Advent 3

Readings: Isaiah 35:1-6a, 10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

“Blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”
But who would ever take offense at Jesus?
Who would ever take offense
at the blind being given their sight,
at the deaf being given their hearing,
at the sick and suffering being made whole,
at the dead being raised,
at the poor being given good news?
Well, apparently, quite a few people.
Though it is perhaps unseemly to mention it
as we prepare to celebrate the arrival of baby Jesus,
but he did, after all, end up on a cross.
This is the stubborn fact over which we stumble
whenever we try to make Jesus inoffensive.
Sweet baby Jesus grew up
and made a lot of powerful enemies
who saw him as offensive
and even dangerous
and, certainly, worth killing.

Who would take offense
at the blind seeing and the deaf hearing?
Maybe those who are worried about
what they might see and hear.
Who would take offense
at the sick and the suffering being made whole?
Maybe those whose own power
is derived from the weakness of others.
Who would take offense
at the dead being raised?
Maybe those concerned
about the tales the dead might tell?
Who would take offense
at the poor receiving good news?
Maybe those who fear
that good news for the poor
might be bad news for them.

Who would take offense at Jesus?
Maybe those who want to use him
for their own agendas—
agendas of personal reassurance
or national greatness
or ecclesiastical power—
and who are surprised to find
that he comes with his own agenda,
an agenda that is not about
reassurance or greatness or power
but seems to involve
a radical remaking of our world.
And this remaking of the world
is offensive to those who benefit
from business as usual,
from the way the world ordinarily runs.

“Blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”
Who, then, are the ones who take no offense at him?
Presumably it is those who do not benefit
from the way the world ordinarily runs.
It is a multitude that includes the disabled and destitute;
it includes those who await God’s vindication;
it includes those whose knees are weak,
whose hands are feeble,
and whose hearts are frightened;
it includes those poor waiting for good news,
those whose lifeblood is spilled
to grease the gears of business as usual.
These are the ones for whom
Jesus’ promise of radically remaking the world
holds out hope that one day justice will prevail,
that the desert will bloom,
that those made mute by suffering will sing.
These are the ones whom Jesus calls blessed,
whom he comes to comfort,
who will join him in his kingdom.

I do not presume to know
who here is among those blessed ones
who take no offense at Jesus.
I can only speak for myself.
And, if I’m honest, part of me wishes
that Jesus had remained a voiceless infant
rather than growing up to be
the offensive, inconvenient character
who said a lot of difficult, dangerous things
that strike my conscience and trouble my prayers.

Who would ever take offense at Jesus?
If I’m honest with myself and you,
I take offense at Jesus.
I take offense because he can make someone like me,
who by virtue of race and sex,
of social class and structural inequality,
has benefited so much
from the business as usual of the world,
suddenly begin to worry:
could God not be entirely happy with me?
The letter of James warns us,
“Behold, the Judge is standing before the gates.”
And how will I be judged?
Could the blessings I have received
be a sign not of divine approval
but in fact the basis of divine condemnation?
The very idea offends me,
and my offense troubles me,
because I believe that Jesus is in fact
the one who is to come,
the saving God who comes to rescue his people.

But what can I do?
I cannot undo the benefits I have received
from being who I am,
from living the life I have lived.
But I can let Jesus’ vision of the world transformed
set the agenda for how I use those benefits.
I can try to see the world from the perspective,
as the martyred theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it,
“of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated,
the powerless, the oppressed and reviled.”
I can try to make their cares and concerns
my cares and concerns,
to stand with those on the underside of history,
so when Christ comes in judgment,
to cast the mighty from their thrones
and lift up the lowly,
to turn business as usual upside down,
to make the underside the top side,
I might take no offense at him,
but rather, seeing the wounded made whole,
seeing the poor made rich,
seeing the dessert sing,
I might join in their great song of praise,
grateful to be found among the least
in the kingdom of heaven.
_________________________
Click here for a video of this homily.

Advent 3

Readings: Isaiah 35:1-6a, 10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

Change.
Every election cycle the promise of change
is peddled to us like a healing remedy,
but it often proves to be more an opiate
to dull the pain of injustice and oppression
as we look for the better days that are sure to come
once the right people are in charge.
Or it is a stimulant to excite and enrage us,
to agitate us with false energy
growing from the resentments
and disappointments of life,
making us lash out at perceived enemies
who, we are told, must be put in their place
or even eliminated
in order for the promised change to occur.
And when, as so often happens,
the change that is promised does not arrive,
or—perhaps worse—does arrive
but with consequences
that we did not foresee or desire,
then our hope turns to bitterness,
until the next political season,
when new promises of change will made.

Change.
It is also what is promised to us each Advent.
Do we not hear that a day is coming
when, “the eyes of the blind [will] be opened,
the ears of the deaf [will] be cleared;
then will the lame leap like a stag,
then the tongue of the mute will sing”?
Do we not hear of Jesus,
at whose appearance among us,
“the blind regain their sight,
the lame walk,
lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear,
the dead are raised,
and the poor have the good news
proclaimed to them”?
Do we not hear of a change that is coming,
the change to end all changes,
when suffering will be banished
and death will be no more?
What is Advent about if it is not about change?

But how do we know
that the change promised each Advent
is not the same sort of opiate or stimulant
that is peddled to us in each election cycle?
How do we know that the change
proclaimed to us in this season
does not also dull our passion for justice
with the promise of a better day to come?
How do we know the change
proclaimed to us in this season
does not also feed our resentment of those
who have things better than we do,
those whose lives have worked out
where ours have not,
making us want to put them in their place?
How do we know that the hope of change
promised to us in Advent
is a healing remedy and not a dangerous drug?

