advent 3 2016

Advent 3 2016


I am not the best movie watcher. I like to know what is going to happen to characters before I commit to them. Strangely I do not have this problem with books but getting to the last scene of a movie and finding out that she chooses the wrong one or he chooses stability over a dream – those things leave me feeling disappointed – talking to the screen – I didn’t see that one coming or even worse a movie which just stops, almost mid-sentence and you are left wondering.

When we meet John the Baptist he is fiery, he is a prophet in the manner of all good prophets – outspoken, daring. Now he is in prison. In the real world we should not be surprised, he called the Pharisees and Sadducees sons of snakes – children of that first evil which in the Book of Genesis sets up a rift between humanity and God. The reference to the Biblical story would not have been lost on them.

John is an exciting character, ushering in a new age. I suspect what happens for a lot of us, it did for me,  is that we meet John by the Jordan a lot earlier than we meet John in prison. The John of the Jordan is great for children’s stories – he is weird and you can elicit a big “Yuck!” when you talk about locusts and wild honey. In many ways he might look like a sort of Biblical superhero. When the penny drops that this is the same person who is now sending a message to Jesus asking if he even had it right there is a sense of profound sadness – we want to rewrite the end of the story. We want Jesus to sweep in and do something. But this is the real world.

That Jesus leaves John might be disconcerting. That John has doubts also gives us uncomfortable questions. We really want him to be on the same page as Jesus – pretty much automatically. If  John, who has stepped so far out on a limb for faith is having doubts  - what about the rest of us? But the Gospels are not a corporate annual report – they are not set out to impress with smiling faces and carefully rounded numbers – they are messy. Like the hero dying before the credits or the pollution remaining in the city, if we look at the Biblical narrative we will see a direction – which is always towards relationship with God and with each other – but we will also see a lot of loose ends and tangled threads as people deal with being, well, people.

Jesus does not even say, “Yes, I am the one.” He sends back a message which might sound a little obscure to us – but, actually, to John, this will be a profound reassurance. We know John knew the prophets – he was quoting the texts at the river. The message that Jesus is healing and freeing is what has been told for centuries – perhaps the paradigm is not what John expected, perhaps he, like others, was looking for a more forceful entry into society, but Jesus clearly says – this is what you have been saying – it is OK.

The messengers go back to John and this is the last we hear from him. We hear of him later, that he is executed but Matthew’s point here is not so much to let us know that John the Baptist’s fears have been allayed but rather that Isaiah’s prophecies are being fulfilled.

The rest of the passage addresses that unspoken piece of the question to the crowds. Jesus turns to the crowds and asks them what people expected. Royalty – another Herod? Herod who took the reed as his symbol and held is staff as a rod to beat the people of God. Herod who dressed in fine linens but was broken as a vassal king in a Roman state. I was thinking about those old cartoons this week, cat chases mouse, coyote chases road runner. The inevitability of those stories and the resolution always being that the victim turns into the oppressor – and on it goes. The ending is obvious, the stories are clever and how revenge is achieved is what kept us glued as children.

This endless chase, this endless struggle for power is not what Jesus is offering. He is not just bringing bigger and better of the same. In these stories there is not any room for change.
Herod is part of an endless cycle, the cat chases the mouse until the mouse learns to become a cat – and so on.

“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 this is enough, this is a powerful testimony. But hang on, you say, Jesus picks and chooses, not everyone gets healed. What good does that do? If this is going to mean anything then, surely, he should be a bit more universal in his efforts – why not release some sort of healing ray over the earth so that there is no more sickness or pain or dying.

All three of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) have a story about a man who is paralyzed and who is lowered down through the roof of a house where Jesus is. Jesus words to him are, “Your sins are forgiven,” there is outrage. Jesus told the man to walk and he did – that is the piece we want to notice. First though, he sets him free.  Sin and illness were linked in the Jewish mind. Illness might even be a punishment for inherited blemishes from previous generations. This healing is a revolution of forgiveness, of breaking the tyranny of old oppressions and guilt.

Jesus frees all those who come to him not only from physical burden but from indebtedness to something which they could never hope to understand. Jesus removed them from the controlling power of the Jewish orthodoxy and orthopraxy which kept them away from relationship with God by underlining the sinful nature of their very existence. Mark Davis uses a wonderful phrase – Jesus re-describes them. He re-describes them as beloved and new.

Yesterday Kris was watching a TV show whilst I was in the kitchen. It was called “Last Chance University”. The show is about a small college in Mississippi which gives young men who are great at football but not so adept at life a second chance. I did not get to watch to the end but will try to go back to it. There is a fundamental piece of any rehabilitation and that is to give worth and independence and this is hard work when everything in a person is wired to think the opposite.

I know this from my own life. I have said before that I grew up in a difficult household. You don’t really notice at first but then as you get into school you realize with a growing dread that everyone is not the same. It all ends up with little sense of self-worth. With a fractured understanding of a theoretical love, with a theoretical basic humanity and every grain of your being knowing that this is just not true, that you are just not there and so it goes on. I am sure each of the young men on the TV show has a story which has, in some way or other, led them to this place and they have walls a mile high, thinking that no one can see it.

This sort of pain is what Jesus is confronting in His people. They are told in words that they are
Covenant people but they are sick and suffering and the pieces do not tie up for them. This is not just the messiness of humanity – this is the sin of a sick system. Physical healings demonstrate a reality of reconciliation which is happening. Jesus redescribes these lives as worthy – God makes us worthy. All of us.

This is not an easy act. If we think through the subversive political nature of Jesus inviting oppressed people to worth it is huge. John the Baptist might actually seem quite soft and cuddly in comparison to allowing people who have no belief in themselves to function as beloved, as full human beings with their own voices, opinions and joys. In Advent we must struggle with this. We are called to radical healing, to describing people around us as children of God, to offering healing and light. But how do we do that? What risks are we taking that in redescribing someone else we allow God to redescribe us. Where is the star and the manger? And where is God’s pen in our hands?