"It's Alive!"

John 1:1-14.

I.

            There is a set of questions that every human being has to answer.  And we begin to answer those questions for ourselves almost as soon as we are born; maybe even before we are born.  At that age we don’t answer consciously in words, but our body and our heart and our mind give us an answer very early, and it shapes our whole future. 

            The questions have to do with whether the world is a safe place.  We want to know if we will be taken care of.  Will we find love?  Do we belong here?

            These are questions that we are actually answering every day and every minute of every day of our lives.  Just about everything we do is an expression and a reflection of how we have chosen to answer those questions.  What we have for breakfast, what we teach our children, what books we read, what we buy, how we vote, the kind of language we use… everything we do betrays our answer.

            Unfortunately, we all answer those questions negatively.  We all conclude very early that the world is not a safe place for us, and we have to figure out how to make it safe in order for us to survive.

            It is not the fault of our parents or our family or our community.  We simply find ourselves thrown into a world in which we are cold, hungry, and lonely – at least in comparison to where we were before we were born.  And immediately upon birth, if not before, our minds start building defense and offense mechanisms to equip us for survival in a world that we perceive to be different, alien, and not particularly friendly.  It is like we have been ejected from paradise and crash-landed in, if not hell, then certainly on some much less beneficent planet.

            Our trust has been shattered; and it will take most of us many decades to recover that full trust in the world, in God, in other people, if we ever do.  John writes his gospel to show what God has done to restore our trust, our faith.  He wants us to know that the world doesn’t have to be the way we think it is.  In fact, it is not a hostile, indifferent, violent place, a place where we have to fight for everything we get, a place where we have to develop elaborate strategies to get what we need.

            The fact that we live this way means that we unintentionally generate exactly that kind of world.  We engage in fearful behavior that creates a fearsome situation where there was none before.  It is our inaccurate view of the world, and the fear, anger, and shame that this fosters in our own souls, that move us to build institutions, perform actions, use words, and develop elaborate rationalizations that spawn a world characterized by violence, inequality, injustice, selfishness, addiction, sorrow, and death, built on the exploitation of the earth and other people.

II.

            And that would have been that: people would follow a tragic delusion, thereby unnecessarily falling into a nasty, brutish, and short existence, until finally being snuffed out by trying to live by a false understanding of the world.  Humans would careen from disaster to catastrophe, millions would suffer and die unnecessary deaths, and eventually they might even poison the whole planet.

            But sometime in his life John met someone.  He met a man who shared with him and others the truth that not only does it not have to be this way, but the real world as God made it is not the world we make for ourselves and choose to live in.  This man lived a life that was so attuned to God, and his words and actions were so powerful and miraculous, that John and others left everything and followed him as his disciples.

            The man pointed out right there in their own Jewish Scriptures, and then embodied in his own way of life, the truth that the world really is a safe and blessed place, charged with the goodness and joy of the Creator.  He said and showed that people could live according to that truth, and in so doing they would be so resonant with God and God’s will that it is not an exaggeration to say that they would become God’s children and never actually even really die.

            When the authorities hounded and finally killed him, not even that was able to stop his mission, because God raised him from death in a new form that could never die!  And now people who trust in him and obey his commandments – living lives of non-violence, justice, healing, and witnessing to God’s love – also share in his resurrection.  The darkness of death cannot hold them; they dwell forever in the light and Presence of God.

            Of course, the man that John met was Jesus.  In Jesus, John and the other disciples saw God.  There was no other way to put it.  God’s Presence and nature was communicated to them through Jesus so fully and profoundly that they understood him to actually be God’s living Word, God’s actual self-communication to the world, God’s complete revelation of God’s nature and essence, as love.  And by learning to see God in him, they also learned to see God in themselves and in others.  Indeed, they started seeing God everywhere, in the whole creation!

            This was not something John could keep to himself.  None of the disciples could.  It is explosive good news that changes everything.  People need to hear it and be saved from their delusion and turn to the truth, the light, the Word, the Presence of God.  Their lives and the life of everyone depended on it.  So John collected and wrote down and distributed stories about Jesus that revealed who he was, who God is, who we are, and how we can share in his way, truth, and life.

III. 

            But before diving right into the stories, John adds a prologue.  It may even have been an early hymn of John’s community of disciples.  Hearers of these stories needed to know in advance exactly who they were about.  Jesus Christ is none other than God’s very Word, come into our flesh as the Savior of the world.

