Disillusionment and Joy

Matthew 11:2-11; Isaiah 35:1-10

So there sat John the Baptist in prison, more than a wee bit disillusioned I suspect.  The Empire struck back at him, one could say.  King Herod and his wife, Herodias, whom he stole away from his brother, often rode past where John preached in the wilderness by the Jordan River.  There were many mansions of the rich and famous in the area.  John liked to hold the two to account for their adultery whenever they passed.  So, Herodias, not liking this prophet of God meddling in her morality, got Herod to arrest him.  John was not under a death sentence, but getting out wasn’t likely unless Cousin Jesus, if he was the Messiah, got on with it. 

I say if because I think that even to John Jesus was a bit of an enigma.  He didn’t live up to the expectations of what the Messiah was supposed to be.  Faithful Jews were expecting an overthrow of their Roman occupiers and a clean up of their corrupted royals and temple authorities.  But Jesus didn’t fit that bill.  He just healed people, had some great debates with the religious authorities, cast out demons, pronounced forgiveness of sins...and he kept company with all the wrong people (whores, revenuers, and fishermen).  To the powers that he was supposed to overturn, Jesus seemed more a source of entertainment and a bit of a blasphemer than the One who was to bring in the Kingdom of God; though the size of the crowds was concerning.

So, John went and did what many a pastor goes and does about mid-career when ministry hasn’t gone the way you expected.  He sent out a hotline to Jesus wondering what was the hold up.  You see, it’s a difficult thing to come to grips with the troubling reality that God does what God does…or doesn’t do, and it seldom is what we want and expect to happen.  John sent some of his own disciples ask Jesus, “Are you the One, the Messiah who is coming, or should we wait for another?”  Jesus told them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.”  And just to make sure they got it right, Jesus gave them a list of things that he was doing, things that the prophets of old and particularly Isaiah foretold that the Messiah would do.  Ah, blessed assurance.

So…what did these disciples of John hear?  In my imagination John’s disciples heard the sound of people praising God with great joy, a sound so loud that it seemed to be the voice of all creation resounding in joy at the arrival of its Saviour. If you have ever heard Middle Eastern people when worship comes on them, you know what I mean.  It is emotional, loud, and powerfully joyful.  If you are the type who hears the sound of colours, it was like the wanton wasteland of the dry wilderness of becoming lush, breaking forth and blossoming like the dry riverbeds in the Palestinian wilderness coming into blossom in Spring just after the end-of-winter flooding…bright purples, pinks, yellows, whites (I’ve seen that bloom and it’s beautiful.)

So, if that’s what John’s disciples heard, what did they see?  What could have caused all that loud praising?  Well, Jesus doing what God himself said he would do when he himself came to deliver not only his people but more so all of his creation from oppression by sin and death.  Weak hands were strengthening.  Unstable knees were steadying.  Jesus was opening the eyes of the blind and unstopping the ears of the deaf.  He was making the lame to leap like deer and loosing the tongues of the mute so they could praise.  He was cleansing lepers and even raising the dead.  Jesus was sending out his own disciples ahead of him and they did these things also as if to make a highway in the desert so that God’s people could come to him.  Joy was overtaking those people.  Sorrow and sighing was fleeing.  John’s disciples were seeing and hearing Isaiah 35 manifesting all around Jesus everywhere he went.  What better news could there be for the poor in the land than these signs of “Immanuel” – God is with us!?

Jesus told John’s disciples to go report what they hear and see and also sent them back with a little kick in the pants for John.  Tell John, “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”  If I had to paraphrase that, it would be, “John, I am who I am and I will do as I do.  I may not be doing what you think ‘God’ ought to do.  But I am ‘God with you’.  Keep being faithful, John.” 

I can relate to John.  Faith in Jesus can be quite disillusioning.  We want a God who does what we think he out to do, but God does or does not do what he wants to do in what seems like a test of patience to us as he works all things to the good for those who love him.  It is especially difficult when suffering is involved.  As a minister, I’ve walked with more people than I care to through terminal illness praying all the way that God would heal and yet God didn’t.  Instead, what God more often does is come along side the person he’s calling home and gives peace.  Instead of fear there is the peace of Christ.

When I think of the present circumstance of the world today I get really spooked.  The environment of planet earth is at the tipping point.  The population of species homo sapiens is reaching the point of being unsustainable on this planet.  I can only think of one global leader who is a step above mediocrity, Angela Merkel.  The rest are mediocre at best and/or diabolically corrupt.  The economy is great for the rich, but the day will come likely in the next decade when economic disparity will catch up with us and the Recession of 2008 will seem mild to what’s coming.   I want Jesus to come be King Jesus right now.  I don’t want to live through a time when billions of people starve to death and there are epidemics and wars.  Then there’s the state of the Church.  My outlook on life is profoundly affected by the fact that my profession, professional clergy, is one of the fastest declining in the world.  I am not seeing the Kingdom of God grow as I hoped it would through my work.

