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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