            When John says those famous words, “In the beginning was the Word,” he is simply pointing out that, in the book of Genesis, God creates the universe by speaking.  God’s Word “is God“ in action.  The Word creates what it says by saying it.  And the Word says everything.  Nothing happened, nothing came into being, that this Word did not say.

            So the world and everything in it comes from God as a product of God’s self-expression.  It is not an accident.  It is not random.  The world is made on purpose.  And that recognition means that there has to be some point to our existence.

            Not only that, but everything that comes into being through the Word is life.  The universe is therefore in some sense alive.  It moves and changes, it vibrates and shimmers and hums with the Word and Breath by which it was created.  It interacts, it exchanges, it grows and develops, it processes and evolves.  Nothing that God creates is inert and dead.  All of matter and energy shine and glow with the business and purpose of life.   

            In this living creation God’s light is shining in and through everything and everyone.  Human beings are made to be conscious of and know this fundamental reality and truth about themselves. 

            So when John says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it,” he means that the Word that creates life and light is invincible.  It is stronger than the darkness of disordered chaos.  It’s victory and triumph is inevitable.  The universe is not about the disorder and inertia of the darkness; life and light always advance, the Word always wins in the end. 

            So, contrary to our limited perceptions and weak reason, we humans are not aliens in the universe.  We are made of what the universe is made of, which is light.  We are the universe, conscious and self-reflective.  We are alive because the whole place is alive.  We can no more die than can the universe can somehow expire.  Everything is connected.  Right down to the atoms and molecules of our bodies, we were spoken into existence by the Creator.  God’s Word shapes and forms us as human beings.  We are not alone but part of the extended family of matter and life.  We’re all in this together.

IV.

            All that may seem like abstract philosophy, or wishful thinking… until we realize that wherever the text says “the Word” it means Jesus Christ.  John is not saying all this because he read about it.  He learned it by direct experience of an actual person through and in whom he perceived and knew this truth.  John met the true light personally; he met the Word of God coming into the world.  

            God comes to us in Jesus Christ.  God does not relinquish us to drift into oblivion, having to slog our way along on the earth subject to lies and falsehoods about the way the world really is.  We are not finally given up to the violence, injustice, and inequalities of whatever corrupt empire happens to be dominating the earth.  We are given hope in the truth that God comes to us.

            People didn’t recognize him, and they still don’t recognize who or what they truly are.  Even when our true nature as light stares us in the face we don’t get it.  It looks alien, threatening, disruptive, and wild.  The Spirit of the Creator infuses the world, but we don’t perceive it.  The Word of the Creator comes to his own people, but people do not accept him. 

            But then John affirms this mystery that some people do get it.  They do awaken to the truth of all this, and receive, welcome, and accept the light and life of God.  Some folks come to believe or trust in him when he comes to them.

            This requires a receptivity, an openness, a willingness to be changed.  People who already have everything they want and need tend not to be receptive.  It is those who know they have nothing to lose, who are not being well-served by the status quo, these are folks who are receptive.  These are the people who are willing to entertain an alternative.  Desperate people, people who have hit bottom, people who have nowhere else to turn, these are the ones who are ready to receive a different answer than the ones they have been getting from the authorities in this world.

            This receptivity is built into us from the fact that the Creator’s breath already permeates us simply because we are made by God, made of light.  We already have within us the ability to receive what we already are.  We just have to relax our defenses and look to the light God has placed within us.

            Later, Jesus himself will point out that all true receptivity is receptivity to God.  To be truly open is to be open to God.  Everything else we have concocted in the imagination of our own hearts.

V.

            Finally, John gives us his key insight that “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”  The Word doesn’t just create light and life; the Word goes further and becomes flesh, he takes on our mortal, human body, he takes on our material, physical nature, even to the point of sharing our death, and showing it to be a doorway to life.

            Because he takes on our mortal life, we are empowered to take on his divine life of self-giving and love.  By our receptivity to the flow of God’s light coming into our lives and world, and our shining of that light into the world in our obedience of his commandments, we rise above the darkness, the fear, the anger, and the shame, and we express and reflect God’s love.  We actually become partakers of the divine nature itself. 

            We become children of God, who are born of God.  We become who we were created to be.  And in us creation becomes what it was created to be: a place of light and life, growth and beauty, giving and peace, justice and freedom.

