bearing their own names. Throughout the history of Israel the prophets played critical roles which assisted the people of God along the Road to Redemption.

The first role that the prophets played was that they were to speak truth to power. One person described this task as "forth-telling." Forth-telling was the task whereby the prophets shined the light of God's law and purpose upon the actions of the people of God. There were times when the forth-telling was for a single individual. This was the case when the prophet Nathan made King David aware that David's adultery with Bathsheba and David's subsequent murder of Bathsheba's husband was known by God and a price would have to be paid. David would have to face up to his sins. There were times when a prophet would shine a light on an entire nation. This was the case with prophet Hosea. Hosea was told to go and marry a prostitute in order to demonstrate to God's people that they were playing the prostitute in their relationship with God (in other words the people of God were running after and worshipping other gods, rather than being faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). The message of Hosea was also, to offer a more positive note, that God was going to remain faithful to God's people even when they were not faithful to God. This calling was an attempt to keep the people on task; to remind the people that they were part of God's larger plan of redemption. 
The second role that the prophets played was that they were "fore-tellers." Fore-tellers are those who speak to the future. At this point I want to stop and make clear a few things about prophets and speaking to the future. First, the prophets were not soothsayers predicting the future of individuals for a fast buck. If they were predicting someone's future it was always in reference to God's plan for that individual (God was going to anoint someone King or eliminate someone because they had done great harm to God's plan and people). Second the prophets were not those who were trying to predict specific dates and times for the coming of Jesus. 

Over the centuries the church has tried to tie virtually every prophetic prediction to Jesus. While Jesus was ultimately the culmination of the God's redeeming work, the prophets spoke to many other events along the way (such as the people being carried into Babylon in exile as well as their eventual return). Finally the prophets were those who gave hope to the people by fore-telling about God's redemptive plan. While this fore-telling was not always specifically about Jesus, it was about the fact that God's saving action would culminate in one who would be the suffering servant, giving his life for God's people and for the world. In the end then all of the fore-telling was another way of keeping God's people on the road to redemption.

You and I are the beneficiaries of both prophetic roles. The words of the prophets while spoken to people more than two thousand years ago can still speak to us today. First they remind us that we are to live as God's redeemed and redeeming people. We have a task before us to live out the love and grace of God in our everyday lives. The words of the prophets keep us aligned with God's plans. Second the prophet's words remind us that God is still at work redeeming the world; that even in the face of tough times we are not to give up on God, because God has not given up on the world. 

the healing begins: the exile

I realize that even the title of this piece, The Healing Begins: Exile seems as if it is an oxymoron (a figure of speech that contains contradictory terms such as living dead or new classic). On the one hand we have the image of exile, meaning to be sent away from one's home, land and people to a foreign location. On the other hand we have redemption which implies that we have been set free from our bondage or exile. The question becomes than how does exile move forward the redemptive plan of God?

In order for us to gain a handle on how these terms work together let's begin by taking some time to learn a bit more about exile in the scriptures. To being with we need to remind ourselves that the stories in the scriptures about the history of God's people did not take place in a vacuum. The history of Israel and Judah (the northern and southern kingdoms of God's people) were lived out in the midst of the geo-political upheavals of their times. The initial rise of Israel/Judah took place in a moment in history when the major powers of the East (Hittites, Samaria, Egypt, Assyria and Babylon) were all weak and consumed with internal struggles. Once those struggles were completed these nations began to assert their power over neighboring nation states, including Israel/Judah. The issue for Israel/Judah was how to remain independent, while at the same time acquiescing to the demands of their more powerful neighbors. This struggle, as you might imagine, was one that was not easily resolved.

The concept of exile began when the northern Kingdom Israel refused to pay tribute to Assyria, and aligned itself with Samaria and Judah in resisting Assyrian domination. The results were disastrous. Assyria obliterated Samaria and Israel (721 BCE). The people of Israel who were not slaughtered were taken into exile never to return. In a sense their exile was permanent. A little more than 100 years later (598-586 BCE) the southern kingdom of Judah was faced with a similar situation.
 This time it was the Babylonian Empire which dominated the Middle East. And once again the people of God believed that by aligning themselves with another power (this time Egypt) that they could successfully become independent. Though the prophet Jeremiah warned them that the alliance would fail, the people and their leaders refused to listen. History proved Jeremiah to be correct. Judah withheld tribute and was destroyed by the Babylonians. All of the leadership of the nation which was not killed (the king had to watch his sons executed before his eyes, then he was blinded) was taken into captivity in Babylon. This was the exile.

