How questions

·  Isaiah 35:1-10

·  James 5:7-10

·  Matthew 11:2-11

·                      Canticle 15

I’ve never been in prison.  The closest I’ve come was a couple hours on a school bus full of protesters with a zip-tie around my wrists, waiting to be processed by the National Park Police.  But that’s a story for another day. My point is that I don’t really know what it is like to be confined against my will, forced to do nothing but wait and see when and if I will ever go free. 

John the Baptist, in our gospel story, is in prison, and he doesn’t know how long he must wait, or what he’s waiting for, and it’s not likely to be pleasant when it comes.  But John is not concerned about this.  Because God has given it to him to see that the kingdom of heaven has come near, that one is coming after him who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  This is the waiting that matters to John—the long waiting of his people for the redeemer promised to them through the prophets.   And this is the wait that John believes will soon come to an end—but the question is: how soon?

The conditions of John’s imprisonment mustn’t be completely harsh, because he can have visits from his disciples.  That is how he catches wind of the activities of Jesus of Nazareth, who once came to him to be baptized in the Jordan.  At that time, according to Matthew’s telling, John recognized Jesus’ spiritual stature, and protested that Jesus should baptize him, and not the other way around.  Jesus insisted, though, that John do it, and maybe that made John doubt whether Jesus was the one foretold.  In any case, when we next meet John he is in his prison cell and sending his disciples to ask Jesus a question.

Now, the author of Matthew sets the stage for this story by using the word “Christ,” “Messiah.” It’s the first time this word appears in the Gospel since wise men came from the East, and Herod asked his priests and scribes where the scriptures said the Christ would be born.  “When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing,” Matthew writes, “he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’”  So for us as readers of the Gospel, the answer to John’s question is known before he asks it.  There is no doubt or suspense about it at all. 

For us the question that really counts is the one that Jesus chooses to answer.  It is not the question of “when?” because we know that the answer is “now.”  It is not the question of “who?”—the answer is, “Jesus.”  But the question that Jesus answers is “how?”: “how do we know that he is the Messiah?” or “how does the Christ act when he comes?”  And this morning I want to submit to you that the “how” questions are the ones that really matter to us, too. 

Christians through the centuries have enjoyed speculating about what theologians call “eschatology,” that is to say, the “when” question.  I guess maybe we’ve found it reassuring to think that there’s a definite date upon which history will end, and that we might even be able to foretell that date, even if in only a general, ballpark-guess kind of way.  And we’ve had even more fun speculating about what theologians call “Christology”—the “who” questions.  Maybe it give us a sense of confidence to be able to define in precise and technical terms who Jesus is and what exactly is his unique relationship to God and his role in the plan for the creation and redemption of the universe.   But if we’re going to be completely honest with ourselves, I think we have to admit that our answers to these questions are always going to be no more than speculation, because they are questions to which, by definition, only God can give the answer.

And it’s the “how” questions that really meet us, as they say, where we live.  Jesus’ answer to John’s question suggests that we can answer the “how” questions, right here on the human level.  We don’t need to wait for someone else to come, in the future end of time.  We don’t need to confess that Jesus is Lord and Savior, or the only-begotten Son of God, or load him up with all kinds of other lofty Christological titles.  What really matters to Jesus, is that we put our faith in what he did when he was here on earth, in his human life.  John the Baptist’s disciples come to ask “who?” and “when?” and Jesus answers, “tell your master what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” 

This answer of Jesus is a kind of pastiche of quotes from the prophets, from their inspired visions of what it will be like when Israel’s waiting is over, and the anointed one finally comes.  But it’s a very selective set of quotes.  He doesn’t say anything about slaying the wicked, or destroying the enemies of God; he doesn’t talk about restoring the dynasty of David, or rebuilding the might of the nation, or reforming the worship of the temple, though he could have found passages in prophecy to support making these the planks of his messianic platform.  But again, he’s not answering John the Baptist’s question with promises of what he will do, if everyone accepts his claim to be the Christ, and joins his insurrection, and supports him in a bid to take power.  He’s talking about what anyone can see and hear—the work that he is already doing, with the power he already has from God.

The work that Jesus is doing is healing human beings who have been deprived of the full flourishing of their lives by illness or disability, by poverty or premature death.  He’s not solving all their problems, or giving them keys to a house on Easy Street, but he is restoring their dignity and their hope.  He is showing them what they can do and be, when they believe that they, too, are sons and daughters of God.  He is renewing their faith that there is meaning and purpose to human existence, and that they have been called to play their part in God’s mission in the world. 

