The One Who Is to Come.

Matthew 11:1-10

December 11, 2016

I.

The season of Advent asks us to focus on John the Baptizer, who is the Lord’s advance man, getting people ready to receive him.  Here we have an indication that even John has his doubts about whether Jesus is really the One.  

John is in prison for his anti-government activity.  So he may have felt depressed that his work is fruitless and frustrated.  If his agenda is to announce the coming of the Christ to all of Judea, he hasn’t succeeded.  And he notices that Jesus’ ministry, while it has an identical basic message of repentance because of the nearness of God’s Kingdom, is different.  John is a severe ascetic, featuring rigorous fasting and self-denial.  Jesus, on the contrary, is known for such laxity of lifestyle that some accuse him of being a glutton and a drunkard.  If John is about judgment and wrath, Jesus expresses forgiveness and love, gathering to himself all manner of low-lifes, sinners, infirm, and outcast people.

John is so concerned about Jesus’ ministry, that he manages from prison to send some of his disciples to check Jesus out.  He wants to know if they really are on the same side.  So they find Jesus and ask him, “Are you the One who is to come?  Or should we look for somebody else?”  Are you the Messiah, the Christ, the chosen, anointed Redeemer of Israel?  Are you the Bringer of the Kingdom of Heaven?  Or is John mistaken about you, and we need to keep a lookout for someone else?

I think this is a question many bring to church with them.  Even some who have been attending for years, may still have this question lurking in the back of their brains.  Is this Jesus the One?  Is he the only One?  Is he the One who can save and heal me?  Is he the One I should follow?  Is he, well, God?  Is he worth getting up early on a Sunday and schlepping over here to hear about?  Is he worth associating with these other people who seem to think he’s worthwhile?   Is he going to change my life for the better?  Or should I continue to shop around… maybe check out Buddhism or Islam… or better yet, just sleep in and not deal with institutional religion at all and just, you know, be spiritual on my own?

The answer Jesus gives to John’s disciples is basically, “You tell me.  Look around.  See what is happening here.  You tell me if this is what you are looking for.  You tell me if this is what the Christ is supposed to be doing.  You tell me if I am the One for you.  See for yourself.  I am not going to give you a speech and try to sell myself to you.  Look around.  You tell me.”    

So presumably they do just that.  Perhaps they interview people in Jesus’ group. Perhaps they watch what is going on, observing the disciples and how they treat each other.  Maybe they see what kind of a community they have, how they pray, what they teach and preach.  Maybe they listen to what people in the villages and in the countryside have to say.  The probably do the same kinds of things we would do to evaluate a ministry today.

Jesus tells them and us what they’re going to find.  “Those who were blind are able to see.  Those who were disabled are walking.  People with skin diseases are cleansed.  Those who were deaf now hear.  Those who were dead are raised up.  The poor have good news proclaimed to them.”

II.

These are the marks of Jesus’ ministry, then and now.  They describe a community where the living God is active and having a direct impact on people’s lives.  This is the proof that Jesus is who he says he is.  This is the proof that we are his disciples and that he is with us still by the power of his Holy Spirit.

When someone comes to our church and wants to know if Jesus is the One for them, we need to be able to say exactly what Jesus says here.  “Look around.  See for yourself.  Talk to people; listen to their stories.  You tell me.”

And in doing so we do have to get beyond the limited, literal, reductionist interpretation of these things.  Yes, Jesus heals people of physical sickness, and that sometimes happens today.  At the same time, these are metaphors for larger and deeper issues.  The church is not primarily a health clinic.  So this is about overcoming more than bodily illness, disability, and death. 

