Crocuses.

Isaiah 35:1-10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

December 15, 2019

I.

In the center of Isaiah’s vision of the coming salvation are these words about healing.  “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”  It is these very categories that the Lord Jesus has in mind when he offers his work as a healer of these specific maladies as proof of the validity of his ministry. 

It is healing that is the witness, the evidence, the validation and proof of God’s living and saving Presence in the world.  To put it bluntly, if we are not a healing place, then we are not an anticipation of, or a testimony to, the Kingdom of God.  

Jesus is known among his contemporaries as a healer and exorcist.  Healing is what justice looks like when it is applied to an individual body: it restores us to our created, intended condition.  It brings us back to a wholeness and integrity that God blesses us and all creation with at the beginning.  It banishes the evil that breaks us, degrades us, depletes our energy, and makes us less than complete, full, whole human beings.

What Jesus demonstrates in his healing ministry towards individuals, Isaiah reminds us is a metaphor or a sign of what God intends for the whole creation, as we see in the opening lines of Isaiah’s prophecy about the wilderness and the dry land being glad.  “The desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.”  

For us, the crocus is one of the first indications of the coming of spring.  We still have two months to wait for the first crocus.  And crocuses are very hardy; they survive blizzards in March.  Springtime is what justice looks like for creation: the forces of death retreat and life starts to take over again.

Isaiah finds in the oscillation of the seasons an image for what God is doing in his time politically.  The people have been languishing in exile in the city of Babylon for around 70 years, two or three generations.  Jerusalem is a dusty ruin.  Only a few old people still even remember Solomon’s Temple.  It has been what we would call a long winter for them.

Crocuses also produce saffron, which, at nearly $2000 a pound, is the most expensive spice in the world.  So there is this overlay of immense value in Isaiah’s image of the crocus blossoming abundantly.  Even from what is today a desiccated moonscape, God provides.

God is going to turn the wasteland into a thriving, fecund, busy, buzzing, life-filled swamp!  Isaiah knows that a swamp is a place of incredible blessing.  It is humans who see them as full of pests, a nuisance only to be drained.

The point for Isaiah is reversal.  The corrupt, barren, disordered, diseased, dysfunctional situation in which we find ourselves, what we consider to be normalcy, whether it be manifest in crippled bodies, imprisoned nations, or an abused creation, is what God comes into the world to change.

II.

And God is about nothing if not change.  Healing is change.  If we imagine that God is about keeping things stable and the same, or even about making things the way they used to be, we haven’t read much of the Bible.  The whole story starts with, and is summed up by, the miraculous deliverance of God’s people from slavery in Egypt.  That is a massive and political change that overturns the normal order of things in which Emperors and Empires and armies and conquerors rule.  God’s power overturns that whole system and replaces it with the new egalitarian community described in the Torah.

Jesus is proclaiming and enacting the same thing.  “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,” he says, describing his own ministry.  This is the same change, the same transformation and liberation, applied on the most personal and physical level.  

Jesus starts with healing individuals to show that God is not going to change and renew just one area of life.  God’s salvation is a comprehensive transformation of everything, from within people out to the whole creation. 

This focus on healing and transformation is unfortunately not evident in very many Christian churches.  Last week the news in church circles was yet another damning poll, this one from Five-Thirty-Eight, showing that “Millennials Are Leaving Religion and They’re Not Coming Back.”  One interviewed couple talks about how they “came to see all of this negativity from people who were highly religious and increasingly didn’t want a part in it.”  This is what young people think of us.  Fifty-seven percent of millennials say that religious people are generally less tolerant of others.

Along with being a healer, the other thing Jesus is known for in his own time is his ridiculous and even alarming, offensive, and dangerous tolerance.  He was famous for hanging out with “prostitutes and tax collectors.”  That even became a common epithet that his enemies used to describe his work.  He also made a point to engage with sick people, even lepers.  He would heal anyone who showed up.  He had no means-test or qualifying exam.  All you had to be was sick, and he would heal you.

The church has managed to degrade from being disciples of Jesus Christ, the most welcoming and positive human in history, to a place with a reputation for negativity and intolerance.  We need to lose that reputation and fast.  And the fact that some of the most prominent Christian leaders today are preaching bigotry, fear, and anger towards immigrants, Gays, Muslims, and generally anyone they don’t like, while spouting a toxic nostalgia, and aligning themselves to godless and inhumane figures and political policies, isn’t helping.

III.

I am not saying we have to accommodate to whatever a particular generational group wants us to be.  That would be crazy.  Accommodating to this or that dominant social cohort is how we got into this mess.  We accommodated to a comfortable existence in Babylon.  We became apologists for Babylonian atrocities.  And we were well-compensated for it.  But now we are paying.

I am saying that the church needs to accommodate only and always to the teachings and life of Jesus Christ.  If we’re going to be rejected we should at least be rejected for our trust in him, our hope in his life, and our love in imitation of him.  If we’re going to be rejected it should be for the same reasons he was rejected and crucified, which was that he associated with the “wrong” people and he threatened the privilege and status of the “right” people.  If we’re going to be rejected it should be because people are finding healing among us, and healed people are less apt to be exploited, manipulated, conned, or enslaved by the powerful.

Do the "blind" receive their sight here?  Do we banish the darkness of ignorance and bring people into contact with the Light which is Jesus Christ and his message of love?  Or are we content to leave people in the blindness of self-serving lies and conspiracy theories?

Do the “lame” walk here?  Do we empower people and give them the ability and the room to change and grow and transform into Christ’s likeness?  Or are we content to leave people paralyzed by old habits, roles, fears, desires, and regrets? 

Are “lepers” cleansed here?  Do we welcome the outcast?  Do we respect and enact healthy boundaries?  Do we cherish what is inside people more than their appearance?  Do we help them wash away the corrosive thoughts eating away at them?  Or are we content to leave them lost and alone?

Do we help the “deaf” to hear?  Do we develop skills of listening and attentiveness to others?  Or are we content to hear only our own personal stories and agendas?     

Are the “dead” raised here?  Do people find new life and energy, new meaning, purpose, and direction to their lives by following the Risen Lord?  Or are we content to leave people forgotten in isolation and despair?

Do the “poor” have good news brought to them here?  Are we a place of generosity?  Do we advocate for policies that feed the hungry, house the homeless, pay workers fairly, and provide medical care for all?  Or are we content to blame and punish people for their poverty? 

And I do believe that being a place where individuals and relationships find healing and wholeness will be instrumental in creating change in society and even renewing the whole creation.  Healed people heal the world.  My favorite quote from the Russian Saint Seraphim of Sarov is: “Acquire a peaceful spirit and thousands around you will be saved.”  Just being with people who know healing, heals people.

IV.

For in Jesus Christ, people who say “I once was blind but now I see” will not let others languish in ignorance and bigotry.  When we who know we were once powerless, or excluded, or not listening, or even spiritually dead, we will relate to, empathize with, and so heal those who suffer from these inner disabilities.  We can be agents of healing because we have been there.  We can bring Jesus’ new life to others.  We who know we were poor but are now rich can communicate how we all benefit together from the culture of sharing, gratitude, and abundance that Jesus Christ announces.

These are the people who are “the ransomed of the Lord.”  Isaiah says these are the ones who “shall return, and come to Zion with singing… they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

Their joy is infectious, and they… that is, we... shall be the means by which God changes the whole world, one soul at a time.  That is our calling.  We are crocuses, resisting the persistent winter in steadfast hope, trusting in the Light that is both coming and within us.

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