[Sorry, no audio today]
Isaiah 35:3-10; Matthew 11:2-11
December 11, 2022
- The coming of Jesus challenges our expectations for God’s help
Sometimes when you are waiting for the train, you are not sure what’s going to show up. I have been blessed to ride on trains in different places, and they are certainly not all the same. There was the one in Rome that nearly knocked me out with the effervescence of human perspiration, the one in Paris that was not even on a track but on tires so that as we went along, we were bouncing all around. I have gotten to ride on high-speed trains, the kiddie train at Busch Gardens, but the most memorable one was the train in India that was so packed that people were sitting in the luggage racks over us. That was not too troubling until the guy above me started clipping his toenails. On a much more festive train, we got to ride with Santa and Mrs. Claus when our children were little. That might have been the Virginia Scenic Railway; I do not recall, but they are not sponsoring this message.
Trains can be more than large vehicles for transport. They are also a symbol for opportunity, and you can choose to get on a particular train or to wait for another one, literally and metaphorically. Jump on the whole grain train, the cardio bike train, the fortified water train, the political candidate of your choice train, the DYI train, the fashion of the day train, maybe even the soul train. The Jesus train has come through from time to time. And that was John the Baptist’s question to Jesus: is this the true Messiah train or should we wait for another?
Other than me weirdly working trains into this sermon, did you notice anything else that is odd with John’s question? John the Baptist was Jesus’ cousin and personally knew Jesus. He had baptized Jesus himself and witnessed God’s response in the Holy Spirit. In the fourth Gospel, John makes very clear that he knows Jesus’ role in God’s grand plan, yet, yet, yet, here it seems like he is really questioning his understanding of Jesus. “Jesus, I thought you were the Messiah, but now I am not so sure. Are you still the one or do we wait for the next one?”
This is a very interesting situation requiring a very interesting answer.
John’s style and Jesus’ style were very different, completely different. John ate wild locusts and honey; Jesus ate well at the homes of sinners. John stayed out in the wilderness; Jesus was in towns and streets and houses. John was fiery and antagonistic; Jesus was warm and forgiving. John was dressed as a wild man; Jesus wore regular clothes. The gospel writers tell us that people saw the two of them as very different people. John was out there in Old Testament prophet Elijah style, calling for God’s judgment, but Jesus is doing something different – something John did not expect. Jesus is not preaching against the powers and calling down fire from heaven, but he is loving God’s people in change. He is the living embodiment of God’s redeeming mercy. John was arrested and executed for pointing a finger at the Roman puppet king and calling out his wickedness. Jesus was arrested and executed because he made his own people nervous. I doubt that if John the Baptist had written this story that Jesus would have ended up on a cross at all. God’s Messiah would not die on a cross forgotten and abandoned as a criminal. Here John is not sure which train to take. Is this the Jesus I need to follow?
What is wonderful is that Jesus never answers John’s question. Instead, he draws us into his thoughts by telling John’s disciples to report what they see and hear. You should find the connection to the passage from Isaiah that I read a few minutes ago. The agent of God’s salvation will work healing, restoring, reviving, redeeming works among God’s people. We need to open up that path and welcome him home. Jesus says the same idea when he says that blessed are those who are not offended by him. Welcome Jesus. Welcome God’s Kingdom. Welcome the Jesus revolution.
That sounds nice, doesn’t it? Or does it? I wonder if we would rather have the Messiah, the Jesus, that John envisioned. This is the question that needs to be answered for us. Would we rather have a God who is set to judge and condemn the world and eradicate sinners, or would we rather have a God who brings the lost home, who heals the broken, who feeds the poor, and who raises the dead?
I have never known anyone who was blind that regained their sight. I have never known anyone who was deaf who regained the ability to hear. I do not know anyone who was dead but came back to life. What I do know are people who should have died, who were on the ropes with no prospects, who came back to some sustaining health. I do know of people who suffered tremendous physical trauma and should never have walked again but who come to live mostly normal lives. I do know of people who have been very sick but have received a second lease on life, and in some, the illness seems to have disappeared.
I know of people who have found happiness even in great sorrow. I know of people who have discovered love after debilitating grief and loss. I know of people who had given up on God, but God never gave up on them.
Jesus shows us the God of mercy, but this God is actually not an easy God to love if you are looking for vengeance, vindication, or punishment. Jesus gives us a God who will always surprise us with more love.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German church leader leading up to and during WW2. He did not live to see the end of the war, though, because he died in a Nazi prison. Before he died, he ministered to those who were there, including the guards. I picked up his Advent devotional book yesterday and found this reading. The book is God is in the Manger:
In an incomprehensible reversal of all righteous and pious thinking, God declares himself guilty to the world and thereby extinguishes the guilt of the world. God himself takes the humiliating path of reconciliation and thereby sets the world free. God wants to be guilty of our guilt and takes upon himself the punishment and suffering that this guilt brought to us. God stands in for godlessness, love stands in for hate, the Holy One for the sinner. Now there is no longer any godlessness, any hate, any sin that God has not taken upon himself, suffered, and atoned for. Now there is no more reality and no more world that is not reconciled with God and in peace. That is what God did in his beloved Son Jesus Christ. Ecce homo – see the incarnate God, the unfathomable mystery of the love of God for the world. God loves human beings. God loves the world – not ideal human beings but people as they are, not an ideal world but the real world.
I think that is the best devotional I have ever read. Others might find it disturbing or silly. Of course…, our God did come to earth as a messy, fussy baby. Our God embraced human life in all of its trouble and struggle and loneliness and hurt. Our God in Christ was a servant before he was Lord. Anyone looking for help was never turned away, not matter how sinful they were, no matter how filthy or undesirable or shameful they were. Jesus did have judgment for those who abused the faith, for those who made it all a show, for those who claimed to have all the answers and practices and rightness before God, but for the ones we would all say deserve condemnation – the evil and wicked and wrong, Jesus brought mercy.
We need to decide which Messiah we want to welcome, again, this Christmas. We need to decide what Jesus we are willing to follow. There is only one true Messiah, one true Christ, one true Savior, one true Lord who is coming. If we want to follow THAT one, then we FOLLOW that one.
It is a dangerous game to forget mercy. The moment we want God to judge anyone, the moment we want Jesus to hold other people accountable, the moment we want righteous justice reigning down on the wicked, we have forgotten that we still carry a fair bit of sin, too. We need as much mercy as anyone else. We need as much grace as anyone else. We need Jesus as much as anyone else.
If we want to prepare the way of our Messiah in these weeks of Advent and Christmas, we can begin with showing the same kind of mercy and forgiveness and love that Jesus has for us. People will be offended when they see true mercy. It feels like people are getting off too easily, but Jesus has already paid for it all. This is the train that is coming. We can never love too much. We can never be too merciful or kind or gracious. If this is too hard, we can always take the next train, but you might not like where that one goes.
To God be the glory. Amen.