• So being a place where “Those who were blind are able to see,” means that we bring people to enlightenment, true knowledge, real perception, and broader understanding and awareness.  It means people come to see from a higher, wider, and more inclusive perspective we see more of the relationships and connections between us that unite us.  
• When we talk about how “Those who were disabled are walking,” we mean helping people who were paralyzed by fear to get somewhere in their lives.  We bring people to experience new freedom, empowerment, and ability.  We give them permission and bring them to emancipation from powers that had held them back or down.   
• In Jesus’ day, people with skin diseases were excluded from worship and from the community in general.  They were forced to live apart as pariahs.  One of Jesus’ most characteristic actions is to welcome and include all kinds of people in his circle, especially those whom society deemed to be diseased and defective and dangerous.  By embracing them, we in the church cleanse others of their social label of being defiled and infectious.  
• “Those who were deaf now hear,” means that we allow people to hear others’ voices, especially cries for help and justice.  It means we value open and honest communication, we speak the truth, and we listen to each other with an empathy that identifies and resonates with people.  
• The church has always been about bringing people from death to life, this is what baptism symbolizes.  “Those who were dead are raised up” from the things that keep people spiritually dead and inert, like addiction, like anger,  shame, and hatred.  Like ideologies that keep us locked in dark tombs of despair and convention from which we see no way out.  
• Finally, in the church, “The poor have good news proclaimed to them.”  Jesus is here accessing the teaching from Leviticus on Jubilee and sabbath.  These were times built into the economy for release from indebtedness, restitution of lost property, and equitable distribution of wealth.

III.

And we don’t spiritualize or psychologize these categories either.  Each one of them leads us to concrete action in the world, not just a change in opinions or mindset.  Each one changes our actual behavior, what we do and say, how we relate to each other and to God’s creation.  We relate to these areas in how we vote, how we spend our money, how we use our time, and what we do with our bodies.

These six things, at least, have to be happening in every church, in my view.  When people ask if Jesus is the-One-who-is-to-come, we have to be able to point to where these things are happening around and among us.  Because these are the indications that we are disciples of Jesus Christ and that we have his authority and power.  

Because doing these things is not normal in a society and economy that prefers people stay blind, lame, unclean, deaf, dead, and broke.  Because those who view themselves in these broken and defective ways are easy to convince that their salvation is in working for someone else and buying things.  Such people are easy to control and herd into dead-end jobs and superficial, temporary relationships.

These are the people to whom God sends us.  Unfortunately, too often they are precisely the people the church has wanted to stay away from.  Some imagine, with some justification, that the only people welcome in church are those who have it all together.  As if this were where healthy and successful people came to congratulate themselves that they are not like those other pathetic losers who aren’t “saved.”

No.  Jesus’ gathering is a place where healing and wholeness happen, and healing and wholeness don’t happen to people who did not start out diseased and broken.  If you think you have it all together this is the last place you belong.

John’s disciples presumably look around and see and hear what Jesus is doing.  Then they leave.  We don’t know if they were impressed or disappointed.  We don’t know what they report back to John, whether this Jesus is the real deal, or just some faith-healer.  It is possible that they didn’t get it.  The Christ is supposed to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire and divide the wheat from the chaff.  Is that what they see in Jesus’ ministry?  Is what Jesus is doing spectacular enough to warrant the title of Messiah?  Or do they decide to wait for someone else?

Some were apparently not convinced.  Jesus’ disciples run across disciples of John for many years, all over the Empire.  They seem to have come around eventually, because John is viewed very favorably in the New Testament.  But if they are looking for fireworks, or a revolutionary army to finally overthrow Rome, they don’t find it in Jesus’ group.

IV.

In the end, Jesus suggests that John’s ascetic, firebrand, prophetic ministry is a preparatory stage that maybe we have to pass through before we can perceive and participate in what Jesus is doing.  It’s like the stages of grief, we have to go through the denial and the anger, the depression and the bargaining, before we arrive at the kind of acceptance that finally heals us.  You have to sort of exhaust all other options and discover that they don’t work, before turning to the One whose Presence does work.

Jesus says that’s okay.  It may even have been his own path, to go through that case first; he goes to John as well, remember, before he fully realizes his own calling and identity.  John baptizes him.

Now Jesus demonstrates that the Kingdom of God gets revealed and activated one broken person at a time.  This may not be the fire and brimstone John expects.  But it is what works.  Jesus’ approach is not to overthrow the system from above, but to undermine it from below by creating small communities of love, hope, peace, and justice, places where healing and growth happen, places where the Kingdom of God breaks in like light through the broken places, and the broken people, of the world.

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