The question presents itself then, how does the exile play a role in the Road to Redemption. After all it would appear that the exile was more of a detour along the way than anything else. Which, in actuality it was. However, one of the most important lessons of scripture is that even detours can teach us something. What this detour tells us is that the Road to Redemption is not a super highway but a long and winding road (to borrow a phrase from the Beatles). As 21st century people we like getting to where we want to go in a hurry (by plane, phone, text or tweet). While some of us may enjoy a long, meandering walk in the woods, if we have something to accomplish the shorter path the better. God on the other hand appears to not be in that big of a hurry. God is willing to allow God's people to mess up, get sidetracked, and go into exile in order that they learn to trust God and not political or military might. Needless to say such lessons are not easy to learn. As human beings we are predisposed to yearn for absolute freedom (redemption). Waiting does not come naturally. Yet, God appears willing to take whatever amount of time is necessary to help us learn the lesson.

   The good news of the exile then is that while it is not God's desire for us, we as the people of God can survive whatever the world throws at us…and still find our way back to the Road to Redemption.

the healing begins: the return from exile

So what now? So what is God going to do about God's redemption of the world? That is the question that any student of the Bible ought to ask themselves when they arrive at the end of the Books of II Kings and Jeremiah. They ought to ask about God's redemption plans because the end of those books describes the people of God being carried into exile, their capitol city being burned, their Temple being thrown down and hope leaving the building (so to speak). The people had been carried to a foreign land whose customs and religious affinities were much different from those that were required by God of the children of Israel. In other words the people through whom God was supposed to redeem the world were homeless, Temple-less and leaderless. It would appear that the powers and principalities of the world had defeated this part of God's plan and so perhaps God would have to choose another way. This seems to have been not only a detour on God's Road to Redemption, but a dead end.

The marvelous thing about God however is that there are no dead ends on God's Road to Redemption. While this was not clear in moment in which God's people watched their lives be torn apart, it would become clear as time progressed. It would become clear for a number of reasons. The first was that they began to realize that the Prophet Jeremiah had been right; the demise of the nation was not caused by foreign gods defeating the God of Israel, but was God's punishment for the nation's failure to trust and obey. Second, the words of the prophet Ezekiel made it clear that even though the geographic location of the people had changed (Israel to Babylon) God's love for the people had not. He did this through a series of prophecies in which he witnesses the glory of God actually traveling from the Temple to the people in Exile. Finally the powerful words of Second Isaiah (a prophet who claimed the mantel of the original Isaiah) declared that God would not only forgive God's people, but would bring the people back to the Land of Promise in order that they continue their role on the Road to Redemption.
It was only slightly more than 40 years after the people had been sent into exile (583BCE – 538 BCE) when God used Cyrus of Persia as the liberating agent of God's people. Cyrus and the Persian army obliterated the Babylonian Empire, sending it into the dustbin of history. Cyrus then declared that all captive peoples (including the children of Israel) would be allowed to return to their homelands. Over the next few decades (until around 515 BCE) the Israelites returned to their homes and began to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. Along the way home however something happened which once again might have short circuited God's Road to Redemption. As the people gathered in Jerusalem two of their leaders, Ezra and Nehemiah began to enforce the complete separation of the people of Israel from all other peoples. These leaders made Jews who had married foreign women, divorce them. They also made all of the people promise to maintain absolute purity in order to once again be a completely distinct people. This re-emphasis on purity and separateness was another detour along the Road to Redemption because the focus of the people was on cultural survival and not on being a part of God's redemptive work.

Last week we spoke of the Road to Redemption being long and winding. This week as we recall the people returning from exile we witness those who are to be redemptive agents forgetting their purpose. None-the-less God remains true to God's promises of redemption coming through Israel (an achievement which comes through the Jewish messiah Jesus of Nazareth). Hopefully this fact will continue to give us hope that even at those moments when we lose focus on our role in God's redemptive work, that God will always bring us back to our true task: working for the reconciliation and redemption of the world.

the healing begins: separateness

He was born in 1912 near Barry's Corner in the Irish middle class area of North Cambridge, Massachusetts. The third of three children his mother died when he was nine months old. He was raised by a French Canadian housekeeper until his father remarried when he was eight. Jumping into politics in 1928 he worked for the election of FDR. His first job was as a brick layer, but politics kept calling. In 1932 he suffered his only political defeat, as he ran for Cambridge City Council. It was after that loss that Tip O'Neal discovered, as he would say later, that all politics is local. O'Neal along with generations of other politicians have used that understanding to their advantage as they won reelection again and again because they were able to "bring home the bacon" to their constituents.

Leadership in a representative form of government is a delicate balancing act. On the one hand a representative is supposed to do the obvious, represent his or her constituents in the larger governing body. They are to insure that the needs of those who elected them are met. On the other hand representatives are also part of a larger body (city, state, or nation) whose interests they are also supposed to be considering. Thus, leadership becomes a balancing act. Unfortunately as most of us have witnessed, the tendency is to return to all politics being local wherein representatives focus solely on gaining advantage for and protecting the interests of those who elected them (in order to insure reelection) to the detriment of the needs of the larger community.