            That is the urgency of John’s message.  People do not have to be on a one-way path to extinction.  We do not have to be alone and enemies of each other.  We do not have to walk in the way of falsehood and delusion.  In Jesus Christ, we can be who we already are, we can be who God created us to be, we can live in joy and goodness, and we can be a blessing to the earth and to each other.

+++++++    

                       

Jesus-the-Light.

Isaiah 9:2-7.

I.

            These words from the prophet Isaiah celebrate the birth of a new king, a new heir to the throne, indicating a new future for the people.  We who follow the Way of Jesus Christ understand the prophet to be looking forward to the coming of the promised Messiah.  That Messiah is Jesus Christ.  He is our King and our God.  He is our light.

            The prophet begins by saying that the people had been walking in darkness.  I take this to mean that they were living according to lies, falsehoods, and untruths, probably fed to them by a conquering power.  They were not living in the real world, but a fake and artificial world generated and projected by the sinful human ego.  Hence, the people were subject to violence and motivated by fear.

            I find much darkness in our world in our days as well.  I am conscious of much denial and delusion.  There are so many ways that we are not following Jesus the light, and choosing instead to live by our own feeble and limited, little, artificial lights: our own reason, our own feelings, our own hungers and desires, our own memories and habits.   

            Jesus the light feeds hungry people.  But we choose to leave hungry people, even children, unfed.  Jesus the light heals everyone who comes to him sick or disabled.  But we deny healthcare to people, or charge such high prices that it is the major cause of personal bankruptcy.  Jesus the light welcomes everyone and makes a point of associating with outcasts, exemplified by tax collectors and prostitutes.  But we find ways of judging, condemning, excluding, or placing arbitrary conditions on including people we either don’t like or don’t understand. 

            Jesus the light celebrates and appreciates the natural world, lifting up lilies, foxes, birds, wheat, and weather as signs and examples of God’s loving care and providence.  But we, of course, have built a civilization upon the rape and pillage of creation, even causing a wave of extinctions, for the profit of a very few.  Jesus the light preaches forgiveness and freedom.  But we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world.  

            Jesus the light establishes new communities of equality and sharing, as acts of resistance to the tyranny that throttled his own society.  But we have this idea that only individuals exist, and communities don’t matter.  Jesus the light warns us of the certain consequences of continuing on the path of inequality, violence, injustice, fear, and anger; he sadly cautions us against trusting in ourselves and our leaders and our ideologies.  And we choose to follow self-serving, self-righteous, self-justifying, self-important, self-centered ways of thinking and acting, trusting in violence, greed, feeding our manifold addictions, and piling up material goods.

            Surely “walking in darkness” describes us pretty well. 

II.

            But the prophet doesn’t emphasize this here.  There are lots of other places in his book where he talks at some length about the character of the darkness that grips the people.  But here that darkness is placed in the past.  He says that light has finally shined on the people and he foresees several clear indicators that this is the case.

            First, the nation is growing in joy and prosperity for all.  The creation is made by God as the perfect space for life to grow and thrive.  The earth is more than able to provide for everyone’s needs, if resources are distributed and shared equitably.

            Jesus the light tells us that we do not need to be anxious or worry about what we will eat or what we will wear.  The notion of scarcity and limitation of resources is something we invent and create.  The situation where some have too much and many have too little, and where too many people fight over scraps, is something generated in the darkness of the fearful human heart.  It is not true.  It is not the way God created the place.  It doesn’t have to be this way; and God will fix it.

            Living in the light means living in this abundance.  Jesus the light shows that abundance happens in obedience to him when we give thanks for what we receive, and when we share with each other.  Living in sharing and gratitude creates abundance and joy; but living by hoarding creates scarcity, pain, and anger.

            This is the economics of the light.  It has to do with rejoicing in what you have, rather than in being resentful about what you don’t have.  And the prophet mentions the dividing of plunder as a reference to the redistribution of wealth that the victors do after a war.  In this case it is the spreading around of the wealth of their oppressor who had gobbled the lions’ share of goods for themselves.     

            Indeed, the joy of the people is based on this defeat of their oppressor by God.  Their conquerors’ weapons have been miraculously broken, which is to say that their powerful enemy has been defeated.  The example used is that of Gideon, from the book of Judges.  In that story God deliberately reduces the number of Israelite fighters so that it will be absolutely clear that the victory as not won by the people, but by God.  In that battle, the Midianites defeated themselves in the disarray and confusion brought about by fear. 