To be sure there are those who are disappointed in Jesus because they hope for bold slogans and grandiose pronouncements and instantaneous change.  There are those who are resentful because, being accustomed to power and privilege, they assumed the messiah would reserve a first-class place on his bandwagon for them.  But then there are those who see that in Jesus God has come to us to heal our bodies and souls, not because we have any special rights, but because of our special needs.   We are broken, seemingly beyond repair, and still God cares for us, and chooses us to be ambassadors of heaven.  When we welcome this Messiah who shows who he is by restoring wounded human beings, we are already blessed, no matter who we are, or who we have been.

You and I may not have the supernatural gift of healing that Jesus had.  But that doesn’t mean that the power of God can’t work through us to change our lives, or even change the world.  It can, if we accept that it is in the lives of ordinary men and women like us, that God has chosen to manifest redeeming power.  If we accept that this transformation is not something that will begin any day now, when we’re good and ready, when we’ve kicked that bad habit and started doing yoga, and the holiday shopping is done, or the kids are in college, it has in fact already begun.   

For Christians the supreme model of this kind of acceptance has always been the mother Mary, who magnified the greatness and power of God in her own lowly soul.  Though she cannot possibly be ready, she consents to conceive the promised child.   And then it’s up to her—to her ordinary human powers of gestation and giving birth, of maternal care and love, of patient instruction in the way of life commanded in the Torah.  She has accepted her role in the coming of the Messiah, and that in itself has scattered the proud and thrown down the mighty.  That in itself has lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things, as surely as if the job were already done.   

The way to freedom

Isaiah 65:17-25
Canticle 9
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19

On the morning of Wednesday, November 5, 1980, I met with a half-dozen of my friends outside our high school before first-period band.  We passed around black strips of cloth and safety pins and helped each other fasten them around our upper arms, as signs of mourning and protest.   Because the night before our hopes had been dashed, our hopes to come of age in a world moving toward peace, equality, and justice.  A right-wing extremist had been elected President of the United States.   

Over the next several months, I wrote a paper for my honors U.S. History course about the prospects for dictatorship in our country.  The first part was a summary of a classic work on the rise of Fascism, Escape from Freedom, by Erich Fromm.  Fromm, a psychoanalyst, was not interested in political history so much as in social psychology.  He proposed that human beings have an innate and existential need for freedom, a kind of spontaneous solidarity with others in love and work, not on the basis of primal ties of family and race and tradition, but as creative individuals.  But, Fromm argued, modern social and economic conditions sometimes frustrate and prevent individuality from developing in this way.  At the same time, these conditions tear apart the primal bonds that used to make us psychologically secure.  Hanging suspended in the void, between stunted individuality and the loss of primal ties, people find freedom too much to bear.  So they give it away to an authoritarian figure.  Relieved of the burden of freedom, they experience it vicariously through the strongman, the one who alone is magnificently free to say the unthinkable, and do the unspeakable.

My paper continued with a historical account of populist demagogues in the United States during the period of the Great Depression, and then went on to a survey of contemporary society.  I described economic decline and the resulting alienation and resentment, in the small towns and the industrial working-class.  I noted the resurgence of nationalism and militarism, the manipulation of public opinion through misinformation and propaganda, and the rise of a reactionary political movement.  And I concluded my paper, not with a prediction, but with a warning, of a situation taking shape that could lead to the end of our democracy. 

After last Tuesday night more people than ever are feeling that this is a real possibility.  And it is not hard to see why.  Even as he calls for national unity, the President-elect has yet to pledge explicitly that he will defend the constitutional rights of the vulnerable groups he threatened and bullied during his campaign.  He has not even condemned the wave of celebratory hate crimes that has followed his election.   But as troubling as this is, I would urge us not to misunderstand.  The majority of voters, who cast ballots for Trump did not do so because they are more racist or misogynistic than the rest of us.  They are not longing for a Fascist dictatorship.  They disliked the same aspects of his message and his personality as others did. 

