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The Rev. Frank
Logue More than We Could
Imagine John the Baptist was wrong. It is a glaring fact. John the Baptist’s main job in life was to point the way to Israel’s Messiah. He got it wrong. Sure, he was right to point out Jesus as the Messiah. But then he waffled. John pointed out Jesus on the Jordan Riverbank before he baptized him. John knew this was it, the moment toward which his life in the wilderness had been building. John wanted Jesus to baptize him, but after Jesus insisted it was part of God’s plan, John baptized Jesus. Then came the special effects. The Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus and God declares, “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Up until that moment, John the Baptist was still right. Then things went bad. John had been preaching how his own ministry would pale in comparison to the Messiah’s ministry. In last week’s Gospel reading, John the Baptist said of the Messiah, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear the threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” John was an uncompromising fire and brimstone preacher who would say, “What part of ‘fire’ don’t you understand.”[1] But Jesus ministry didn’t exactly get off to an incendiary start. Once Jesus is baptized, the Messiah disappears. For more than a month, nobody even knows where Jesus is. We know he had been led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, but John doesn’t know that. Once Jesus returns and begins his ministry, he doesn’t exactly set the world on fire. Jesus traveled the countryside, preaching and healing. That’s it. Some nicely told parables. Some impressive miracles. No old-school apocalyptic doom and gloom. No end of the world pyrotechnics. By the time of our Gospel reading for today, John the Baptist is imprisoned for speaking out against the Jewish king, Herod. John waffles. He had been so sure that day at the Jordan. But Jesus’ ministry just wasn’t what John expected. Jesus seemed so, well, tame. The fiery preacher, John the Baptist, had lived on locusts and wild honey while preaching an uncompromising message of repentance. Sure, Jesus preached repentance, and he was good for a few miracles. But no one could honestly say that the Messiah was turning the world upside down. At least no yet. Now John is in jail with little hope of surviving. John needs certainty. So he sends some of his disciples to find Jesus and ask him plainly, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait on another?” It was a clear case of mistaken identity. John the Baptist thought that he knew exactly who the Messiah would be. John did not just think he knew Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. John was convinced he also knew what Jesus’ ministry would be like, must be like for Jesus to be the Messiah. But John the Baptist was wrong. Let’s stop and enjoy that it’s all right to be wrong. John the Baptist, one of the great heroes of the faith, who we extol for knowing God’s vast cosmic plan, was also wrong, and that was OK. If John was wrong, we can be wrong. If it was OK for John the Baptist to be wrong, it’s OK for us to be wrong. Jesus shows no impatience with John. Jesus simply tells John’s disciples to go back and tell John about the things they have seen and heard. No stinging rebuke. No frustration. Just another chance to get it right. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 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 and blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” The 16th century, Thomas of Villanova connected each of Jesus statements to prophecy found in Isaiah. Isaiah wrote, “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unsealed and the lame man will leap like a hart.” Jesus said, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised.” Isaiah also wrote, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . . he has sent me to announce good tidings to the poor.” Jesus said, “the poor have good news brought to them.” Finally, Isaiah wrote, “He will be a stone for stumbling over, and a rock of scandal as well, for both houses of Israel.” Jesus said, “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”[2] Jesus connects his own ministry to the prophecies about the one who is to come. Jesus offered his miracles as a sign that God was working through him in the way that had been prophesied. The point for Matthew in putting this story in his Gospel, probably had nothing to do with John the Baptist and everything to do with you. For by the time Matthew wrote his Gospel, John the Baptist had been dead for decades. It no longer mattered what John knew and when he knew it. What mattered most is you, the reader. Matthew begs the question, “Is Jesus the One who was to come or are we to wait for another?” We know that Matthew wrote for Jewish readers and so he gives the reader pause to consider whether what they read about Jesus is what the Old Testament told us to expect of the Messiah. But Jew or Gentile, the question for any of us is, “Is Jesus the One or do we go searching for another?” God will not always come into your life the way you hope for or expect. In fact, God may never come into your life exactly as you expect. That’s what happened to John the Baptist. John knew Jesus was the Messiah the day of Jesus’ baptism because of the promptings of the Holy Spirit. But the Spirit did not control John’s every waking thought and John came to doubt. John had a box labeled “Messiah” and the real Messiah didn’t measure up to John’s expectations. In one way, we have the same problem as John. Jesus still doesn’t meet our expectations. John preached straighten up right now because the Messiah is coming to bring the smack down. Then Jesus came and did far less than John anticipated. Our problem is more likely the opposite of John the Baptist’s problem. John expected much more of the Messiah. We often expect little or nothing. I can suffer from the opposite problem. I pray for miracles and then make up excuses for God in advance. After all, God is not a cosmic vending machine dispensing answers to prayer on demand. That’s OK as long as what I am really seeking is God’s will, and know that my prayers might not be God’s will. But it’s not OK to make excuses for why God won’t come through if all I am doing is playing it safe, hedging my bets, because I don’t have the faith that God will act on my prayers. I continually remind myself to be open to the real miracles, and when I can keep my heart and mind open, wonderful things can and do happen. The problem is boxing in God. Jesus’ ministry was so much more than John the Baptist appreciated from his prison cell. Jesus was patiently, lovingly, turning the world upside down one life at a time. Jesus is so much more than our preconceived notions too. Whatever box you have put him in, it’s too small, because Jesus is still transforming the world in unexpected ways. Smash the box into which you have placed our Trinitarian God. Let go of your too strict notions and your too little hopes of Jesus. Let go of your ideas about who God is and how God can act to make a path for Jesus to come into every circumstance in your life. I don’t know why I should be surprise, God is always doing more than I might expect. God did more than anyone thought possible when I got encephalitis in third grade. There was no treatment for the encephalitis, just for the symptoms. Death was likely and long term problems were a sure thing if I survived, but God did more than we could have expected. When prayer was the only option left, my parents, family and friends counted on God. And God did more than we could ask for or imagine. God also does things differently than we could ever expect. When Victoria and I were hiking the Appalachian Trail and an early April snowstorm in Tennessee caught us off guard, we were running out of food as the snow drifts built up. As we set out the next morning, in snow sometimes up to our hips, a hunting dog came up and led the way all the way to the next road crossing several miles away. A coincidence? I don’t think so. Just God using divine imagination. If you don’t see that God works in unexpected ways to do more than we imagine possible, then you aren’t well enough aware of the history of King of Peace. In four years, we have seen plenty of miracles. Stick around. God has more in store. Because, Jesus is still opening the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf and the Good News is still be preached to those in need. Don’t wait for another. Jesus is the One. Open your eyes and your ears to see and hear Jesus at work in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit. God is doing more than we can ask for or imagine, right in this place, right now. Amen. |
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