            In Scripture it is God alone who takes vengeance, not the people.  The people are to maintain their attitude of faithful non-violence, even to the point of ministering to those who are hurt in the divine retribution.

            What Isaiah and so many other biblical writers say is that violence begets violence, those who live by the sword will die by the sword, if you participate in a system based on murder then don’t be surprised if that is what your actions bring down on you.  Not one of the many acts of destruction in the Book of Revelation are committed by the followers of Jesus.  It is all God acting in defense of the creation.

 

III.

            Finally, there is the birth of this child, the new king.  There is a reason why we are reading this passage tonight.  In the Lord’s Nativity we celebrate that the new king prophesied by Isaiah has come!  He comes as an infant, but the fact that he is here means that we know the light has arrived and is now available to us. 

            Knowing this, we are forced to choose now which king we will follow.  On the one hand, we may continued to give our allegiance to the defeated oppressors who still manage to rage.  We may follow those who kept us in the darkness of selfishness, greed, wanton consumption, and division; who enforce inequalities between us and whose agenda has always been the abuse of the poor and workers, and the depletion, degradation, and destruction of the earth. 

            Or on the other hand we may walk in the way of the new king who brings light and endless peace with justice and righteousness; the One born with the animals and first worshiped by shepherds.

            It is a choice that every generation has to make.  Caesar or Jesus Christ?  The Empire or Jesus Christ?  The reigning system propped up and enforced by the terror of advanced weaponry, or Jesus Christ?  The ones born with privilege in palaces, announced by well-paid propagandists, or the One born in a livestock feed-trough in a barn, and announced to poor workers by angels?

            Jesus is real.  He does not pretend to be more than human… even though he is God!  Too often humans pretend to be God, imagining God to be no more than an extrapolation of what we think is really powerful – just whatever we admire written in capital letters and yelled really loud.  But we thereby ignore this fact that where we find God most truly is in the circumstances of abject humility we see in Jesus’ birth.  God is not like us at our greatest; God is more like us at our lowest, most common, ordinary, and shared life.  It is through that place God infuses everything with divinity and being, from the bottom up. 

            To walk in the Way of Jesus Christ is to walk in the Way of God.  It is to resonate with and share in the energy of the Creator, reflecting and expressing the Creator’s Light in us and through us.

            So all those things and qualities that Isaiah says this child is about – Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, establishing the throne of David with justice and righteousness forever – that all happens in Jesus Christ, not from above, but from below.  It is not imposed on us by force, but we live into it with gentleness when we find that Presence within ourselves.

   

IV.

            We cannot make a new world without him; we have no light unto ourselves.  He is the only light.  And it is his light, the light of Jesus Christ, the light of God-with-us/Emmanuel, the light of the Kingdom of God within and among us, that brings light to all the world. 

            Isaiah makes the point that all this is God’s doing.  It is done by God’s “zeal,” God’s fervent energy, God’s unstoppable will.  Like a rising tide, or gravity.  You can work against it if you want and be temporarily successful.  But God always wins in the end.

            And here, in a barn in Bethlehem, the victory is sealed and guaranteed.  Because here is where we who walk in darkness, deep darkness, do see a great light.  It is the light that shines in the darkness, our darkness, that the darkness cannot overcome or comprehend. 

            Here God shows us that the light that shines on the people comes into the world by emergence from within.  From within first a woman named Mary, then from within a manger, then from within Bethlehem, then Galilee and Judea.  That light shines from the cross as an outpouring in love of the very life-blood of God, and through his blood and the Spirit that life and light finally radiate inexorably within the earth and the whole creation itself.

            Now we walk in the Way of Jesus in the power of that light, following his commandments, living his life of love revealed in generosity, healing, forgiveness, blessing, and peace, gathering his people….  That is what the Nativity is: walking even now in the gentle and open and joyful Way of our Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

God Is With Us.

Isaiah 7:1-16; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18- 25.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent.

I.

            Matthew began his gospel with a genealogy in which he pointedly lifted up 4 women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.   All of these women had some reason to be judged, excluded, and shamed, but God chose to work particularly important and pivotal actions through each one.

            Then, in today’s reading, he turns to a 5^th woman, a teenager named Mary.  She is another woman whom God is choosing for special work, but who will also be condemned by many as morally questionable.