But they were willing to hold their noses and vote for him because they are desperate for social and economic change.  They have feel humiliated and afraid because of the long, relentless withering of their future prospects and their communities while, as Americans, they believe it is their birthright to be free.  Theirs was not a partisan decision--millions of them would have been happier to vote for Bernie Sanders.  But, given the choice they had, Trump was the more revolutionary option.  For all the symbolic significance of her sex, Clinton was the candidate of more of the same.  And here we have to be completely honest.  Under the leadership of the Clintons and Obama some of the most troubling signs of our country’s drift toward totalitarian rule—the fusion of government and corporate power, the expansion of state secrecy and mass surveillance, the continuation of a state of endless war, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, the militarization of the police, and the criminalization of the poor—became the policy of the Democratic Party.

Of course, they are Republican policy too, and this is where Trump’s less rabid supporters are deceived.  The new President will quickly learn the limits our Constitution places on his power.  And even if he truly desires, which I suppose he might, to somehow turn back the clock on neoliberal globalization, the leaders of his party in the Congress do not.  Unlike him, they have a legislative record, which shows how slavishly they do the bidding of the corporate elite.  And this raises the prospect of a truly precarious moment that is still to come—now that Sanders and Trump have raised the flag of revolution, what happens in the vast sections of our country sinking into the red, when folks realize that they’ve been fooled again? 

Jesus of Nazareth lived in a time of seething popular unrest, of repeated cycles of revolutionary violence, and even more violent reprisals and repression.  And he wasn’t especially optimistic about the future of his nation.  As he presciently said, “the days will come when not a stone will be left upon a stone.”  But under these conditions, for a brief time, Jesus carried out a public campaign; a campaign to show the world for all time what it looks like when the Spirit of God has set someone completely free.   And because Jesus was free--of hate and fear, of greed and self-pity, of the desire to dominate or submit, free of misgivings about the goodness and compassion and wisdom of God, and free of illusions about human beings, he was the most dangerous man alive. 

Jesus was hated and feared by the authorities.  And for good reason, because the people who became Jesus’ disciples, who believed what he said and followed him to hear more, began to see that they also could be free.  They also could come alive with the Spirit of God, and become new people, free and spontaneous individual agents of God’s new creation of the world.   It wasn’t going to be easy.  It’s never easy to let go of old identities, old ties to family and tribe, and old religious certainties.  It’s not easy to give up on social climbing, on grasping after wealth and prestige, and the other things that make us feel superior to others.  It’s not easy to write off the debts we think that we are owed.   

It is not easy to have faith that we are sons and daughters of God, who provides for our every need, and will not allow one hair of our head to perish.  It is not easy to trust that we are brothers and sisters, meant to live together in repentance, forgiveness, and mutual love.  It’s not easy to share all things in common, and to give equal respect, and equal value, to our very different talents, and backgrounds, and needs.  No wonder so many people didn’t get it.  No wonder they preferred to think that following Jesus meant championing a strongman who would make Israel great again. 

But instead Jesus died.  He died to pay the cost of freedom for others, which is what the word “redemption” means.  He rose again and sent his disciples in his Spirit, to continue his public campaign of demonstrating what freedom is.  As the decades went on, and the political violence went from bad to worse, the Jesus movement refused to take sides in it, and for that they were despised by everyone.  They rejected the demand to honor earthly rulers in the place of God, and for this they were hunted.  But it’s not like they didn’t have political power—in a strange and unprecedented way, they did.   It came from a promise that Jesus had made to his disciples not long before he died: the promise that, even surrounded by enemies, even standing, accused, before kings and governors, they would not be alone: “I will give you words,” said Jesus, “and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”  They might be in chains on their way to execution, but speaking Christ’s words, they would have power.  They would be free.  

I wish you all could have been with me in Sacramento last weekend at our church Convention when the youth of our Diocese got up to speak.   Their adult and college-age leaders went first, but then, one after the other, the fourteen and fifteen-year olds came up to the mike.  They were hesitant at first, but seemed to draw confidence from each other, as they gave their testimony.  They had gone on pilgrimage last summer, some to South Africa, others to Tule Lake here in Northern California, and in a vast hall, in front of hundreds of their elders, they spoke passionately and persuasively of what they had seen and heard and learned. 

They bore witness to the scars left on bodies and communities, and on the land, by violence and injustice.  They testified to the persistence of pain, and the suffocation of denial, and of the truth-telling and acknowledgment of wrong that is the first step toward forgiveness.  They spoke of the new life that flows from reconciliation.  They spoke of being changed, of wanting to change, of wanting to make change happen.  And believe it or not, they spoke of the church--of how much it meant to them to be encouraged by their church to explore and discover the Gospel as the healing power of the Spirit in the world, the power to create community, and to be free.  

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