All the
preparation, all those years in the wilderness, all that time making things
ready. It’s no wonder this text finds its way into our Advent season. There are
so many things to get ready, so many things to prepare, so many things to worry
about, a house to clean, gifts to wrap, relationships to reconcile… Are you the
one, or are we to wait for another? As John sat in prison, he probably wondered
if all his work was for naught. John, who was the one who prepared the way for
the Lord, has the courage to ask the question everyone wants the answer to but
nobody seems willing to ask. Jesus, are you the one? Should we wait for someone
else?
Jesus turns the
question on its head, not offering an answer, but a retort: Go tell John. Go
tell him about me. Tell him what is happening. The blind receive their sight,
the lame walke, the lepers were cleansed, the dead were raised, and the poor
heard the Gospel. But John was still sitting in prison. Why was it he remained
shackled to the wall with some snarky response from Jesus if all of these
people were being released from their ailments? John prepared the way for Jesus
and had to hear the good news second hand, camel hair coat scratching his skin
more than it seemed to in the wilderness as the guards rattled his cell door in
the middle of the night just so he wouldn’t get too comfortable. Go tell John,
Jesus says. Sometimes it seems like Jesus comes for everyone else, leaving us
to question whether he is the one we have waited for, the one in whom we have
put our trust, or if he’s just another desert healer, wandering around until
his luck runs out.
Jesus turns to
those following him, hungry for a sign, hungry for healing, hungry for food,
hungry for a Messiah. They had waited for so long. Israel had been at civil war
for two hundred years, then conquered by the Assyrians in the North, then the
Babylonians in South, then the Persians, then the Greeks, then the Romans… they
had been beaten more times than they had won. Sometimes, when you lose enough
times, you give up the fight. They had almost forgotten how to hope for
anything other than survival. Every now and again, there would be a flicker of
hope, a sprout of green with the audacity to nose its way up through the
brown-gray landscape. They would cling to it, hoping it would be what they had
been waiting for, only to see soldiers of a new region coming, leaving them to
wonder whether this one will raise their taxes, carry off their children as
soldiers, streams of armies running through the desert, trampling the crocuses
as they went.
Hope is a funny
thing. The smallest flicker can ignite a fire, toppling the powerful regime
that thought all it took to win was a bunch of soldiers and well-placed
propaganda. The men looked to their sons, not daring to have too high of
expectations yet not willing to give up the dream of one day being free. The
women looked to their daughters who grew up too fast, who were too smart for
their own good, who became mothers at 14; they hoped they would one day have
the courage to look up at the hills of Judaea to see them covered with the
flowers of spring. They were expecting something spectacular. They were
expecting streams in the desert, paving the way for the one who would topple
the regime, the one who would end poverty and sickness and finally fulfill
their hopes of deliverance from the all-too-familiar occupation.
Who are we
waiting for? What are we waiting for? What do we come out to see? Well, Jesus,
we have come to see the Messiah. We’ve come with our hopes and expectations for
release and forgiveness. We’ve come out to the wilderness, this space of
temptation and fear and doubt to see the promise of a better future unfolding.
We’ve come, lugging our pasts and our fears and our hopes and our dreams and
everything that holds us back yet refuses to let us believe that failure is the
final answer to the human condition. We have come to see the Messiah. We have
come for deliverance.
We wanted a God
we could point to and say, “See – look what our God can do!” We wanted
something big, something spectacular, something that would obliterate our
enemies instead of telling us to turn the other cheek. But you came, Jesus, and
you didn’t deliver us the way we wanted to be delivered. You came in a package
too small, to a backwater town, to a teenaged mother, and you hung out with the
crowd that even we wouldn’t deign to spend our time, though we are the least of
these. Jesus, we wanted to be delivered from all of the things around us, all
of the things outside us, all of the things that we can point to that we can
blame for our failures, for our fear, for all those times we didn’t act because
we were too afraid. It was supposed to be different than this, Jesus. You were
supposed to deliver us from everyone else, and instead you came and saved us
from ourselves. Instead of releasing us from oppression, you placed us on the
side of the oppressed. Instead of making us rich, you placed us on the side of
the poor. Instead of placing us on the winning side of the regime, you placed
us on the shadow side of the cross.
And in the
shadow of the cross, blinking, we see what you have brought us out here to see.
As the reeds shake in the wind, we see the one who makes the wind blow. As we
look for a king dressed in fine clothing, we see a savior that looks a little
more like us than what we expected. We have come out to the wilderness and,
instead of meeting the God we want, we meet the God we need.
 |
| The Anunciation Henry Ossawa Tanner Image may be subject to copyright. |
Are you the one
who is to come, or are we to wait for another? It’s a real question. You could
spend your time waiting for the God who will take away your enemies, who will
remove your obstacles and challenges and troubles… or you could spend your time
waiting for the God who will take away your fears, who will remove your sins and
save you from your self-possessed efforts to create a god in your image who
will run the world the way you want it to be run. But God loves you too much to
let you create the god you want in your own image. God beckons you to wait with
baited breath at the bedside of a pregnant teenager from a backwater town in
Palestine.
Go tell John, he
says. Go tell him that it’s true. Go tell him the shackles that bind him bind
only his body; his soul has been made free. Go tell him the joy of the blind
who see the crocuses of spring for the first time. Go tell him the lepers are
welcoming the rich to the table. Go tell him the lame are dancing in the
streets, carving a pathway in the desert. Come out and see more than a prophet
preaching in the wilderness: come out and meet your God.
No comments:
Post a Comment