But Advent does not only promise change;
it also counsels patience.
The letter of James tells us today,
“Be patient, brothers and sisters,
until the coming of the Lord.”
Of course, the counsel to patience
might sound like another version
of promised change
as an opiate that dulls our pain,
an encouragement to sit on our hands
as we await our rescue.
But we misunderstand what patience is
if we think it is just waiting around
for something to change.
The letter of James,
perhaps more than any other writing
in the New Testament
stresses the need to put our faith into action;
it is, after all, the letter that says,
“just as a body without a spirit is dead,
so also faith without works is dead.”
This is hardly a counsel to just wait around for change.

What then do we make of patience?
The root of our word “patience”
is the Latin word patientia,
meaning to suffer.
It is the same source from which
we derive the term “passion,”
which is the name we give
to the suffering of Jesus on the cross,
the great labor that he undertook
for our salvation.
As the passion of Jesus shows us,
patience is not a matter of sitting idle;
but neither is it a matter of agitated energy
breeding anger and resentment
of those we see opposing the change we desire.
Patience is the revolutionary act of being willing
to actively suffer for the cause of God,
even as events unfold around us
in ways that we do not—cannot—control.
Patience is the virtue that allows us
not to be seduced by the empty rhetoric of change
into either a gentle haze of vague hope,
or the angry agitation of resentment.
Patience is the willingness to let God determine
when change will come,
the willingness to suffer
the slow revealing of God’s kingdom,
even as we continue to actively labor
as disciples of Jesus
for that day when the desert
“will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song.”

Each of us, when we were baptized,
was marked with the sign of the cross.
We begin and end each liturgy with that sign.
We make that sign at those key moments in our lives
when we need strength to act or patiently to wait.
In this Advent season, we mark ourselves
with the sign of Christ's suffering,
the sign of his revolutionary patience,
as a witness to our willingness
to fight for change
without succumbing to false hopes
or bitter resentments;
we mark ourselves
as a witness to our willingness
to follow the path of Jesus
through the cross
to new life in the Spirit;
we mark ourselves
as a witness to our willingness
to seek first the kingdom of God,
the kingdom that even now
is appearing among us.

Advent 3

Readings: Is 35:1-6a, 10; Jas 5:7-10; Mt 11:2-11

“Are you the one who is to come,

or should we look for another?”

This is the question that John the Baptist,

imprisoned by King Herod and facing execution,

sends his followers to ask Jesus.

“Are you the one who is to come,

or should we look for another?”

This question is a puzzling one.

Why would John, whom we heard last week

confidently heralding Jesus’ coming,

suddenly seem to doubt that Jesus really is God’s anointed one?

Having proclaimed him the one who is to come,

why would he be sending his followers

to ask if Jesus is really the one who is to come?

Has he forgotten?

Does he think he might have been wrong?

Early Christian theologians were puzzled by this as well,

and tended to think that John

was not really asking a genuine question,

but was posing the question rhetorically,

for the benefit of his followers.

In other words, he knows the answer,

but he wants his followers to hear the words

from Jesus’ own lips

so that they will know, as John knows,

that Jesus is the one who is to come.

I have always found this interpretation of John’s question

somewhat dissatisfying,

probably because I find disingenuous rhetorical questions

somewhat irritating,

as if John were trying to be sly,

by pretending not to know something that he knows perfectly well.

Pope Gregory the Great, in the late-6th century,

took a different approach to this story.

As he interprets it, John is asking a genuine question.

He has no doubt that Jesus is the promised Messiah,

since he had clearly declared this at the beginning of the Gospel,

when he served as Christ’s herald.

But now, at this point in the story,

John is seeking to know something different.

John is facing execution at the hands of Herod;

he knows that he will soon depart this life

for the realm of the dead.

Thus, Gregory says, he is asking

whether he will also be Christ’s herald among the dead,

whether Christ, who had come into our world as God with us,

would also be God with us even in death.

As Gregory puts it, it was as if John were asking,

“Just as you deigned to be born on behalf of human beings . . . ,

will you also die on our behalf” (Homily 5).

I will admit,

Gregory’s interpretation might seem like just as much of a stretch

as the interpretation that says

that John is asking only a rhetorical question.

Yet there is something about it that makes sense to me.

Facing death, John is confronted with a new question:

how deep does your faith in Jesus go?

He believed fervently that Jesus had come into this world

to share our human life.

Now John wants to know,

has he come also to share our human death?

In our Gospel last week John had declared,

“the one who is coming is mightier than I.”

Now John asks, “just how mighty are you?

Are you mighty enough to conquer even death?

I am about to go into the darkness.

Will you be there?

Are you mighty enough to follow me into that dark place

and bring me back to the kingdom of life?”

Will you be there to say to me,

“Be strong, fear not!

Here is your God, he comes with vindication;

with divine recompense he comes to save you.”

John is asking for the gift of faith, to believe that,

even into the mystery of death,

Jesus is the one who is to come.

He will come with his light to dispel death’s darkness.

And as with John, so too with us:

we too ask of Jesus,

“Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”

Are you the one who will come to me

in the darkest places of my life?

Will you be there when I am in pain,

when I am alone,

when I am terrified,

when I am confused,

when I am in the valley of the shadow of death?

Are you the one?

Are you mighty enough to share my weakness?

You who deigned to be born on behalf of human beings,

will you also die on our behalf?

Joining me in death, will you lead me back to life?

We pray in this Advent that God would find us ready,

expectant,

waiting to receive Jesus.

But perhaps even more we should pray

for a deeper faith that it is Jesus who is ready,

expectant,

waiting to receive us.

Let us pray this Advent

that God would find us ready to believe

that no place is so dark that God in Christ is not there,

ready to meet us with joy and gladness,

ready to set sorrow and mourning to flight.