            Matthew’s point is that this is not unprecedented; it is in fact normal for God to act this way.  So he writes: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.  When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” 

            That is a mouthful that we may confidently assume no one swallowed.  Sometimes we have to cut through the sentimental, pious cobwebs and realize that, although we have learned that this is all a beautiful, holy mystery, at the time it was a shameful scandal that would have had no scent of holiness or mystery about it.  There are cultures even today where a young woman’s showing up pregnant outside of marriage warrants an instant death sentence.  And we may be confident that Mary’s culture was far closer to those than to ours.

            Were this to happen in our time and place we wouldn’t be happy about it, but we would figure out a way through and try to do what’s best for the mother and child… which for the mother would surely include intensive therapy if she stuck to that story about the Holy Spirit.  But back then, Mary was risking her life along with permanently shaming her family.

            One of the things we learn from all this is that when God interacts with the world and with people, it is always messy.  God does not usually if ever show up in a way that affirms our stability, order, rules and regulations, or even our morality.  In fact, God tends to enter human life with all the gentleness and subtlety of a charging rhinoceros.  God’s motto seems to be, “If it ain’t broke, break it.”

            In fact, the only time God doesn’t enter life like a tornado blowing everything apart, is when everything is blown apart already.  When the Creator chooses to interact with the humans and their civilization it is usually not very pretty because what passes for civilization is just about the opposite of what God originally had in mind.  Civilization is just the word we give to the chronic human tendency to disobey, reject, mock, and otherwise hate our Creator.

II.

            God’s Presence and activity is always wild, undomesticated, feral, and fundamentally challenging if not comprehensively destructive to all our human systems.  The seminal story of the whole Bible is God messing with Pharaoh, the supreme leader of the most advanced civilization of the time, who was busy building monuments to himself using slave labor.  (Powerful people building monuments to themselves with slave labor is practically the definition of civilization.)  God comes in, not on the side of the powerful, wealthy, educated, attractive, and successful Pharaoh.  Pharaoh had all the other gods telling everyone how great he was.  No.  The true God comes in on the side of the slaves and in freeing them totally wrecks Pharaoh’s cushy gig.

            So here, with the coming of the Messiah, God does not show up in Caesar’s or Herod’s palace to one of the royal daughters, so the Messiah can be raised in comfort, privilege, and splendor, as we might imagine befits the Creator of the Universe.  It is not into one of the well-appointed homes of the successful, respectable, upright, beautiful families that the Messiah arrives.

            But it is to a young, unmarried woman, as a spectacular disruption of her whole formerly ordinary life.  Showing that we have a completely unrealistic understanding of what “befits the Creator of the Universe.”  The Creator of the Universe actively seeks out and flows into places where the creative and active response can only be trust and love.

            Matthew goes on to tell us about the man to whom Mary is engaged.  “Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.”  He is a man who faces the disorder, chaos, and wildness of God with dignity, grace, and forgiveness.  He could have reacted in anger and violence.  His community would have supported him in this.  He could have moaned on about his offended honor.  He could have had her arrested.  He could have energetically sought to get to the bottom of this.

            But he doesn’t.  He is righteous; more righteous than the letter of the law, apparently.  His righteousness is demonstrated in mercy, in his humility, and in his caring about others.  He does not want “to expose her to public disgrace.”  In other words, he meets God’s disruption with trust and love even before he has the dream that explains it all.  He doesn’t feed violence, anger, fear, vindictiveness, self-righteousness, and retribution into the system.  Instead of making the situation far worse, he rolls with it.

            When God chooses Mary, God also chooses Joseph.  Only a person of decency and patience, only a person of profound humility and openness to God’s disruptive activity would do.  Someone who was insecure with a big ego wouldn’t have cut it.

III.

            But then, just as Joseph has resolved to do the decent thing, as much energy as that would have taken in itself, God sends Joseph a dream requiring even more of him.  His intention is to put this sad incident behind him and move on with his life.  His intention is to separate from the disruption and the chaos of God.  But God says, “Not so fast.  I require more from you than simply not being a jerk.  I want you in this thing for the long haul.”

            Joseph is to marry Mary anyway.  He is to raise this child with her.  He is to weather with her whatever storms may arise.  He is to answer with her and for her when people ask hard questions.  He is to make her lot his own.  This is a great deal to ask.  I mean, it is still someone else’s baby that he is being asked to raise as his own.  That Someone Else may be the Holy Spirit, but it remains a big pill to swallow. 

