Millions across the globe
this week paused to consider the life and witness of one of the giants of the
last century. Nelson Mandela, former revolutionary and anti-apartheid activist,
died two weeks ago and was buried yesterday in his hometown, following a
memorial service on Tuesday that drew so many people it had to be held in a
soccer stadium. Regardless of where you stood on the man and his legacy and his
one-time unwillingness to renounce violence to achieve his aims, Mandela was an
will remain known as the person who symbolized his country’s struggle for
justice and freedom. It was an amazing life that spanned the better part of ten
decades and saw him rise from relative obscurity in a small village to become
the first black president in a very racially divided South Africa and go on to
share a part of the Nobel Peace Prize.
What I think most people find
compelling about Mandela’s life is the twenty-seven years he spent in prison serving
what was supposed to be a life sentence for speaking out against the oppression
and injustices of the ruling elite. He suffered mightily for sharing his vision
and speaking out for the cause of freedom. It’s somewhat of a miracle that
during those long years in forced labor in the limestone quarries that his
heart did not become as hard as the rock he was forced to dig. And while people
are fascinated by that awe-inspiring graciousness—his ability eventually to
forgive his captors—I’m sure for him the time in prison was excruciating. I’m
sure that for him it was gut-wrenching to sit there behind those stone walls, behind
those iron bars, and wonder what was going on out there in South African
society. Was it truly changing? Were the steps of freedom and equality for all
races still marching forward without him? Which new leaders were taking up the
cause of justice, and, of course, would his own captivity ever end? While he sat
in prison I’m sure these questions occupied his thoughts. Mandela ended up
dying this month with much of his vision realized, although that country (and
all countries, for that matter) still has a long way to go.
*****************************
Today, millions of Christians
gather to pause and consider the life and witness of one of the giants of the
first century. John the Baptist, revolutionary prophet and agitator of the
powerful elite, appears in our Scripture texts this morning very much like
Nelson Mandela, in prison and awaiting execution. Regardless of where you stand
on the man and his willingness to use shouting and other outlandish tactics to
achieve his aims, John the Baptist remains known, among other things, as one of
the people who symbolizes the Jewish people’s disgust with the Roman military
regime. Enormously popular in his day, John gave voice to the people’s anger at
the religious elites, and to the dissatisfaction with the apathy of all of
God’s people when it came to living in hopeful expectation of God’s reign. He
was ready for God’s kingdom to come and he was willing to speak out for it.
In the earliest days of his
career, John the Baptist had been out in the wilderness, on the outskirts of
society, preaching about the arrival of the Promised Messiah and baptizing
people as they repented of their sins. He had also taken issue with the
corruption of Herod Antipas and his family, speaking out against their
injustices and indiscretions. They had him captured and thrown in prison…a
reminder to all that there are often harsh consequences to standing up for God’s
justice!
This morning we see that John,
like Mandela many centuries later, is starting to wonder what is going on outside
that prison’s stone walls and iron bars. John the Baptist is starting to wonder
whether things in the world were truly changing. Was this new leader, Jesus the
Messiah, taking up the cause of justice and ushering in God’s kingdom? Was
Jesus the one they had all been waiting for in God’s revolution to overthrow
the powers of evil or should they wait for another? I also bet John was
wondering if his own captivity would ever end. After all, if the Messiah comes
to give sight to the blind and set the prisoners free, then that would have
some very positive outcomes for John. So with an urgency that we can only
imagine, John sends his disciples to Jesus wanting to know what’s up. Is there
hope for a new world? For God’s sake, when will it be here?
*****************************
Millions of Jesus’ followers
pause each and every day to reflect upon their own lives in this twenty-first
century. Regardless of where we stand on our own accomplishments and
achievements, we have to admit that our lives are important. They may not loom
as large as Nelson Mandela’s or John the Baptist’s, but they do matter. Our
lives, no matter how insignificant they seem, are avenues for God’s peace and
mercy to break into the world.
