Year A : 15 December 2019
The actors had been working on the show for weeks. There had been long rehearsals and the result was a good production for amateur theatre. The crowds that came each night shared their appreciation with rounds of applause. But as the final performance neared, the star of the show found that the performance was becoming stale, and so, without giving any warning ahead of time to the other cast members, he did the opposite of what had been rehearsed ahead of time, at a particularly critical time in the flow of the drama. The other actors jumped like startled rabbits, as if they had been practising this move for ages. The audience loved it and the atmosphere was electric. It was not what the other cast members had expected, but it was better than they could have hoped for.
Theologian NT Wright suggests that the events described in Matthew 11 have much the same quality – they are unexpected but better than could have been hoped for – Jesus is behaving in an unexpected way.
In this tricky passage we find John the Baptist, in a far different setting from last Sunday. He is no longer in the wilderness preaching his message of judgement and repentance, no longer baptising and witnessing to Jesus as “the one who is to come”. John is now in prison which we discover later is because he has spoken out about Herod’s inappropriate behaviour.
As John in languishing in prison, he hears about what Jesus is doing and seems to doubt whether Jesus is actually the One the people have been waiting for. A simple explanation for this could be that as John is dejected and discouraged he is troubled with doubt. This is a basic human response that can happen to all of us. But his doubt might also be because Jesus is not doing what John has expected he would do.
From the reading last week we know that John, who called people to repentance, believed that the primary task of the Messiah was the to bring judgement, and possibly anticipated an Elijah-like character who would call down fire on his opponents. But this is not the Jesus we meet, and for John it might seem as though Jesus is following the wrong script.
Rather than bringing judgement, Jesus proclaims the message of the unfolding kingdom of God by healing the lame and the blind, extending compassion to the broken and reaching out to those on the fringes of society. When Jesus restores the lost, his actions don’t seem to fit, and like the actors in the play, John is taken by surprise. Even though John can’t seem to grasp it, this new thing that Jesus is doing is something far better than John had ever dared to imagine!
The difference between John and Jesus is startling, and Frederick Buechner describes it well … “Where John preached grim justice and pictured God as a steely-eyed thresher of grain, Jesus preached forgiving love and pictured God as the host at a marvellous party or as a father who runs to meet his returning child. Where John says people had better save their skins before it was too late, Jesus said that it was God who saved and that it wasn’t too late. Where John ate locusts and wild honey in the wilderness with some of the church crowd, and Jesus ate whatever he felt like in Jerusalem with the wrong crowd. Where John baptised, Jesus healed.” This is not to bad-mouth John, for he walked the path he was called to walk, but it shows how Jesus, the Messiah, was more than what even John was expecting.
John’s question to Jesus provides an occasion for Jesus to clarify who he is, and using the language from Isiah Jesus invites John’s messengers to report what they have seen, what in fact he is doing for the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, the dead, and the poor. The primary activity of the Messiah is the restoration of the needy and the giving of life to the lifeless – Jesus is the fulfilment of the vision of Isaiah.
The passage from Isaiah that Jesus quotes is tricky, especially when we interpret it as being about individuals, for this is not the way in which it was written. In this poem, Isaiah is articulating the transformation which comes when God enters a person’s life, as well as the eschatological changed hoped for when God comes in glory.
It is important to remember that the text is set in the context of the exile, when the nation of Israel was cut off from their homeland. The characters described are not real people, but help tell the story of what it will be like when the displaced will return home; a time when the very desert will blossom and those who are broken will be restored to fullness of life.
It is important here to briefly mention impairment and disability. I feel I need to do this because so often passages like this are used to berate real people, suggesting that it is only their lack of faith which is stopping their healing. I had a conversation with someone only two weeks ago who shared that a leader in her church had suggested she wasn’t healed only because she didn’t really have faith.
John Swinton makes a helpful definition between impairment and disability, reminding us that we are all only temporarily able at some time. Impairment is what gets in the way of us doing a particular task, whereas disability is socially constructed.
Maybe the hope for the individual who doesn’t see is not only that their eyesight will be restored, but that they will be accepted as a whole person in their community regardless of the fact that their vision isn’t 20/20.
In this passage from Isaiah everything hangs on verse 4 where there is the promise that God “will come and save you”. The impact of this good news is that there will be transformation for humanity and creation. Even in the desert where resources are scares and survival is precarious, there is the promise of rain which will allow life to flourish.
The prophet envisions a total remake, a complete re-creation, a total reversal of life as it is experienced. The way will be made safe so that all can travel together, all of creation rejoicing as one.
This text invites us, even as we live in a context of managed rationality, to affirm that God is able to do what the world thinks is not possible. God did this, coming in the form of a tiny baby to dwell with us. Jesus lived the vision of the promises of God being for all people and not just a few.
Advent is a time when we are called to hold on to the vision – and to get ready for the impossibility which permits everyone to dance and sing and march and thank and drink – and live!
Amen.
Rev Heather Hon – December 2019