            In the dream the angel says that if it makes him feel better he gets to decide the child’s name… as long as he decides that the child’s name is Jesus.  In Hebrew the name “Jesus,” or Yeshua, means “the Lord saves.”  The dream-angel says that the child gets this name because “he will save his people from their sins.”

            The angel addresses Joseph as “son of David.”  Part of Joseph’s appeal is his lineage.  He is a descendant of the great King David, as Matthew pointed out in the earlier genealogy.  So there is this necessary connection here to various prophecies that indicate the Messiah will be a descendant of David. 

            But once again the story is messy.  God doesn’t make it easy or clean or neat.  There are apparent loose ends that need to be addressed.  It has problems and ambiguities.  Because Joseph isn’t the biological father of this child.  It will be one other thing that Jesus’ opponents will use against him.  Joseph isn’t his father; therefore Jesus can’t be the Messiah because he is not a biological descendant of David. 

            It turns out that anyone obsessed with the question of who Jesus’ father is or isn’t, anyone needing the historical, biological verification, anyone holding Jesus up to this or that proof-text in Scripture – for that matter, anyone arguing about the gynecological likelihood of a virgin birth – is missing the point.  God deliberately makes this all unproveable.  Because it is not about our proofs of various kinds; it is about the trust and love with which we receive the Messiah into our lives and into our hearts.

            Jesus is a descendant of David by adoption, not by blood.  God is therefore saying that the actual, historical, biological DNA doesn’t matter.  What matters is the trust and love demonstrated by Joseph.  It will become the way all of us become part of the Messiah’s family and are made descendants of Abraham: by adoption.  By faith.  By trust and love.  By sharing a universally applicable story rather than a limited, tenuous, arbitrary blood-line.

IV.

            The angel in Joseph’s dream then interprets for him the passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah, where it says: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
 and they shall name him Emmanuel.”  And the angel translates the Hebrew name Emmanuel as “God is with us.”

            The angel sees this as a prophecy; Isaiah looks ahead to the time of Joseph and Mary.  The child that Mary has conceived with be named Jesus, but he will function as emmanu-el.  That is, he will be not just a sign of God’s protection in a particular historical situation; he will be the living, saving Presence of God with, within, and among the people, for all time.

            Each Sunday during the season of Advent we have been singing the last verse of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”  The words are: “O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray.  Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today….  O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel.”  The great medieval Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, once said something to the effect that if Christ is not born in us now, it doesn’t matter whether or not he was born back then.

            We experience that Presence of God in trust and love.  We trust that God is more powerful and creative than whatever disasters and catastrophes we bring upon ourselves.  The Creator is bigger than our messes and stronger than our brokenness.  Not only can God take our broken, dirty, confused, shattered, and lost lives and bring something unique and true and beautiful out of them, that’s the only way this happens.  God only comes to the humble and the powerless, the losers and the lost.  God only comes to those who know they have nowhere else to turn.

            The good news is that it is our very brokenness that opens us to healing.  It is our losses that enable us to receive grace and forgiveness.  It is our powerlessness that creates the space where God can come in and empower us.  The people most able to experience resurrection: the uprising and awakening, the redemption that restores us to our true place in God, are those who know their lives have become unmanageable. 

            The good news that God is with us is the essence of the Christian message.  It means we are not alone.  It means our lives have direction and purpose from the Creator.  It means that nothing can ultimately harm us.  This Word is what we have to tell and express and reflect and share with others.  God is with us!  All of us.

+++++++

Stuff the Messiah Does.

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

The Third Sunday of Advent. 

I.

            Last week we heard John the Baptizer predicting the Messiah as one who brings apocalyptic judgment, separating the wheat from the chaff, baptizing with the Holy Spirit and with fire, Burning up the wicked in an unquenchable fire.

            This week it is 6 chapters later.  John is in prison and wondering if Jesus really is the Messiah after all.  The reason he is not sure about this is that Jesus does not appear to be doing the apocalyptic judgment thing at all.  John is expecting fireworks, earthquakes, volcanoes, a veritable Book of Revelation.... 

            But what he hears about regarding Jesus are these reports that he is doing some impressive healings, but that, alarmingly, he is also hanging out with, among other people, those hated tax collectors.  One thing Jesus is not doing is generating this End Times fiery cataclysm that John predicted.  So John is, well, confused.