All things considered it would be quite easy to be disillusioned with the whole God/Jesus thing.  If it were not for one thing, the blatant fact that God is with us.  In patience and in prayer the presence of the Lord is with us and there is a joy that comes with that.  These Advent themes of Hope, Joy, Peace, Love are all the effects of Jesus being with us and he has promised to be with us to the end of the age when he finally comes.  To know ourselves to be the beloved children of God in Christ upon whom he has rested his Spirit is something to be joyful about this day and always.  Where the presence of the Lord is the lame leap, the blind see, the deaf hear, the mute speak, the dead are raised.  Whether literally or spiritually, where Jesus is present healing happens; and there is the silent sound of all creation joyfully worshipping. Amen.

Hungry for Personal Transformation

Matthew 11:2-11, Isaiah 35:1-10

So there sat John the Baptist in prison.  The Empire struck back, one could say.  King Herod’s wife, Herodias also the wife of Herod’s brother, did not like this prophet of God meddling in her morality.  So she got Herod to arrest him.  He was not under a death sentence, but the likelihood of his getting out was nil unless the Messiah should get things rolling, which meant, Cousin Jesus, if he is the Messiah, needed to get on with it. 

But, I think that to John, Jesus was a bit of an enigma.  He didn’t live up to the Messianic expectations of the day.  Faithful Jews were expecting an overthrow of their Roman occupiers and a clean up of their corrupted royals and temple authorities.  But Jesus of Nazareth, he wasn’t exactly the likes of his Hebrew namesake Joshua who led the people across the Jordan River to a conquest of Canaan’s Land.  Sure, crowds were flocking to Jesus, but he was more of a circus sideshow than a “Messiah” – a Deliverer.  He healed people, had some great debates with the religious authorities, cast out demons, pronounced forgiveness of sins...and he kept company with all the wrong people (whores, revenuers, and fishermen).  To the powers that be he was more a sought after source of entertainment than the harbinger of the Kingdom of God.  Though the size of the crowds could be concerning.

So, John sent some of his disciples to put the question to Jesus, “Are you the One, the Messiah who is coming, or should we wait for another?”  Jesus told them to go back and tell John exactly what they were hearing and seeing.  Then, and just to make sure they got it right, Jesus gave them a list of things that he was doing that the prophets of old and particularly the Prophet Isaiah foretold that the Messiah would do.  Yet not only the Messiah’s doings, but things God himself would do when he himself came to deliver his people; acts that were a reversal of the universal maladies caused by sin, a healing of more than just Israelite national and religious problems.  These were the healings of the very signs that something had gone deadly wrong in God’s good creation.

What did these disciples of John hear?  I imagine they were hearing the sound of people praising God with great joy, a sound so loud that it seemed to be the voice of all creation resounding in victory at the arrival of its Saviour; rejoicing that the glory of God had returned to the Land of Israel.  It was like the wanton wasteland of the dry wilderness of humanity becoming lush, breaking forth and blossoming like the dry riverbeds in the Palestinian wilderness coming into blossom in spring just after the end-of-winter flooding.  (I’ve seen that and it’s beautiful.)  If you have ever heard Middle Eastern people when worship comes on them, you know what I mean.  It is emotional, loud, and powerfully joyful. 

So, if that’s what John’s disciples heard, what did they see?  What could have caused all that loud praising?  Jesus doing what God said he himself would do when he himself came to deliver not only his people but also and more so all of creation from oppression by sin and death.  Weak hands were strengthening.  Shaking knees were steadying.  Jesus was opening the eyes of the blind and unstopping the ears of the deaf.  He was making the lame to leap like dear and loosing the tongues of the mute so they could praise.  He was cleansing the lepers and even raising the dead.  Jesus was sending out his own disciples ahead of him who did these things also as if to make a highway in the desert so that God’s people could come to him.  Joy and gladness was overtaking those people.  Sorrow and sighing was fleeing.  John’s disciples were seeing and hearing Isaiah 35 manifesting all around Jesus everywhere he went.  What better news could there be for the poor in the land than these signs of “Immanuel” – God is with us!?

Jesus told John’s disciples to go report what they hear and see and also sent them back with a little kick in the pants for John.  Tell John, “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”  If I had to paraphrase that, it would be, “John, I am who I am and I will do as I am.  I am God and you are not.  I may not be doing what you think ‘God’ ought to do.  But I am ‘God with you’.  Keep being faithful, John.” 

