Are You Really?

December 11, 2022 – Advent 3
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Isaiah 35:1-10; Matthew 11:2-11[1]

There is a line in the first Harry Potter film that continually amuses me. Harry is brought by the half-giant Hagrid into a tavern where they will make their way from the regular “Muggle” world into the secret Diagon Alley of the Wizarding world.

Harry, who was attacked by “He-who-must-not-be-named” when he was a baby, has a scar on his forehead. Since the villain did not manage to kill Harry, he had become famous in the wizarding world as “the boy who lived.”

Harry doesn’t know he’s famous, since he grew up in the regular world with a non-wizard family. So, it is a bit of a surprise when the bartender looks up, notices the scar, and says, “Harry Potter. Are you really?”

John the Baptizer hears what is being said about Jesus, that he is fulfilling the promises of God recorded in Isaiah, and asks, “Are you really?” Are you really the one? If you’re not, well, that’s not good because, you see, I’m stuck in this prison. But if you are, that’s really good news!

In both the fictional story of Harry Potter and the biblical story of Jesus, the people have been waiting for someone to come who can really change things. They have high expectations for “the one.” And everyone is a little disappointed, because the one who comes isn’t exactly like they expected.

We often set high expectations for new leaders too. A new president rides into office on a wave of hope and change, and things are mostly the same as they were before. The new pastor comes and all of our problems remain. The new principal takes over the school, but the kids are still failing.

It might be that the leaders turn out to not really be “the one.” It might be that our expectations were not realistic. Or it might be that we dropped our responsibilities as soon as someone new took charge. This is “the one,” right? Well, he or she doesn’t need me; they can handle it themselves.

This is what often happens. A new leader is put in place and everybody just drops everything. The president can’t get anything done without the congress. The pastor can’t get anything done without the congregation. And even the Messiah can’t get much done without the disciples.

John’s job is finished. He prepared the way. The one who is to come is here. Now it is time for the disciples to get to work. The baton gets passed to them, and they drop it. They stubbornly refuse to understand what Jesus is talking about, again and again. However, they keep trying. They keep learning. And they keep following, because he really is the one. He really is the Messiah, God-with-us.

Is he really the one? Well, as Isaiah wrote:

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.[2]

Jesus did open the eyes of the blind. “Two blind men followed him, crying loudly, ‘Have mercy on us, Son of David! … Then he touched their eyes and said, ‘According to your faith let it be done to you.’ And their eyes were opened.”[3]

Jesus did unstop the ears of the deaf, and the speechless sang. “They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech… He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears… then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.”[4]

The lame did leap. “Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them.”[5]

John needed to be sure:

“When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, 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?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John 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.’”[6]

Now, we don’t see Jesus walking around anymore, healing and teaching. We do see disciples, people like you and me, though we’re not able to heal the blind and the lame. So how are we to know if we’ve found the Holy Way, if we really are God’s people?

We know because we love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and our neighbor as ourselves. We know because we welcome all, love all, and seek justice for all. We know because we strive to imitate the transformative life of Christ, encouraging authentic connection and compassion between individuals, local communities, and the world. If one were to look at us and wonder, are they really followers of Christ, they could see by our hope, our work for peace, our joy in believing, and in the love we share.

The work that the disciples did, and that they have continued to do down through the centuries and even today, is to bring hope to those without hope. We bring peace to those who need peace. We bring joy to those who need to be lifted up. We continue to bring the love of God to the world.

Unto us is born a Savior. Really! This is the one. And Christ will lead us. But friends, we have to follow. We must do our part, no matter how small. And when we do, we bring love to the world, and joy to God.  Amen.

---

[1] The scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

[2] Isaiah 35:5-6.

[3] Matthew 9:27-30, selected.

[4] Mark 7:32-35, selected.

[5] Matthew 15:30.

[6] Matthew 11:2-5.

Jesus Has Left the Planet

April 24, 2022
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Matthew24:30-44[1]

We celebrated the Resurrection this last Sunday. The tomb was empty and Jesus, alive again, appeared to the disciples. Then, he ascended. Luke tells us, “He withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.”[2] The first chapter of The Acts of the Apostles also tells us, “As they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”[3] He was gone, and they apparently stopped seeing him in the flesh. There would be, of course, the whole Pentecost event, with the Holy Spirit and tongues of fire, but that was not the same as seeing and touching Jesus. Jesus the person was gone. Sorry folks, you can all go home now. Jesus has left the planet.