And yet, we are imprisoned. They
are not prisons of stone walls and iron bars, but they are prisons of doubt and
fear and apathy. On the one hand, we know and trust that Jesus’ birth among us has
brought us freedom. It has released us from sin’s slavery and we have tasted
that new life. But on the other hand many of us still take offense to Jesus’
claims that God’s kingdom has come, or is coming. We look around and say, “OK,
Jesus, I hear you…but what about Sandy Hook Elementary School? What about
chemical weapons in Syria? What about the systems of racism and economics that
still oppress so many people? If the kingdom you bring is so good, Jesus, when
will we be released from these prisons, too? Are you the hope of God’s reign,
or not?”
Understanding this tension—or
at least acknowledging it—is a fundamental part of Christian faith. Even at
times when our faith in God’s power is strong and vibrant, we still feel a
frustration, like John did, that this revolution of love is not happening
quickly enough. We are impatient with its progress. We grow tired of the fight.
Disillusioned, we go to Scripture, to worship, to the leaders of the faith to
be moved and motivated, to hear again about this redemption and receive some inspiration,
but then get discouraged when vindication doesn’t arrive in the form we
anticipate or in the manner we expect. This is what it means to take offense at
Jesus and his kingdom, and based on Jesus’ own words this morning to John, it
sounds that Jesus might expect this reaction from us from time to time. I think
Jesus fully realizes we grow weary of living in this tension where one age of
sin and death and violence is so slowly giving way to God’s reign of
righteousness, where the kingdom of darkness is so gradually being overtaken by
God’s kingdom of light. We long so desperately for the arrival of that kingdom,
as the prophet Isaiah describes, where the blind receive their sight and the
lame walk and the poor have good news brought to them.
When John’s disciples reach
Jesus with his questions of impatience, Jesus responds by telling them to
return to John with the news of what is happening, news of what Jesus has done.
He sends them back with news of reassurance. As it turns out, some of the blind
have regained their sight, not counting the thousands who’ve been given the new
eyes of faith. The feeble knees have become strong. Those bowed down under the
burdens of sin have been lifted up. Furthermore, the poor—both the literal poor
and the poor in spirit—have had good news brought to them. They are like little
dispatches from the front lines of the movement. In Jesus Christ, God’s kingdom
is on its way.
In this time of hopeful
expectation, we must remember we are not the only ones who feel torn by the
tension and we are not the only ones who cry out from our prisons of fear and
dread. Jesus, himself, feels the tearing of it more completely that anyone
else. On the cross, Jesus’ own body is torn with this tension, crushed by the
weight of our impatience and our discouragement. In so many ways we reject very
vision of the hope he brings and how he brings it, and yet he still dies so
that we might have it rather than withholding it from us. We must not forget
that as we grow frustrated with this kingdom’s full arrival, we have one great
message that John the Baptist never heard: Jesus is risen. The very one who is
torn for us, who feels that awful tension of the revolution’s resistance—that
one rises on the third day for you and me.
So, in this meantime, as this
wait grows at times excruciatingly tense, let us find ourselves, at least every
once in a while, in the role of those messengers that Jesus sends back to John.
You know what that makes us? Chaplains! Chaplains are those who visit people in
prison. Let us be chaplains, gathering again for in worship, at youth group, in
Bible study, in private conversation to share with each other our little
dispatches from the front lines to reassure ourselves that God’s kingdom
coming. Let us renew each other’s faith in Jesus’ arrival among us with the
good news we hear and know about now.
 |
| HHOPE pantry volunteers, Dec 14 |
I’ve got one such dispatch:
yesterday our HHOPE pantry distributed food to thirty families, which is close
to their all-time record. If you didn’t have the chance to stop by church
yesterday, let me tell you that a long line of people in cars waited patiently
for bags of groceries that you helped provide. The volunteers were joyful and
ready to receive them, and the guests were grateful and polite. Impressed with
the volunteers’ hospitality, one guest, in fact, asked our HHOPE team leader about
the level of government assistance our pantry receives. “None,” our volunteer
informed the guest. “All of this food is provided directly by the people of
this congregation.” Apparently the woman almost broke into tears at news of
such generosity.
That right there, my friends,
is enough good news to this John the Baptist who from time to time needs to
hear the revolution is still going strong. Come again this afternoon for the
children’s program and you’ll hear the good news again proclaimed on the lips
of our littlest chaplains: The lepers are
cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. It is all but an echo of
the best news of all: Jesus
is Lord. He is risen!
Thanks be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
No comments:
Post a Comment