When I try to imagine what it was like back then I find myself quite challenged.  The “Church” today is transitioning into something different than what it has been.  We used to be a, if not the, foundational institution.  Now we are not necessary to the public good anymore at least not in the eyes of the public.  We’re not the Mainline church anymore.  We are the Sideline church.[1]  In this time of transition I, like John the Baptist, would like to know what Jesus is up to.  I feel like I’m blind to seeing what Jesus is doing.  I feel deaf to his voice and powerless to leap.  Churches are dying; I want to see them raised to new life. Where is Jesus in all this?  Where’s the Holy Spirit?  What’s God up to?  God is with us.  This is all part of his plan.  But what is he up to?  Where are we going?

The position the church finds itself in now in our culture is very much like what it was in the first century?  So we must ask, why did the early church spread so far and wide and not get snuffed out?  Well, they were Resurrection people.  They unquestionably knew that the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ had in the power of the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead.  They knew this because God the Father had poured that same Holy Spirit upon (into) them and bonded them to Jesus and changed them, raised them to new life – an actual new humanity which they called “in Christ”.  They faithfully lived as New Creation in the midst of the Old empowered by the Holy Spirit.  Their way of life was marked by the way of the cross.  Their fellowship was (and this is attested to by non-Christian 1^st and 2^nd Century historians) distinguished as being filled with compassion, peaceful, and just.

The Apostle Paul summed it up when he said, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by (in) the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:19-20).  What the people in the crowds experienced as physically restored sight, hearing, and abilities, the early Christians experienced as new life “in Christ” and they worshipped and they did this in the midst of a culture that was contrary to them and that often persecuted them.

Paul also said in Philippians, “My goal is to know him (Jesus) and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death” (Phil. 3:10).  He didn’t say, “I just want to be a good person, and have my private beliefs, and hope for heaven when I die if anything.”  He desired personal transformation that was in accordance with a cross-based way of faithfulness.  This hunger for personal transformation in Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit is where we need to be right now in this transforming transition.  
          “Jesus, teach me who you are?”  That needs to be our first prayer in the morning.  To hunger for knowing who Jesus is the beginning of seeing, of hearing, of leaping, of becoming clean, and indeed being raised from the dead.  Jesus, teach me/teach us, who you are.  Amen.

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[1] This is a borrowed phrase from I know not where.

The Word Who Invites us to Live

Text Matthew 11:2-11

I was once in on a conversation where a medical doctor was asking her friends what they would do in a situation she had just encountered. She had made a house call to a paraplegic who was suffering from a skin abscess that was going to require surgery and a 6-9 month hospital stay in a room of four. This would be the second time around. She didn’t want to go through with it because there are certain things that paraplegics need help with that are just humiliating to have done in front of other people. So she was putting it off, a decision that would lead to her eventual death. She then went on to share a bleak picture of her life with this physician. She was upset with her husband, who did nothing besides hang about elsewhere in the house, her son also. She had lived this way 20 years and could see no reason to endure another 20. Then, in all seriousness, she asked this doctor to write her a prescription for something to end it all. Well, the doctor was asking her friends “what should I do?” Even the doctor thought that the continuation of this person’s life was torturous.

           The responses were mixed mostly involving what we could call “psychologizing” the patient. Our culture has bred a wealth of armchair Dr. Phil’s who play God by distantly trying to sympathize with a person and then solve their problems. I know about how accurate I am in that department so I like to refrain from it. There were also faith-based questions. “Does she have any faith…believe in God…have a church?” I sat there just listening with not much to say. As far as what I would have done. My training in seminary would have led me to simply reflect back to the patient, “So you want to end your life and you want me to write the prescription?” and see where the conversation goes.

As I listened I thought two things. First, I began to wonder as to whether I’m required in Canada to tell some official if a person truly is suicidal? The second thing I was thinking was I’ve been there. I’ve been pushed to the point of wrestling with whether or not my presence in this life is worth it. We all have our limits as to how much we can cope with before becoming overwhelmed. That’s part of being human particularly in the wake some event like a death or a debilitating accident or a divorce or an act of violence coming to rob us of life as we know it. When that happens we all will have to decide whether we want to live this new life that has been thrust upon us or not. Many people avoid that decision. Being a minister I have encountered widows, widowers, indeed whole families still stuck in limbo years after the death of a person simply because they were struggling to find the reason to continue on and adapt to this new life that was not theirs by choice. I’ve heard people speak of deceased person as if they just died ten years after the fact. They’ve gotten stuck somehow and haven’t made the decision to start living again. They’d rather be dead too, but know that is not an option.

