One Person at a Time: Dec 14

 Year A, Advent 3                                        Matthew 11: 2-11                                                                    

           As I mentioned last Sunday, when I was bemoaning the lack of John the Baptist decorations, John the Baptist pops up in two of the four Advent readings.  Last week he was baptizing people in the River Jordan calling out the religious elite.   This week he is imprisoned. John wasn’t in jail for criticizing the religious leaders, he was in jail because he had told Herod that he should not have married his brother’s wife as it was contrary to Jewish law.  Herod was the ruler of Galilee and one other region.  While he is sometimes referred to as King Herod, he wasn’t a king, but he did have a great deal of power.  He had enough power to jail an innocent man and then execute him. 

          Jails and correctional facilities are not pleasant places to be in any time or place, but they were particularly horrific during the time that Jesus lived.  People were not typically in jail awaiting trial.  They were usually awaiting execution.  John the Baptist was a great prophet and a holy man, but it would appear from the question that he asked in the Gospel today that he was having some doubts.  This Jesus was not the man he expected.  Because if he was the Messiah, why would he allow his cousin (and a prophet) to rot in jail?

          Now, a lot has been said about what the Jews expected in a Messiah.  Many will tell you that they were waiting for a military leader, which is true to some extent.  But the reality is that the Jewish people didn’t have one defined view of what the Messiah would look like.  However in our lectionary today, and last week we have two pretty good examples of what some people were expecting.  Last week John depicted a Messiah who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire and would judge the people.  This week it says that John the Baptist sent people to confront  Jesus after hearing about what Jesus had been doing.  What had he been doing? If you read the previous 8 chapters, you will read about Jesus preaching, teaching, healing and feeding. He hadn’t confronted any religious or political leaders.  He had not built an army. There was no sweeping change as a result of what he had done.  In fact, to John (who was in prison) it probably looked like he hadn’t done much of anything.  John had done all this work preparing people for what Jesus was going to do and now he was wondering…is this really who they were waiting for?  I think John was expecting a significant sea change and there was no evidence of that…not yet.

          We see another example of what people were expecting in the Song of Mary.  These are Mary’s words, that she expresses to her cousin Elizabeth (who was pregnant with John the Baptist at the time) after learning that she would give birth to the Son of God.  She said, “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel…” Mary was anticipating this baby she would birth would be someone who would turn the world upside own.  The hungry would be full and the rich would have nothing.  The mighty would be cast down from their thrones. 

          Clearly, that was not what was happening.  The Romans were still in power and corrupt leaders like Herod were in charge and imprisoning the prophets who dared to speak truth to power.  Can we really blame John for being a little disappointed…for wondering if this guy who seemed like a good and holy person was actually the Son of God?

          I can’t tell you how often I have heard in the last year: “What it happening? What is the world coming to? Why isn’t God doing anything about this?”  I feel that too.  I felt that profoundly when I saw video footage of police officers kneeling on the neck of George Floyd. I felt that after seeing children in cages in the United States, separated from their families. I feel that when I see the utter desolation in Gaza.  I feel that whenever I see any hungry child, or any hungry person.  I even feel that on a smaller scale when I am going through a personal ordeal that I can’t see my way out of.  I wonder, why didn’t Jesus fix this when he came 2000 years ago?  Why did he die and then come back from the dead…just so this kind of stuff could continue to happen? I wonder that more than I would care to admit.

          But then I look at Jesus’ response to John the Baptist.  He didn’t get defensive.  Have you ever noticed that? Jesus never got defensive.  He was so confident that he was doing God’s will.  He said to the people who were asking the question for John, “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.”  He didn’t tell them to be patient.  He didn’t say, “Look, I am laying some ground work here, but in a 2000 years billions of people all around the world will be worshipping me and even talking about you during Advent---but you aren’t ever going to get decorations.” 

No, instead, he told him about the individual lives he was changing.  He was helping people see, touching people no one was willing to get close to, bringing people back from the dead, and giving good news to the poor.  He never claimed to be bringing about systematic change or solving the world’s problems.  But he was meeting people where they were and showing love and compassion to people who had not known love and compassion.  He was transforming the world….one person at a time. 

It’s ok to be frustrated with the way our world is right now.  In fact, I think you should be.  It’s even ok to wonder where God is in all this and to be a little impatient. What we can’t be is hopeless. Let’s follow Jesus’ lead once again. Do one thing. Help one person.  If you feel overwhelmed, don’t let that paralyze you.  Not one of us has the power of Jesus. But we each have gifts.  We might not be able to change the world, but we can make change and gradually….ever so gradually, we will change the world.  

