Go and Tell What You See and Hear

Based on Matthew 11:2-11
Revision of a sermon first delivered Dec. 15, 2013
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr 

            “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” That’s the question John had in his mind as he sat in jail. Here is John, who last week was proclaiming a coming messiah with an ax in one hand, a winnowing fork in the other, and a bag of unquenchable fire in his back pocket. The messiah was coming, who would purge all the wicked and redeem the righteous, clean house, make everything right. The righteous would be gathered together like wheat in the barn while the wicked would be like chaff thrown in the fire.

            But as John sits in prison, he gets word somehow that Jesus was out there, doing his thing, but there was no judging going on. The wicked powers that be were still in charge. Those who struggled to be righteous were still facing all kinds of hardships. John himself is a perfect example. He was sitting in prison because he made the mistake of speaking truth to power. He called out Herod for his illicit affair with his brother’s wife. Little does John know that before long he will have his head cut off as a consequence of the drunken foolishness of Herod and the heartless scheming of Herodias. So much for the expectation that the messiah was coming with judgment to gather in the righteous and destroy the wicked.

            John appears to be having some doubts about Jesus. And who would blame him? In those days there were great expectations that the messiah was coming to fix things, to bring down the foreign occupation, to throw Caesar off his throne and cast the Roman empire into the abyss and restore the rightful place of the House of David as the royal nation to which all the other nations will be drawn toward. That’s the kind of messiah that John was expecting. And when this wild and noble prophet of the wilderness was presented with the responsibility to baptize Jesus he resisted, saying that he ought to be the one to be baptized. He thought he knew who Jesus was…the long-expected messiah, of the line of David, who would reestablish that line and make Israel great again.

            And yet, John sits in prison. John’s imprisonment is a perfect example of what was so wrong in the world he lived in. Here is the great forerunner, the one whom Jesus declares is the greatest of all prophets, the one whose righteousness drew people out into the wilderness to see, to receive a baptism of repentance, a great and holy man. Yet he is in prison while the wicked Herod and the even more dastardly Caesar remains in charge. The messiah is here yet nothing is changing. Something is wrong. John finds himself needing some reassurance from Jesus that he is the one, or if they are to wait for another to make things right.

            So, John’s disciples go to Jesus to ask him the question. Jesus gives them an answer, but, as is typical with Jesus, he doesn’t give them a straight answer. It would have been nice if Jesus had flat out said, “Yes, I am the messiah.” Instead, Jesus gives John’s disciples a ministry report. He lists for them all the ways that he demonstrates that he is the messiah. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. No judgment? No casting the bad people into the fires of hell? No separating the wheat from the chaff? No winnowing fork? No axe lying at the root of the trees? No unquenchable fire? No. None of that. The messiah that John described in the wilderness is not the messiah that Jesus is demonstrating.

            Now it is up to John and his disciples to decide for themselves if Jesus is the messiah or not. He’s not using an axe or a winnowing fork. He’s not throwing around unquenchable fire. But he is healing people and raising people from the dead. He’s declaring good news to the poor, the downtrodden, the forgotten ones, the marginalized, the nobodies, the deplorables. John was doubting if Jesus was the messiah because Jesus wasn’t acting like John thought a messiah was supposed to act. He doubted because his expectations were wrong. John needed to rethink his preconceived notions of what the messiah was supposed to do.

            We shouldn’t be hasty in judging John’s misconceived expectations, though. In those days, messiah and king were nearly synonymous. Messiah is Hebrew for “anointed one.” Kings are anointed ones as well. When you call someone a messiah you are calling him a king. Jesus is the king of kings and Lord of Lords, as George Frederich Handel reminds us in the Hallelujah Chorus. So, what is King Jesus doing? He is healing people. He is caring for the poor and vulnerable. Jesus was acting like how a king is supposed to act. But that’s not John’s experience of kings. For John, kings are more like tyrants. A tyrant comes in guns blazing, or, in John’s day, with an axe, a winnowing fork and unquenchable fire. The tyrant, like the Caesar, takes over and gathers his chosen elite, the successful, the wealthy, the winners, the sycophants, are all gathered into the tyrant’s palace while the rest are oppressed and forced into servitude. Tyrant kings are comfortable with wielding axes and winnowing forks. When John thought of kings, the images that came to his mind were grounded in his own experience, so he laid those images on Jesus, the true messiah. But this messiah would take his axe and winnowing fork and fire to restore justice, to burn up the wicked and gather in the righteous. But Jesus is not a tyrant. Jesus is a true king. He does not confine himself to palaces. This king is with the people, helping the poor and sick, socializing with sinners, calling out the hardened hearts of the supposed leaders who care more about themselves than the people they are to shepherd. Jesus is acting like how a messiah is supposed to act and John doesn’t recognize this. John did not understand how kings were supposed to act. His experiences of kings had been quite different.

