Finally, we get to John—John who was predicted in Malachi, John who was just born in Luke 1, finally arrives in Luke 3. This is the guy! This is who we’ve been waiting for! What novel idea or message can we expect?
Steve Jobs, the founder and deceased former CEO of Apple technology company, was a master at managing expectations. He would paint a picture of a situation so difficult that it would be impossible to fix—and then Apple would come out with a product that solved the problem. Or they would take away abilities from a newer model of their technology, claiming it’s not a defect—it’s a feature! You want simplicity, right? Jobs’s charisma and ability to generate product by sheer mental force both managed expectations and built anticipation for the secrecy-wrapped novel products, for better or worse.
John the Baptist may have had serious expectations for his life given his father’s prophecy. But those expectations may not have been met. John wore strange clothes and ate strange foods, and he had only one sales line: “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Even that line came from Isaiah.
Steve Jobs may have been a master at managing individual expectations, but we see that John the Baptist is the master at overwhelming the expectations for who Jesus is to be. Jesus is expected not simply to arrive but to set the world aright, to remove the inequalities, and to humble the self-exalted. We’ve now spent two millennia understanding that those massive expectations are met only when they are made real in every community’s life together across the globe.