They waited for him to come back. You see, he had said he was coming back. In the passage we heard from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus answers the disciples’ questions about the end of the age by telling them, “They will see ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven’ with power and great glory.”[4] And he even goes so far as to tell them, “This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.”[5]

The Apostle Paul says basically the same thing in his letters. In fact, there’s a whole section of First Thessalonians where Paul talks about the return of Jesus. A scholar of Paul, Bart Ehrman, summarizes:

This world was soon to end, when the God who created it returned to judge it; those who sided with God would be delivered, and those who did not would experience his wrath. Moreover, the way to side with this God, the creator and judge of all, was by believing in his Son, Jesus, who had died and been raised for the sins of the world and who would return soon for those who believe in him, to rescue them from the impending wrath.[6]

His converts had presumably taken his teaching to heart; they were eagerly awaiting the return of Jesus to deliver them from the wrath that was coming. But Jesus hadn’t returned and something troubling had happened: some of the members of the congregation had died.[7]

Paul tries to explain to them: “For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.”[8] It’s OK, folks. Those who have died just get to be first in line, that’s all. Paul fully expects that Jesus will be coming back before he dies. There’s a small problem here; do you see it? Paul and all the disciples died almost two-thousand years ago, and Jesus hasn’t come back yet.

The Second Coming never happened. There have been many groups, or movements, which have predicted the end times over the centuries. Do you remember the 2012 Mayan calendar phenomenon? When I was serving the First Congregational Church of Western Springs, I was told about a previous pastor who stood on the corner outside the church at midnight, December 31, 1899, fully expecting the rapture. He was looking for a new job the next morning.

Paul wisely doesn’t try to make any predictions about exactly when Jesus is coming. And Jesus didn’t either. Jesus said, “About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”[9] So, you think you’re good with numbers and you want to do the math? Well, I guess you must know more than Jesus…

Jesus tells us himself that it is pointless to try to predict when the end times will come. You won’t know what day, and it will be at an unexpected hour. But, be ready. Expect the unexpected. Live as if it could happen any time now. And I think that is what Paul, at least, was really trying to get at. We should live our lives in expectation, anticipating with how we live that way of life that will be ours when Christ does return.

Jeremiah, the Old Testament prophet, told us to always be prepared:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah… I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.[10]

That is the way we are supposed to live. We are supposed to live as if we all know God. We are supposed to live as if the law of God is written on our hearts. Love God… and love your neighbor… you shall put these words on your heart and on your soul.

So, if Paul was right, if Jesus is coming back at any moment, what are you going to do? If you knew that any moment could be your last on earth, what would you do differently than you are doing now?

There is a song by John Mayer called “Waiting on the World to Change.” I always thought of that song as rather passive, just waiting. But if I am waiting expectantly, as if the Lord will appear at any time, I might conduct myself differently. That is what Jesus meant by “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”[11]

A pastor named Hugh Beck has said,

It is amazing how ‘expecting the unexpected’ changes the ordinariness of life into a perpetual flutter of hope. It lightens the darkness. It breaks apart the chains of sin and death with a lively life that leaps for joy. For it knows that the ordinariness with which we are surrounded every day is not the last word. It is not a binding word. Into it and around it and through it there is a God who has transformed this ordinariness into an unexpected extraordinariness.[12]

Seeing the extraordinary hidden within the ordinary is one of the ways in which the Church stays ready and awake. Seen from a distance, Jesus was a pretty ordinary traveling holy man. You would have to follow him around for a while, listen to what he said, and watch what he did, in order to begin to see what an unusual person he was.

Even his crucifixion might have been seen as just a tragic injustice perpetrated by a sick imperial system, were it not for what happened three days later. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people – Jews, rebels, political prisoners – were crucified by the Romans in Judea. But wrapped up in the life and death of this person in particular was the world-changing power of God.

And it is only because of the Church, formed out of those scattered and fearful disciples, that the meaning of Jesus has been, and is still being, revealed. In a most extraordinary and unexpected way, God not only changed the course of the world but also brought life into the midst of our dying, restored hope where hope had vanished, and brought light into utter darkness.[13]

There is something extraordinary hidden within the waters that were poured on us at our baptism and the bread and cup we receive at the table of the Lord. To the casual eye, it is the same water we use to wash dishes and the same bread and wine that we serve at dinner. “But when we hear Jesus speak to us and say that hidden there within the water and bread and wine, he is present for us, we believe and know that this is the washing of grace, the bread of heaven, the cup of salvation. To expect the unexpected here is to receive life and hope and a new vision of what our lives can be by the blessing of God.”[14]

Amen.

---

[1] The scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

[2] Luke 24:51.

[3] Acts 1:9.

[4] Matthew 24:30.

[5] Matthew 24:34.

[6] Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 3^rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, 2004), 307.

[7] Ibid., 312.

[8] 1 Thessalonians 4:15.

[9] Matthew 24:36.

[10] Jeremiah 31:31-34.

[11] Matthew 24:42.

[12] Hugh Beck, from: http://www.predigten.uni-goettingen.de/archiv-7/041128-4-e.html.

[13] Ibid., paraphrased.

[14] Ibid., paraphrased.