This understanding of all politics being local is nothing new and actually plays a role in the Road to Redemption which we have been examining. Last week we looked at the Return from Exile as an example of God's faithfulness not only to God's particular people Israel, but to the entire creation as God continued the process of redeeming all of creation. Once again however there came a hitch in the process. As the people of God began to reconstitute themselves as a people and a nation they were face with the ongoing dilemma which all communities face; do we focus on our own needs and survival or do we risk everything and fulfill our greater role as agents of the redemption of the world? The leadership of the people chose the former…that their job was about the local needs of the people and not the redemption of the world.
In the Old Testament books of Ezra and Nehemiah we read of the Jewish leaders separating the people of God from all outsiders. Even those Jews who had remained in Israel during the exile and married non-Jewish women were to divorce their wives in order that God's people somehow become a cultically and racially "pure" people. This separation was the beginning of the isolation of God's people from the rest of humanity. This separation almost insured that the larger vision of the redemptive purpose of God's people would be lost. The world would have to take care of itself because Judaism was going to take care of itself and its own survival. In essence all politics and all religion became centered on the survival of the community. All religion was local.

While it would be nice to believe that it was only the Jewish people who focused on the survival of the community rather than the redemption of the world we would be wrong to do so. Time and time again congregations have also made survival of the "local" the locus of their life. Congregants want to make sure that their needs are met before the church reaches out to meet the needs of the world. Recently I had a retired pastor tell me that the purpose of the church is to worship…not to reach out in worldwide redemptive work…in other words all religion is to be local. The challenge for us as a community of Jesus followers however is to remember that Jesus called us to follow him out into the world, not simply to remain comfortably behind our beautiful walls. While religion is to be local…it is to be balanced with our commitment to the poor, the hungry, the stranger and the child whose voices are often hard to hear.

the healing begins: god prepares to act

The prophets of Israel had vanished. No one is sure which of the prophets was last on the scene (Malachi or Joel) but it is clear that after 400 BCE the prophetic voice was silenced. This is somewhat remarkable considering that the role of prophet had been central to the life of Israel for more than 600 years. During those 600 years (from the time of King David until after the restoration of Jerusalem following the Exile) prophets had helped to shape the religious and political identity of the nation. Their writings had helped to preserve Judaism during some of its most difficult moments. Yet suddenly and inexplicably there was silence. No man or woman appeared to be called by God to speak a word to the people. 

This silence was particularly deafening because the 400 years before the birth of Christ were some of the most difficult and destructive years in the history of the nation of Israel. We will take a moment for a brief recounting of those times. The difficulty began in 332BC when Alexander the Great wrested Judea from the Persians. Alexander died and claim to Judea fell to the Ptolemies (the descendants of one of the four Generals who claimed portions of Alexander's Empire) who were not kind to the Jews. In 198 BC the nation was conquered by the Seleucids (another family descended from one of Alexander's four generals). The Seleucids eventually outlawed Judaism and made its practice punishable by death. The Jews rebelled and after a 27 year war of liberation gained independence in 142 BC. Less than 100 years later (around 63 BC) the Romans conquered the nation, tore down the walls of Jerusalem and killed more than 12,000 Jews. In 40 BC the Parthians (people from what is modern day Iran who had been influenced by the Seleucids and the Greek culture) drove out the Romans. They ruled for only 3 years, when the Romans once again became the dominant power and installed Herod (the Great) as the local ruler.
We might imagine the desperation of the Jewish people for a word from God as they lived through centuries of brutality and conquest. Surely, the people believed, God would speak. After all the great prophets had promised that not only would God speak but that God would act; God would act to redeem God's people. The Jew's sacred scriptures were replete with promises of a new creation, of a restored Israel and of a messiah that would make it all possible. While there was no overall consensus about the messiah (who he would be, when he would arrive or if he would be a descendant of King David) the majority of Jews held fast to the hope that such a person would arise and be the savior of God's people. In the years preceding the life and ministry of Jesus there were numerous men who claimed to be the messiah, yet all were eventually killed by Herod or Rome thus proving they were not "the one." 

It was into this silence that John the Baptizer appeared. While we have some information on John from the Gospels (Luke records that he is the cousin of Jesus) we know little more than that he baptized Jews (including Jesus) in the Jordan River as a preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Many of the people around him considered him to be either the prophet Elijah returned (it had been prophesied that Elijah would return to prepare the way for the messiah) or a new prophet like those of old. John's preaching and teaching implied that he saw himself as both. He was very clear that he was not the messiah. His task was instead to prepare the way for the chosen one of God by calling the people to repentance and faithful obedience to the Torah. Ultimately his prophetic proclamations got him in hot water with the king and brought about his beheading.

John's work fanned the flames of messianic expectation. So when Jesus appeared on the scene the people were more than ready to see in him the one who would free God's people. The only problem was, as we will discover, that in the end Jesus did not fit anyone's mold of what a messiah was supposed to be.