This woman, though a paraplegic, was still a human being still trying to decide whether life is worth living even 20 years after having her life radically changed by an accident. I can’t blame or fault her for wanting to end it. Like I said, I’ve been there, even as a man of faith, I’ve been there. The course of life can to often lead us to a point where we find ourselves asking, “Is my presence in this life really worth what I’m going to have to endure for the rest of it.” It is common for us to imprison ourselves in something or other to avoid dealing with the question; work, materialism, substances, over-indulging, just staying too busy, or just finding somebody to hate – whatever we can find to avoid answering the question do I really want to live this life that I have been given. Indeed, life is a gift. Didn’t a one of us ask to be born. We are here by accident or by decision of parental units. It doesn’t matter which. We have been given life and we are accountable for how we live it not just to God but also to ourselves and to one another. How we live or choose not to live has consequences not just for ourselves but more so for the “others” in our lives.

Turning towards a more theological understanding of this problem, one of the traditional ways of talking about the Holy Spirit is the confession that he is the Lord and Giver of life. At creation it was the Holy Spirit by whom God the Father spoke the Word and breathed life into all of creation. Life is not God in us. Life is a gift from God for which we are accountable. The new life given to us in Jesus Christ is akin to living in the breath of God as the Holy Spirit surrounds and indwells us creating His communion of love in our midst, uniting us to Christ Jesus as his body, that we might live in the image of him in this world. He is the Head of a new humanity meaning we are in a network of relationships which we call “our lives” and the Holy spirit is their in the midst of it pointing us to Jesus the Son and to the true life that God has given us in Him. So, whenever we find ourselves wrestling with the “do I really want to live” question and if so “how”, I believe we are wrestling with the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life. And his answer to us, is to point us to Jesus and says “I am with you always. In the depths of your agony I am with you. Like the breath flowing through your body I am with you. You would not be alive right now were I not here giving life to you. You are the way that you are because this is the life I have given you to live that you may be a witness to the depths of my love. From this point on you shall live knowing that I am with you and this is all you need.”

John the Baptist, the one sent to announce the coming of the Lord, was imprisoned for calling to account those who were abusing the gift of life and causing others to suffer. While in prison he was battling with issues of the value of his life and God’s ability to keep his promises. He sent his disciples to Jesus to get some assurance that he had not lived his life in vain because Jesus was not living up to expectations. John like most Jews of faith in his day was expecting someone who would deliver them from the oppression of the Romans, of their own kings, and of their own religious authorities. The answer Jesus gives to John in a roundabout way is “John, don’t lose hope because I am not what you expect, for indeed I am the fulfillment of Scripture. I am the one who removes the curse of sin and death and God-forsakenness. I give life, life with God in the midst of it to those who have believed themselves cut-off from God.”

These miracles that Jesus performed…healing the blind, lame, leprous, the deaf, and raising the dead, and preaching good news to the poor…were more than just curing what ails the physical condition. In those days people believed that these diseases were evidence of being cut off and cursed by God. They believed that those who suffered from them had sinned so horribly bad that not only were they no longer allowed into the temple to be in God’s presence but God was punishing them with physical suffering. Even more so, healthy clean people were not allowed to touch them or they could not go in the Temple. By healing them Jesus removed the false curse from their lives and made it so they could worship God and be fully accepted into human community. He removed their shame and left them pondering how will I now live now that the curse has been taken away. Shame plays a major factor, deserved or not, when it comes to getting on with life.  It is dibilitating.  Shame cuts us off from others, yet oddly not from God. 

What Jesus gives through the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit is freedom from the binding power of shame. He comes with his Word – “I am with you always” – and he speaks it to us until we finally hear it and then he becomes redundant. It is a Word that cuts through our shame and gives real hope to us and invites us to really live...in him sharing his relationship with God the Father through the life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit.  This real hope leads us to want not just to cope with life but to be proactive in it, to take the sufferings of others upon ourselves, to tell the world that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, to rejoice in the Holy Spirit and point to Jesus Christ and say to all he is our hope.

Jesus said to John the Baptist by way of John’s followers, “Blessed (Happy) are those who do not take offense at me.” A lot of people get tripped up in hearing the Word of “I am with you” because it’s not what we expect nor what we want. We want action. So, as if we were God we dismiss it and only find further bitterness. Yet, we cannot separate God's acts from his being. Giving us himself is the powerful thing the Trinity does for us. His presence in us and in the midst of our relationships changes everything. True life, blessedness, happiness is only found in living as a witness to the love of God in Christ in the sure knowledge that he is with us. God with us is what Christmas is all about. Praise be to God he keeps trying no matter how often we say no or don’t get it or can’t see past our own expectations. God wants us to live…in Him...and he will make it so. Amen.