            So he sends some of his disciples to go visit Jesus and find out what’s going on.  When they track Jesus down they are instructed to say to him, “Are you the One who is to come, or should we look for somebody else?”

            It is a frustrated question, and also somewhat insulting or at least challenging.  It is saying to Jesus, “If you’re not going to start doing more things that look to us like what the Messiah should be doing, then maybe we should start looking around for someone who can.”  It is a barely veiled attempt to pressure Jesus into acting more like the Messiah they were expecting. 

            When the emissaries from John find Jesus, they probably have to pick their way through a busy throng of people.  Maybe they pass small groups receiving instruction from Jesus’ disciples and joining in conversation with them.  Maybe they see recently healed individuals celebrating their new lives with their families.  Maybe they overhear knots of Pharisees and other leaders debating Jesus’ validity.  Maybe they see wealthy tax collectors uncharacteristically sharing with poor people.  Maybe they notice that women seem to have more of a central role even in leadership of what is going on.  Maybe they observe groups of people leaving while talking enthusiastically about bringing Jesus’ message of hope back to their own village. 

            Maybe they find someone who can guide them to Jesus, and that person tells them about the things Jesus has been doing, like feeding 5,000 people with practically nothing.  And when they finally locate Jesus himself, maybe he is actually healing someone even as the visitors arrive.

            Jesus looks up at them.  And they say they’re from John, who is in prison, and John has heard different things about Jesus, and what he really wants to know, the reason he sent them to find Jesus and see for themselves, is this: “Are you the One who is to come?  Or should we look for somebody else?”

II.

            Jesus doesn’t answer them directly.  He doesn’t say, “Yes, I am the Messiah, the One who is to come.  Tell John I’ve got this.”  Neither does he say, “No, it’s not me; we’re all still waiting for the Messiah.  Tell John he should keep looking.” 

            He asks them to answer this question for themselves, based on what they are hearing and seeing all around them.  In other words, Jesus doesn’t make any claim to be anything.  He trusts them to trust their own perceptions.  “Look around.  What do you see?”

            And in case they are not seeing what is going on all around them, Jesus interprets for them.  I imagine him actually pointing to specific individuals when he shows these representatives from John what he has been doing.  “There’s a blind person who has received his sight; that woman was lame and now she is walking; over there are some lepers who are now cleansed.  This child was deaf and now she can hear.  And on the way in you may have noticed a young man who was dead who is now raised.  And right now I am about to share the good news of God’s love to this group of poor people from a neighboring village.”

            These are things that the Bible – the Torah and the prophets – said would be things that the Messiah would do.  In our reading from Isaiah we heard about some of them: “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.”  Jesus is telling the delegation from John that “then” is now; the time that Isaiah prophesied has arrived.

            Perhaps John had only listened to one verse from that passage, the one that says: “He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense,” and not completely hearing the rest of it, beginning with: “He will come and save you.”  Because the coming of the Lord is first and foremost about salvation, deliverance, liberation, and healing. 

            This means that the Messiah initially gathers and redeems people who need these things to happen in their lives: the sick, the outcast, the enslaved, the disenfranchised, and the poor.  So the work of Jesus has to begin where he begins, with the losers, with the people who want their lives turned around.  As Jesus himself says, he has come to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  He has come to lift up and restore those who have been stomped on.

            And the “vengeance” and “recompense” come to those who are benefiting from an oppressive and violent system.  Those who profit from the exploitation, division, powerlessness, and trauma of the people, will find the whole superstructure crashing down on them.   

III.           

            Jesus tells the visitors to look around and see for themselves and make their own judgment about who he is, based on what he is doing.  But this whole idea that people have the ability to make up their own minds about Jesus, that they do not have to swallow anything on faith or second-hand, but that they should see for themselves and decide for themselves, is something Christianity largely lost over the centuries. 

            We stopped trusting people to trust their own perceptions; instead we demanded that people believe what the church told them about Jesus.  Because, unfortunately, the church largely forgot that it is the Body of Christ and therefore that it is supposed to be Christ in the world.  It even mostly stopped doing what Jesus said to do, and more and more only talked about what Jesus did.  So, instead of being Jesus, faith was reduced to agreeing that Jesus did something, a long time ago.

