Matthew 11:2-11 NRSV
When
John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his
disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to
wait for another?” Jesus answered them,
“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.”
As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John:
“What did you go out into the wilderness to look at?
A reed shaken by the wind?
What then did you go out to see?
Someone dressed in soft robes?
Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces.
What then did you go out to see? A prophet?
Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.
This is the one about whom it is written,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way before you.’
Truly I tell you,
among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist;
yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
***
Last
week I told you to go out into the wilderness, and to look for the
prophets, to look for the Christ Child, and this week, we come across
Jesus asking the crowds, “At what did you go out into the wilderness to
look?” “A reed shaken by the wind?” Jesus goes on to say, that John,
that wild and probably crazy prophet, is no reed shaken by wind, that he
is one of whom the prophet Isaiah foretold. Yet, despite all John’s stability, even he wonders, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
John
is in jail, and will soon be beheaded, and I can only imagine how much
he needs Jesus to be the Christ. From inside his mother’s womb he leapt
at this hope, from his life as a grown man he went into the wilderness
on this hope, from that wilderness he preached to the people and
baptized the crowds on this hope, he defended himself to the Pharisees
and Sadducees on this hope, and now in jail facing death, his eternal
life depends on this hope. John needs Jesus to be the one who was to
come, John does not want to wait for another. So he asks, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Are
there times in your own life where you have needed Jesus to have
already come? That to wait for another is too long? Have you needed to
hear that hope, that promise, that assurance of grace, to be baptized
and welcomed, and claimed God’s own? Perhaps you have been in your own
type of jail, perhaps you have faced your own type of death. Perhaps you
also need to know that Christ is the one who has come. I understand
John’s question. I often look around, and hear the stories of your
lives, and I wonder why do we have to wait for Christ to come again? I
go out into the wilderness, and I am reed shaken by the wind. I wonder
why our loved ones struggle with mental illness, with violence, with
addiction, with incredible pain, with natural disasters, with poverty,
and hunger, and on this day, with cold, cold, cold. I go out into the
wilderness, and I am a reed shaken by the wind.
And to John, and to I, Jesus sends an answer. He says,
“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.”
I
am the one taking offense, I have never seen the blind receive their
sight, nor the lame walk, nor the lepers cleansed, no the deaf hear, nor
the dead raised, and I have not been poor enough to know what that good
news truly sounds like. These seem like extraordinary miracles, and
when faced with such things, I tend to have my doubts or explanations -
modern science is an amazing thing. Modern faith then perhaps, is an
amazing thing. That with all our knowledge, and our science, and
technology, there seems to be less without answer. We must look for
ordinary miracles, which seem like an oxymoron. I have been looking for
miracles amidst the ordinary.
Falling asleep to the glaze of snow clouds lit by street light, or waking to a world of white and winter, and the skinny silhouette of
trees made thick with impractical layers of snow, or dusk turning to a
blue and black finger-painted night sky with a waxing crescent moon and
venus charting a course, ordinary miracles in a wilderness. I have been
looking for miracles, seeing Jen Kelley in Melissa’s workout class, the
familiarity of old friends and the stories running deep, and the joy of
new friends, of relationships forming on youth trips to McCall, and the
surprise and welcome of Thanksgivings in unfamiliar homes. I have been
looking for ordinary miracles in a wilderness, thinking of this room on
Christmas Eve, filled with families and coats and jackets and the cozy
warmth they bring, and enormity of our carols and faint beauty of our
chimes, and flickering beams of candlelight near our skin, and that
somehow every year, Christ comes again, as a babe, wrapped in swaddling
clothes, lying in a manger, promising, extraordinary miracles by way of
the ordinary.
“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.”
Perhaps,
in this modern day and age, it is just as much about teaching ourselves
to see the silhouette of snow on trees when we are blind. Perhaps in
this day and age to remember Nelson Mandela walking out of prison we can
see the lame walk. Perhaps in our little towns Cancer Center, we can
see how the lepers are cleaned. Perhaps as we being to hear Christmas
carols our deaf ears begin to hear. Perhaps as we hear this story
foretold again and again, we believe that the dead are raised, and we
believe the good news that comes in the greatest miracle. A little
child, born in a manger, and the promise of miracles he brings.
So
in this Advent season, in this modern wilderness, be not a reed shaken
by the wind, but a disciple who brings the good news back to John of the
miracles already in our midst. He is the one who was to come. We shall
not have to wait for another. He is here.