Sorting Ourselves Out: December 7

 Year A, Advent 2                                                                   Matt 3:1-12                                                                 

    Like many of you, I have been busy trying to get things decorated and festive.  We have a lot of Christmas decorations as that is a go to present for a priest and there are two priests in our family.  I think we are up to 7 crèches…only one of which we purchased.  Yet you know what decoration you never see—John the Baptist in his camel hair with a dead locust hanging out of his mouth.  Yet, John the Baptist pops up twice in our Advent readings, calling people names, telling them to repent.  It’s a wonder he doesn’t have his own Advent calendar.

It’s interesting that he shows up during Advent for a few reasons. Remember this is the adult John the Baptist.  John the Baptist and Jesus are born within a few months of one another.  What is adult John the Baptist doing preparing us for something that happened 30 years before? John the Baptist was not preparing people for the birth of Jesus— he was preparing people for the reign of God.

Many people at the time thought that he was the prophet Elijah, who had lived 100s of years before and was also a little rough in his appearance.  Elijah did not die, he was taken into the sky in a chariot.  Since he didn’t die, many Jews expected him to return right before the Messiah was to come. Some Jews are still waiting for Elijah to return, which will herald the coming Messiah.  From the few texts we have in the Bible about John, he never said he was Elijah, but the author of the Gospel was obviously trying to make a connection.  If John was Elijah and pointing to Jesus, then that’s further proof that Jesus was the Messiah that they had all been waiting for.

At Christmas, we tell the story of Jesus’ birth…which is a pretty great story. I never weary of hearing that story.  But Christmas is also supposed to be about the incarnation itself, which means that God became a human being and lived among us.  John’s presence in our readings during the season of Advent wasn’t preparing people for the birth of Jesus, but he was preparing people for the life and ministry of Jesus. 

John had a very specific vision of this ministry.  He said, ‘I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me…He will baptize you with  the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’

Whenever I read this, I recoil a little. I have to wonder, did John the Baptist get it wrong, or am I wrong about Jesus? Next week we will read another story about John the Baptist after he has been arrested where he asks Jesus if he is the one they have been waiting for, or if perhaps there is someone else coming.  He wasn’t yet convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, because he wasn’t what he expected. To that Jesus responded something along the lines of “I am healing people, raising the dead and bringing good news to the poor. “  Jesus clearly thought that those things were what made him the Messiah, not the winnowing fork and unquenchable fire.  That said, Jesus did talk about the fires of hell a few times in the Gospel of Matthew.  We don’t like talking about that in the Episcopal Church, but it’s definitely there. 

However, I wonder if there might be a way to consider this message that John the Baptist delivered as an opportunity for growth, rather than a judgment.  Typically when we think of the separation of the wheat and the chaff, we see them as groups of people. You are either the good wheat that is gathered lovingly or you are the chaff that is burned in the unquenchable fire.  Fire can be destructive, but it can also refine or purify when the fire is controlled.  At the time Jesus lived, they refined metals like gold and silver using intense heat, which would melt away the impurities. 

What if the fire that Jesus brought was a fire that refined, rather than a destroyed?  When Jesus talked about repentance, I believe he was asking us to look at ourselves, and how we might allow ourselves to be refined.  That refining would require that we release the sins that hold us down, our judgment of other people, our selfishness…whatever it may be.  That is what repentance is, it’s not only examining ourselves, but also accepting God’s guidance as we do so.  It’s allowing God to burn away the parts that get in the way of us being loving, generous, faithful and brave.  It’s not about sorting the good people from the bad people, but sorting ourselves out. 

At the end of the world, Jesus will still judge (if we are looking at it from a Biblical perspective), but I really don’t think that is what we should be focusing on right now.  The way we prepare for the incarnation, which is God in the flesh (God among us), is by acknowledging that while we are flawed and there is room for improvement, being human is at least partly divine because we are children of God.

There is not one single person in this church (or world) who is perfect.  There is not one person in this world who is worthy of God’s love because of who we are or what we do.  And there is such freedom when we can accept that.  What makes us worthy of God’s love—what makes us perfect, is that God loved us first.  When God came to this earth, God decided, these people who keep making the same mistakes over and over again, are worth everything to me.  Maybe, just maybe, showing up as a human, showing them God in the flesh will help them see —see what their worth truly is.  That’s what the incarnation is.  That is what we are preparing for in this season of Advent.  It is about preparation and repentance.  But it’s not about becoming someone else, it’s about returning to who we were created to be, beloved children of God.  That will take some work.  We might need some refining, but it will be worth it.