            Maybe we are afraid to ask people what they hear and see going on in the church because they will see how far short we fall.  They will see our failure to be real disciples.  They will see what surveys tell us people actually do see when they observe Christians and the church: they see bigotry, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, judgment, nostalgia, and irrelevance.  They smell fear and anger.  They sense bitter, nasty people who only want everything to be like it was.

            Because, truth be told, there is too little going on among us of what Jesus says are the indicators that he really is the Messiah.  If we, the church, are the Body of Christ; if we are his disciples, entrusted with his continued mission in the world… then we have to be a place where, in some very real sense, “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.”  If we are the church of Jesus Christ we should be reflecting and expressing his mission here and now.  That’s what people should see us doing!

            At the very least, we should not be a place where people are made more blind, lame, defiled, deaf, dead, and poor.  Do we exhibit a willful blindness in willfully holding on to lies?  Do we habitually hold people down and prevent them from having power?  Do we label some as defiled and therefore excluded and even condemned?  Are we chronically deaf to both the cries of an abused planet and hurting people, and to the words of the Lord we say we follow?  Are we all but spiritually dead, and content to stubbornly refuse to change until someone finally turns out the lights?  Do we have nothing of any value to share with anyone, while our message to the poor is judgment and blame, withdrawing and cutting assistance to them?

IV.

            People don’t necessarily say it in so many words.  But I know that so many of our neighbors are hurting, confused, lonely, disconnected, and lost.  I know that many have not found anything better to give their lives to than selfish consumerism, or workaholism, or various addictions.  I know that we are surrounded by people who are in many ways blind, lame, lepers, deaf, dead, and poor… and often they don’t even know it.  

            John’s delegates asked him, “Are you the One who is to come, or are we to look for another?”  And many people are really asking essentially the same question: “Is Jesus Christ the One I need?  Or should I look for someone else?”  “Is this church going to make a positive difference in my life?  Or should I try something else?”  “Can the Jesus you talk about really set me free and heal me?”  And when we perceive that question, we have to be able to say with confidence, “Come and see!” 

            That confidence has to be born in our own experience.  We have to be able to say, in the words of one of our favorite hymns: “’I once was blind, but now I see.’  I myself was once paralyzed, feeling my life to be unmanageable, but now I am growing in freedom.  I once was filled with shame and felt excluded from society, but now I know I am forgiven and accepted for who I am.  I once was deaf, but now I hear God’s Word speaking goodness and blessing all around me.  I once had no hope, no direction, no future, and no joy.  I once felt I had nothing to offer, was of no value to anyone; but now I make an important contribution to the life of this community. 

            We want to be able to say: “Look what having a relationship with Jesus Christ in the church has done for me!  And look at what we are doing by his Spirit at work among us!  Check out what our church is doing every day!  Then you can decide for yourself whether Jesus Christ is the One to follow.  Observe our ministry, and see that ‘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.’”

            We have to make that all true.  We have to make this church a place where people come to see the world, themselves, and God’s purposes clearly.  We have to be a place where people are empowered and encouraged to change and grow.  We have to be a place where the outcast and excluded are welcomed, and where we hear and respond to the cries of the needy as well as the words of Jesus.  We even have to be a place that brings hope and freedom into people’s lives, and where we do not give up on people or write them off as lost, where we work for justice, peace, equality, fairness, and blessing for all people.

V. 

            Advent is about waiting for the coming of the Lord.  Our reading from James speaks of the need for patience.  But our waiting is not passive and powerless; it is active and risk-taking discipleship in the power of the Holy Spirit.  The main characteristic of the church’s waiting is obedience; it is the life lived in keeping Jesus’ commandments together.

            Neither do we wait simply as individuals, but as a gathered community that is also sent into the world with a mission: to follow Jesus and teach others to follow Jesus.  And everything we do, starting with worship and extending through all the other dimensions of congregational life, has to reflect and express and enable this primary task. 

            That is what we are to do while we wait.  That is how we show our patience.  That is how we anticipate and realize in advance the fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision.

“And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
   

and come to Zion with singing;


everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
   

they shall obtain joy and gladness,
   

and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

            For above all the thing that most characterizes the gathering of Jesus’ disciples in every age is joy.  Not anger, fear, sorrow, or shame, but joy.  The thing that finally shows that we get it, that we have realized what Jesus is about, and that we have had our lives turned around from blindness, paralysis, deafness, and death, is our joy.

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