"Are you the one...?"

Advent 3A | December 12, 2004

Matthew 11:2-11

Jenee Woodard writes about this week's gospel text and the effect of Advent: "I continue to think about the dead-end ways I find myself wanting to write 'happily ever after' in terms that are long-sense dead or outgrown, and in doing so, I miss the really good stuff." Did John have in mind a way of writing "happily ever after" that had to die if he was to see Jesus for who he was? "His winnowing fork is in his hand," John had said of the one who would come after him. Now he sends messengers to Jesus asking, "Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?" In reply he gets a list of activities different from the work of separating wheat from chaff: "the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them" (Matt 11:5).

It's fair to say that Jesus did not match up point-for-point with John's expectations. I can see that, and I can imagine a sermon starting from that place: "There goes John again, saying, 'Bring it on!' to destruction, but look: Jesus is more interested in healing than torching, more interested in raising the dead than smiting the wicked." I get how John got Jesus wrong—or at least how he would come to need the clarification he seeks. But how are we getting Jesus wrong? The harder sermon to write is one that investigates how Jesus does not match up point-for-point with my and my hearers' expectations.

Doubtless some hearers still expect the incineration of wickedness that John anticipated, and they may be as eager for it as John seems to be. This is what I hear, for instance, in the observation that all manner of illnesses (from HIV/AIDS to lung cancer) are God's judgment on human sin. "What can people expect who do not clean up their act?" Now surely God hates and judges human sin. God hates human sin because God loves our neighbor and the rest of creation as much as God loves us and anything that hurts the neighbor or the earth therefore torques God out of shape. Yet in the face of some believers' surety about other people's sin and God's judgment on it, I am tempted to say, "Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?" (Matt 7:3).

In all fairness, the crowd I usually hang out with is way too polite and politically correct to sound much like John the Baptist when they see human sin. My crowd's problem is not that we, like John, think the Messiah will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. Our problem is that we do not expect much of anything to change with the Messiah's advent. It is not that we think he will be vindictive and we are just too gleeful about that—or at least it is not usually that. Instead, our problem is that we think the best the Messiah can do is take the edge off. Jesus says to John's messengers, "Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them." Instead of hoping for, watching, expecting such things as these, we look for a little analgesic. Jesus, could we just have something for the pain?

The Messiah's mission is so much bigger than that. This one means to open the eyes of the blind, to raise the dead, to give the poor a real future and a hope. In conversation with a psychotherapist recently, I commented that a mutual friend was unlikely to change some particular habit: "After all, he is over 50 years old," I said. "How much change can there really be at that age?" The therapist disagreed. "Of course people can change after 50," he said, and I realized what a cramped vision of the future my comment had revealed. I who am in the business of big dreams (for a living, I read a set of documents that ends with the risen Jesus saying, "See, I am making all things new" [Rev 21:5])—I had not even considered that someone who could open the eyes of the blind could also change a middle-aged human's mind, heart or habits. John's expectation of the Messiah might have been too vengeful; ours is likely too small.

I have read about Paul's thorn in the flesh (2 Cor 12:2-10), so I know that the Messiah is not a mere cosmic bellhop come to earth, ready to elminate pain and maximize pleasure. Yet John the Baptist's question to Jesus in this week's text, along with Jesus' answer, has had the effect of opening my eyes to some true and formerly unexpected messianic activity in my life and the lives of those I know well. Go and tell John what you see and hear: One of us is walking again after being laid low by grief for years on end. Another can actually hear it and believe it now when someone says to her, "I love you." Another of us is beginning to feel that he doesn't have to yell, "Unclean!" or do a dozen equally drastic things to keep people at a distance. "The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them." Could this one be the Messiah?

Comments

[Stephanie]

Thanks, Mary, for your fine work on this gospel reading.

When you say, "Doubtless some hearers still expect the incineration of wickedness that John anticipated," I am reminded of a man in the last congregation I served. He was from a decidedly pietistic Lutheran background. He lived in a house where the shades were always pulled shut and was well known to be as frugal as the day is long. Although he did not find my colleague's and my preaching spiritual enough, he attended Search Bible study each week. Frequently during the conversation time, he would suggest that we should preach more on the wrath of God, because that would be "really interesting."

Interesting for whom, I wonder?!

[Frankie]

I appreciate your thoughts and yes Jesus really didn't fit the idea of Messiah very well since he didn't come to enable the worldly kingdom and bring justice and judgement. Jesus will come and deal with sin, etc., when he come again. However in his first coming he was seeking to bring good news and alleviate much suffering while giving hope. I doubt any of us will be getting exactly what we expect with the work of Jesus and the will of God. Perhaps that is the point. Watch and wait for things you never even considered happening with the coming of the Christ! :-)