December 12, 2004
Isaiah 35: 106, 10 + James 5: 7-10 + Matthew 11: 2-11
The old and the new come together today. The greatest prophet of the Old Testament and the greatest prophet of the New. The voice of the old way comes from a prison. The voice of the new is free. This Gospel story could have ended here, because the scholars tell us that its function was to introduce Jesus and get John out of the picture. But it doesn’t end because John is not the only one in prison. We are too.
Just like John we suspect, we hope, that the reign of God has begun. Yet we find ourselves in prison. Stuck and held back in our old ways. Violent ways, selfish ways, prejudiced ways, greedy, slow to forgive, impatient and intolerant, we are like this doubting John, whose expectations of a Messiah are not quite fulfilled by this man from Nazareth. He does not destroy our enemies. There is still sickness, blindness, cancer, infidelity, in justice, and power abused. Like John in prison, we are lonely, betrayed sometimes by the most loved, and we are filled with doubts about whether it is really worth it to be honest, to be truthful, to be faithful. The doubts of John in prison are not hard to understand. “Who’s side are you on?” He must have wondered.
To his question comes the most simple response: “What you see is what you get.” Then one of the deepest and most profound statements Jesus ever makes comes from the pen of Matthew revealing a great deal about the church that will receive this Gospel. “Happy is the one who does not find in me a stumbling block.” It is a starling verse implying that faith is not only a question of belief in the deeds of Christ, it is also an act of faith. It is a choice to believe in spite of some evidence to the contrary that God is with us, that God’s reign has begun, that we are not alone, left to ourselves, and without a vision of the future and the means to bring it into reality. The person who really stumbles is not the one stricken by doubts, but the one not taken with Jesus. Doubts do not destroy us. Indifference does and confusion about who Jesus is for us and what he can do with us.
Advent when lived through the life and eyes of John the Baptist means getting ready for what seems impossible and improbable. It is a season to be teased and tempted, a season that raises our curiosity, and invites us to see something that can change our lives. Our managed and measured rationality never lets God be God, never allows for the surprise of a baby born of a virgin, nor the possibility of mercy, love, tolerance, patience and forgiveness being better than revenge, punishment, and power.
The old and the new come together today. The old way of anger and vengeance meets the new way of mercy and love. John must have wondered why Jesus was eating with the very sinners he had cursed. He must have wondered how it would be possible to save sinners by chatting with them, smiling at them, and touching them. Our joy today springs from the news that the old has been replaced, that God has come to save us not condemn us, that God has come to love us not despise us, and that the Messiah for whom we long is far better than we could have imagined.
As citizens of the Kingdom of God, we are set free from our prisons by a Savior who does not do what we want but invites us to do what he wants. His coming begins a season of life that will permit us to dance and sing and hope an serve and give and love: and “Happy is the one who does not find in me a stumbling block.”