Isaiah 35:1-10
Psalm 146
James 5: 7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
"Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
I once met a rabbi who was deeply spiritual, and if our paths hadn't crossed so briefly, I would have asked him to be my spiritual director. He said to me one day: "Look around you. Does this look like a world in which Messiah has come? That's my problem with Christianity." And I looked around, and I had to admit that the world didn't look all that redeemed.
Reb Zalman-for that was his name-had a lot of experience of an unredeemed-looking world. When he was a teenager, he and his family fled from Austria to escape from Hitler. They worked their way across Europe, gradually selling or bartering everything they had. The last night they had to cross from Belgium into Holland, to get to the port at Rotterdam. They had to go through a dark wood, keeping the babies quiet so the Nazi guards wouldn't hear them. But the man who had promised to guide them through the woods didn't want to take them. The last little bit of money they had wasn't enough for him to risk his neck. But this man had a mother, and his mother took him by the ear and pointed to a picture on the wall of their kitchen-a picture of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, fleeing into Egypt to escape from Herod. "Look at them and tell me you won't take them!" she said. And he took them.
So that family, and their baby, escaped, though it took them much longer than they had thought it would. And there was at least one point at which Jesus made a difference in the story. But was that enough to balance all the rest, enough so that we could say this looks like a redeemed world?
John the Baptist had his doubts. If this Jesus was the promised Savior, what was John doing in prison? How come he didn't stage a rescue? John sent his friends to ask: "Um, excuse us, sir, but are you the one who is to come? Just wondering, and all." Jesus tells them: "Well, look around you. Do you see the signs of the age to come?" And he mentions all those things that Isaiah was talking about: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. Those are the signs of the age to come. But then he says something else: "Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."
Hm. What about that? Jesus was not an inoffensive guy. You could see it coming from the start: Herod was plenty offended at the very idea of Jesus, and Jesus and his family had to get out of town. You might say it was all downhill from there-or uphill, up to Calvary hill.
"Takes no offense at me" is a fairly lame translation. What Jesus is really saying is: you're lucky if you don't stub your toe or bark your shin on me. The stone that the builders rejected, the stone that becomes the cornerstone, is a stone that many, probably most of us are likely to bash our toes on.
"Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
Let's be honest, this Advent, and ask ourselves: are we happy with the Savior we got, or are we really looking for something better?
I don't know about you, but I have my doubts some days. This world really doesn't look redeemed, and just starting at home, I know I sure don't. Like the world I live in, I am fascinated by, enslaved by what Walter Wink calls "the myth of redemptive violence." That's the idea that if we hit back hard enough, we can conquer any evil that comes at us.
I think that if we aren't born thinking that way, we learn to very soon. Maybe that's our original sin. Toddlers, who have very solid ideas of what's fair and what's unfair, learn very quickly how to use their fists and their feet and their toys to make things "right," and as we get older we find more refined ways to put the world "right" in our own eyes through physical and verbal and spiritual violence. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease," we say, and "nice guys finish last." It's all about getting our own way-which we are always sure is the best way-by doing whatever it takes: redemptive violence. At the extreme, we "solve" the problem by snuffing out the life of the person who seems to be the cause of the trouble.
Jesus didn't operate that way. He lived for the sake of those who needed him, and knew they needed him, whether they were loud about it, like the blind man shouting "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" or quiet about it, like Zacchaeus up the tree, or the woman who touched the hem of his garment. When evil approached him, he looked it in the eye and named it for what it was, but he didn't strike out or resist when he was bound and led away to be mocked, and beaten, and crucified. How ironic, then, when people who claim to be his followers go off on crusades, with "God wills it!" on their flags; how strange when they call their wars "Operation Infinite Justice."
To hear the talk nowadays, you'd think that if "we" catch Osama bin Laden and string him up, that will save the world from terror and we can all go back to living our wonderful pre-September lives. The world is out of joint, but we'll fix it, by golly! We'll create more refugees, and call it justice-the same way that, 2000 years ago, a Roman author said of his society: "they have made a desert and called it peace."
So no, I don't think we are satisfied with the Savior we got. We are looking for someone who "will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense." That is who "will come and save you"-isn't that what Isaiah says? And if God would just come down and mop up the bad guys (and gals, let's be fair), if God would just exercise some redemptive violence, we could look around and see a redeemed world. Right?
But that's not the way it is. We have a Savior who comes not in lightning and thunder, not in a war chariot or a tank or a Stealth bomber, but in diapers and born to a family of refugees. We have a Savior who didn't condemn, but instead was condemned, who died an outcast, alone, branded a criminal, the victim rather than the doer of redemptive violence. We have a Savior who is risen and lives among us in silence and in service, who begs of us the use of our hands and hearts and voices so that he may continue to save the world. We have a Savior who asks us to be church, the people called, so that salvation may indeed reign in this unredeemed-looking world-so that people like Reb Zalman might one day say: Messiah has come!
"Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
Well, church? What answer shall we give if someone asks us that question? If someone asks us, can we say: "Look around you: the blind see, the lame walk . . . and the poor have the good news preached to them"? Can we dare to say: "Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at us"? Are we stumbling-blocks in the paths of this world, or just smooth stones in the riverbed, worn down by the washing of the water, offering no resistance? Are we the church we are called to be, or does the world have to wait for another?
Once there was a rabbi who, when he was very old, called his students around him and said to them: "I am very old, and soon I am going to die. And when I die and come before the holy throne, the wise ones who have gone before us are going to question me. And they are not going to say: 'Zeesha, why weren't you Moses? Zeesha, why weren't you Elijah?' No, when I come before the holy throne, the wise ones gathered there are going to say to me: "Zeesha! Zeesha! Oy vey, Zeesha! Why weren't you Zeesha?"
"Are you the church that is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Can we take time, what's left of this Advent, to consider that question? Are we St. Stephen's/Good Samaritan, as we have been called to be? Our Savior, Jesus Christ, was and is at every moment who he really is, who his Father called him to be from before all ages. He was indeed "the one who is to come," and he always will be: not the Savior we would have fashioned for ourselves, but the genuine article, the real thing, the one. All we can do to be truly his church is to be the authentic us, the people he has called to be with him. What could we be, that would be better than that? What more could the universe wish for?