What Kind of Messiah?
Advent 3A-25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
Last Sunday, we read about John’s preaching in the wilderness beside the River Jordan. He seemed so sure of himself. But now, in his prison cell facing death, he is not so confident. He sends messengers to ask Jesus, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3)
The question rings like a bell through the centuries. It sounds almost uniquely modern. Disappointments, sickness, death, tragedy, injustice, and evil take turns so that we lose confidence in faith. ‘We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue us’ (Luke 24:21). But now, we’re not so sure.
Jesus failed to meet John’s expectations. Matthew’s gospel tells us Jesus had done great deeds of power in cities throughout Galilee, in Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum. But the people did not repent. They sort of just shrugged. Other ridiculed Jesus, “Look, [they said, this Jesus is] a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19). Even Jesus’ own mother and his brothers showed up to question him, presumably to take him home and out of the public eye.
‘Are you the one who is to come, Jesus, or are we to wait for another?’ John questioned Jesus afterlistening to an accounting of Jesus’ deeds (11:2-3), not despite them. John realized that Jesus was not the supernatural judge his preaching had foretold (Paul S. Nancarrow). John uses emphatic language in Greek. He asked Jesus if they should be looking toward someone or something else entirely! (Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew)
What kind of Messiah were you expecting this Christmas? Perhaps, like John, you have wondered why the Savior doesn’t simply come down and save us? John the Baptist might have wondered why Jesus didn’t come knock down the walls of his prison, unbind his chains, and set him free. What kind of Messiah is this Jesus of Nazareth?
Notice, Jesus doesn’t take offense at John’s questions. Jesus didn’t get defensive. Jesus complemented John even as he remained firm in his own Godly vision for mission. He responds by asking John’s messengers and the crowd gathered around them, to remember ‘what they had they gone out in the wilderness beside the Jordan to see?’ He asked them to show what they already knew—that neither John nor Jesus were some spectacle—a traveling road show of wonders. Neither John nor Jesus wore fine robes or lived in royal place such as kings do. Don’t come here if that’s what you seek. He told John’s disciples to report what they saw with their eyes, and heard with their ears, and experienced for themselves.
Jesus turned to the passage we read today from Isaiah 35 to direct their attention to a different set of messianic expectations rooted in scripture: not the destruction-filled imagery from the book of Daniel, but the shalom-filled imagery of peace and well-being from Isaiah: “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” (Matthew 11:5). Jesus invited John to consider a different vision from within the pages of scripture about who the Messiah is.
Our readings this week all point to something John missed that is essential to the character of God. “All five passages emphasize the people toward whom God is focused. These Scriptures describe at least eighteen — eighteen! — sorts of people in pain who might be forgotten by the world but who are nevertheless remembered by God: the blind, the lame, the diseased, the deaf, the dead, the poor, the dumb, the oppressed, the hungry, the prisoners, the bowed down, foreigners, orphans, widows, the humble, and then, my three favorites, those with feeble hands, weak knees, and fearful hearts.” (Daniel Clendenin)
John and Jesus called us to live according to the way of God and not the way of the world. The way of God described over and over again by the prophets: is care of society’s most vulnerable (the widow, the orphan, the immigrant); to limit the gap between rich and poor (the Year of Jubilee), not to use power to further the narrow self-interest of yourself and your friends; to not accumulate wealth at the expense of the poor (Jeanyne B. Slettom, Process and Faith).
This is the kind of world that cannot be built by force or the threat of violence but only by love—specifically, by love of God and love of neighbor. John’s followers returned to him. We don’t know whether he was satisfied with the answer. Judging from history –I’d say most people are not.
Traveling throughout Great Britain on sabbatical, visiting castle after ruined castle, opened a window for me on the long history of Christianity’s compromising relationship with political power and the economics of Empire. Leaders of the Church were seldom content in the gospel of love alone but sought to add some small measure of political protection to preserve and extend their own power and wealth. Each castle ruin includes, of course, the story of how they met their own predictable and often violent end.
One such place, St. John’s Chapel in the Tower of London. It was built as a place of worship for William the Conqueror inside the iconic royal, military, and prison complex haunted now by stories of countless people imprisoned, tortured, beheaded and hanged there. The Tower is home to an extensive collection of armaments documenting the vast fortunes and enormous amounts of human ingenuity expended on creating the very best weapons of war. The Tower is also the place to see the Crown jewels, some of the biggest, brightest diamonds and gemstones in the world, pilfered, plundered, and stolen from the four corners of the British Empire. So, what was the purpose of St. John’s Chapel? Did it calm the conscience of the powerful? Did it falsely undergird confidence in their favored status and right to rule—as if God could forget the poor, imprisoned, and orphaned?
Behavioral science tells us we often learn most from our mistakes. Could the collapse of our democracy and impending doom we foresee being wrought by the economics of extraction show us what we, like John the Baptist, either missed or willfully ignored about the Messiah? Amid collapse, in a time of polycrisis, could the world finally be about to turn?
“The challenge for us in Advent is to allow Jesus to restore our senses, to have him open our eyes and ears so that we can go and tell others what we hear and see” (Erin Martin, Blogging Toward Sunday). In Christ, we see that God is a friend of the lost. In Christ, we hear that God stands amid our suffering. In Christ, God enters our world of darkness and death and decisively fills it with light and life. Jesus has given us new eyes, new ears, a new heart and a new life. He says to us ‘Stop worrying so much about the afterlife. That is in my hands, Jesus says. Focus instead on what I have put in your hands, the world, all its people, and myriads of living creatures so love will reign all in all.’
This Advent, prepare to meet the living God who is always more, whose coming is always different, whose power is always greater and more glorious than we could have imagined. Who is this Jesus? He is the one who stoops down from heaven. He is the one who comes to walk with us no matter how messy or fraught with ugly strife, bickering or bitterness our life may be. He comes not in wrath but in love; not as one who seeks to destroy, but as one with power to transform and renew. See, the Messiah took on flesh and lived among us. The spirit of Christ is upon you. Even now, Jesus dives to bottom of the mucky sea that is our life, to make us new from within.