            But there is something else about John’s question that bears mentioning. Maybe the question John asked is the question the world is asking. I have a hunch that if you ask anyone if they think everything is right in the world, that person would say no, things are not right with the world. I bet that response would be at 100%. The examples of how broken the world is are massive. We get new examples every day.

            But are people looking for a messiah to come and fix everything? I’m not sure. We live in a jaded world. Most people don’t believe in messiahs anymore. We don’t have confidence that a single great person, like a superhero, will come to save the day, riding in on his white horse, or coming down his escalator in a building with his name on it, who is going to come in and make everything right in the world, someone who alone can fix it. The assassinations of John Kennedy, of Martin Luther King, of Robert Kennedy, killed the delusion of the single great leader who will turn everything around. The 20^th century as a whole destroyed for many the idea that the world can be made right. The world wars, the Holocaust, nuclear annihilation of cities and the threat of the destruction of the planet during the cold war that is being renewed in these days, the scandals that have brought down so many. It seems the best we can hope for is to muddle along somehow and hope for the best.

            Still, even though we live in a jaded world, there is still a yearning for something better. Every now and then, a great leader does touch a nerve buried deep in the heart of the world that calls forth a better world. Not a better world that the singular leader can bring about on their own, but a better world that we can create together. Martin Luther King did that with his vision of the beloved community. Although some of his luster has worn off, the first few years of the reign of Pope Francis inspired the world to be more compassionate toward the poor and to care for God’s creation. Even though the world is full of cynics, there is still a yearning to be inspired, to be given an example of how the world should be.

            Guess what? Jesus has given us a message to share with the world, a message about how the world should be. Our message is not only that Jesus is the messiah, but that Jesus heals, sets free, brings good news to the poor. Jesus is the real messiah, the true king. The message we have been given to share goes beyond words, however. It is a message that we are to demonstrate. We, the church, are sent out into the world to witness about who Jesus is, both by what we say, and especially by what we do.

            And what is so powerful is that when we are faithful witnesses, both by sharing our experience of Christ and sharing what we have to make lives better for others, those who see and hear can have their own experience of Jesus as their messiah, their king. They receive an experience through our hands, our voices, our presence, that can shape their lives and move them to bear witness themselves.

            I am thinking about those who come to the Breakfast with Santa at the Westside Free Store at Westgate and those who come to the food pantry at Parkview. I am thinking of Jordan’s Crossing and The Refuge, who bring healing and good news to the homeless and addicted. I am thinking of CATCH Court that brings new life to women trapped in the life of prostitution. I am thinking of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of churches throughout central Ohio, big, small and in between, who in big ways and small ways demonstrate a different kind of world, a world in which people are loved, embraced, built up, made well, restored, filled with hope and joy.

            We live in a world that is tired of the mindless consumerism and sappy sentimentality of the “holiday season.” People need to hear about a messiah, an anointed one, a king, who does not singlehandedly come in to dismantle and rearrange the world. We tell a story of a messiah who gives us an example of how we are to live differently in the world, a messiah who leads us to embody, make real, an alternative world. By bearing witness to this alternative story, in which people are healed, people are given new life, people are hearing good news, we give the world an example of who Jesus is, the true messiah, the anointed one, the king.

            Jesus told John’s disciples to go back and tell John what they see and hear. Jesus tells us to go and tell others what we see and hear, the ways that lives are still changed, how love is made real, that there are still moments when joy bursts forth in the darkness. Let us bear witness to the truth of the gospel, that we are created from love for love. Let us demonstrate that there is a messiah, there is one who we serve, one who, little by little, is establishing here and there peace, hope, and joy.