| Date | Speaker | Passage | Printable Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Dec 2007 - 00:00 | Dan Plasman | Isaiah 35:1-10; Matthew 11:2-11 | Not Available |
His name appears in the Guinness Book of World Records, under the peculiar category MOST BROKEN BONES – 35. And you think you have aches! Robert Craig Knievel (aka Evel Knievel) died recently at his home in Clearwater, Florida. He was 69 and most of those hard-living years were spent jumping over things with his customized Harley-Davidson XR 750 motorcycle -- jumping over fourteen greyhound buses at Kings Island in Ohio; over an aquarium filled with hunger sharks in the Chicago Amphitheater.
A quintessential showman and self-promoter, Evel Knievel was even more famous, ironically so, for his failures. On New Year’s Day in 1968, he jumped the fountains at Caesar’s Palace but crashed the landing and went into a coma for a month. In September of 1974, his televised exploit occurred over the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. Strapped to his rocket powered motorcycle, Knievel descended a 108-foot ramp at 350 miles an hour and soared some 2,000 feet over the canyon floor. His stunt, however, failed to match his much hyped promise when the parachute mysteriously and prematurely opened, sending the daredevil and his cycle to a soft but lucrative landing on the canyon floor. Though his promise did not match his performance, and though his hype outmatched the results, for his efforts that day, the daredevil collected a cool $6 million.
Sometimes failure increases ones notoriety and net worth. But most times, failure -- ones own or someone else’s -- raises soul-searching questions, especially if failure and the resulting disappointment arrives on the heels of heightened expectation and promise.
From his prison cell, John the Baptist wondered about Jesus. He wondered why the promises hadn’t matched the performances. He wondered why the hype hadn’t produced the intended results. Rome was still in power. Caesar was still minting coins with his image on them. Herod was still calling the shots in Judea. Roman soldiers were still marching down Main Street Jerusalem. The Jews were still pawns on the Roman chessboard.
From window of his prison cell, trapped like a rat, John the Baptist knew the lay of the land. There had been no revolution. No uprising. No axe head laid to the tap root of Rome’s power. Wasn’t this the job description of the long-awaited “branch from the stump of Jesse”? Did not the prophet Isaiah predict that “He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you” and by inference rid the land of the foreign menace.?John has second thoughts about Jesus. Is Jesus the real thing? Is Jesus the one and only? Is he worth following, worth committing to? Does he have the right stuff? John wants answers and John needs answers. How long he has to live, he doesn’t know, so he sends his own disciples to ask Jesus a question, one of the most haunting questions in the Bible, a question that germinated in the soil of disappointment, a question that arose from multiple spiritual let downs: Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? He doesn’t use the word “imposter” but the suggestion is there. I thought you were the One, but now I’m not sure. Was I wrong about you?
That’s not just John’s question, is it? That’s not just a question raised by a first-century prisoner on death row, is it? It’s our question too, yours and mine. Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?
Maybe we don’t always ask it exactly with those words or exactly in that way, but it is a question that arises from our own disappointments and disillusionments with the ways of God.
You didn’t plan on losing your job, nor did you deserve to. Nobody should die before they enjoy their retirement years, but you know it happens. A parent should never have to bury a child. Even people who never smoked in their lives get lung cancer. You get your five daily servings of fruits and veggies, but your arteries don’t seem know that. You gave that decision much careful thought and prayer and now you know it to have been the wrong one. All your life you’ve played it fair, and now you watch everyone passing you by.
So many carols sung, so many prayers prayed, so many churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and shrines scattered over the earth, yet this world seems nothing like the world Isaiah envisioned where the lion dwells with the lame, where they learn about war no more, where all have enough and no one is turned away.
So much of life is the dark side and the bad news, not what we had planned on, not what we had expected. We want God, or some manifestation of God, or some Messiah of God to put the answers under our pillow where we can find them like quarters from the tooth fairy.
So we know the question of John, “C’mon, God, why can’t you get it right? Why does it take so long? Are you the one who is to come, or am I to wait for another, to seek another, or forget the search altogether?”
Jesus, of course, answers the question put to him by John’s disciples but not in the form of a simple yes or a simple no. Instead, he tells his visitors to report back to John what they see and hear. “Look at the evidence, boys, the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear (without a looped hearing system), the dead are raised, the poor get good news. You tell me, am I the one you’ve been expecting?” Jesus gives an answer but it is not without its gaps and holes.
Episcopal priest and preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor notes, “depending on your expectations, that may or may not be enough. There were still plenty of blind people in Israel, after all, still plenty of lame people at busy intersections rattling tin cups at passers by. All the lepers weren’t cleansed, any more than all of the dead were raised. The poor may have had good news brought to them, but they were still poor – still sharecropping for the rich, still paying taxes to the Romans, still wondering how to make ends meet without getting in worse debt than they already were . . . Pilate was still robbing the Temple treasury to fix the plumbing in Jerusalem, while his soldiers broke the kneecaps of anyone who protested.”
John might have wished, and we too, that Jesus would have said, “Am I the one you’ve been expecting? Well, just look around. There’s no more terror in the world. The machinery of war has been dismantled. There’s not a child who goes to bed hungry. People no longer die premature deaths. AIDS has been eradicated. Cancer is cured with a single pill. Homelessness is a thing of the past. Racism is extinct. Women have all the advantages that men do. Wealth and opportunities for economic expansion are equitably distributed. Drunk drivers no longer grab steering wheels. And by the way, the Cubs have won the World Series.”
John longed to see the tidal wave of God’s restorative work. John longed to witness the redemptive tsunami of God’s presence upon creation. John longed to see God’s painting of the peaceable kingdom stretched across the canvas of the world. And don’t we all?
Instead, Jesus gives us the answer not in tidal waves but in drips, not on a finished canvas but in single brush strokes. He says, “Look at the people, one at a time, whose lives have changed; whose dark circumstances have not destroyed their souls; whose unbelievable odds have not diminished their spirits, who in the face of unfairness and injustice have not responded in like manner. Such are the sign of God’s presence, says Jesus, and blessed is the one who is not offended.
The question, like many found in the Bible, eventually gets to a level deeply personal: What signs of God’s presence will we choose to give evidence of this week?
Who will be encouraged because you are there?
Who will have reason to smile because you walked into the room?
Who will find the weight on their shoulders lightened because you took time to listen?
Whose sunless world will be brightened because of the light seen in your eyes?
Will we be the ones who are to come, or will the world have to look elsewhere?
I could say, “Have a good week” but that seems far too trite and pedestrian. Instead I leave you with, “Make it a good week.”