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?
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