December 15, 2013 | 8:00 a.m.

Are You the One?

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 146:5–10
Isaiah 35:1–10
Matthew 11:2–11

In the ministry of Jesus there is more than enough to warrant our taking the leap of faith, but there is not so much to spare us from the leap. We must decide.

Eugene C. Bay

With the recent death of Nelson Mandela, there has been much reflection on what a giant figure in history he was, modeling reconciliation and heroic leadership, not only for South Africa but the world. Much of his greatness of character was hammered out during his twenty-seven-year imprisonment. He was incarcerated during a workers’ strike, a period in which he was convinced that armed struggle was the only way to achieve change after having tried for twenty years to change South Africa’s racist practices and policies using a campaign of peaceful nonviolent protest. When the government only became more oppressive and vicious, he cofounded a military offshoot of the African National Congress. His revolutionary vision and tactics made him a threat to the status quo.

Because of the apartheid which he—and his people—experienced, and then his incarceration, we would expect that Mandela would have hated his oppressors. In the early years of his imprisonment, he did. But then he realized that as long as he hated others, they still had a hold on his life. He said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemy.” Forgiveness and reconciliation became fundamental principles of his life and later his presidency. As he was finally freed from jail, Mandela said, “As I walked through the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind I’d still be in prison.” He led the country not only out of apartheid but also towards healing through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. While some were craving revenge, he believed that “to forgive is not just to be altruistic, but is the best form of self-interest.”

Imprisonment does not always have the impact of strengthening one’s character. Being in prison can lead to a loss of hope. Nelson Mandela himself said, “There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way [leads to] death and defeat.”

Such a dark moment may be what John the Baptist is experiencing as we encounter him in today’s scripture account. John the Baptist is now in prison. He had publicly rebuked Herod the ruler, whose morals were lax, and Herod proceeded to throw him in jail. Earlier John had been calling people to repentance, confidently preaching to prepare the way for Christ, having no doubts that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. That’s not how we find him here. Now he is wondering if Jesus really is the Messiah. We can well imagine that anyone incarcerated would experience discouragement. Those who have dedicated their lives to a vision of a better world, only to end up in prison, would likely also experience doubt, haunted by questions: Have I followed the right path? Did I commit my life to the right goals? Will my efforts ever bear fruit?

John the Baptist had heard secondhand what Jesus was doing. What he heard made him question whether Jesus was truly the Messiah for whom they had all been waiting. Perhaps it was John’s imprisonment that led to doubt. But it may have been that John the Baptist had been expecting a different kind of Messiah. He had warned people of God’s wrath with the energy of fire and brimstone. He had expected that the Messiah, “the one more powerful” than he, would come to separate the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats. Yet what he was hearing about Jesus seemed a bit different. While with Jesus there was a note of judgment and call to turn one’s life around, the emphasis seemed to be elsewhere. Jesus spoke good news of God’s grace and often referred to the kingdom of God as a banquet or feast. He made sure the wine was plentiful at a wedding and enjoyed himself enough socially to be called a drunkard. He did a lot of healing and purposely hung out with sinners and outcasts. He responded to invitations to people’s homes and hundreds of ordinary people were thronging to him.

Was God doing something different than what John the Baptist had expected? Did he need to revise his thinking? Had he been mistaken in what he preached and who Jesus was? John’s questioning led him to send word to two of his own disciples to go and ask Jesus directly, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we wait for another?”

We may find ourselves sometimes asking the same question. We may have affirmed previously, even with much conviction, that Jesus is the Messiah. But then life hits us with unexpected challenges, and our old assurances are shaken. An unwanted separation or divorce tears at our marriage. Tensions flare up within our extended family. We face loss of employment or financial difficulties. We lose a significant relationship. We discover our life partner is having an affair. A beloved son or daughter becomes terminally ill. A close friend is diagnosed with cancer. A whole village is massacred in war. The gap between the rich and the poor gets bigger and bigger. Climate change wreaks havoc throughout the earth. Prayers seem to go unanswered. Some pain out of our past, which we thought was done and gone, unexpectedly emerges to torment us again. “For the most part,” wrote Paul Scherer, “we keep the [question] tucked away out of sight and hearing” (Paul Scherer, The Word God Sent, pp. 196–197).But periodically the question breaks out from all our mouths: “Are you the one . . . or are we to wait for another?”

Jesus does not respond with a direct answer like, “Yes, I definitely am the Messiah. Stop your questioning and doubting.” Instead Jesus answers by describing the results of what he is doing that others can see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears. The blind receive their sight. The lame walk. Lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised. The poor receive good news.

Jesus is carrying out the ministry he said he would when he began. He is fulfilling the words of the prophet Isaiah, such as we heard earlier: “The eyes of the blind shall be opened . . . the ears of the deaf unstopped. . . . The lame shall leap like a deer. . . . The ransomed of the Lord shall return. . . . They shall obtain joy and gladness; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” Or as in Isaiah 61: “He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners, . . . to comfort all who mourn” (Isaiah 61:1–2).

Fred Craddock writes, “The issue is not whether or not one believes that Jesus really is doing these things; the issue is, Are these the things a Messiah does? It is not one’s view of Jesus that may need adjustment, but rather one’s view of a Messiah. Can someone who gives time and attention to the dead, the very poor, the outcasts, the known violator of the law, and the diseased be God’s Messiah?” Craddock adds, “John has to decide in the same way all of us decide, on the basis of witnesses reporting what they have seen and heard” (Fred Craddock, Interpretation: Luke, p. 100).

Jesus is basically saying to John the Baptist, “I know I am redefining who the Messiah is and what the Messiah does. I am not who you expected. But I am the one fulfilling what the prophet Isaiah proclaimed, God’s anointed who embodies God’s compassion and justice.”

Expectation has a powerful grip on our minds and what we see. Sometimes when you are so focused on what you think should happen, what you expect, you are blind to what is actually there.

Anne Lamott, in her book Operating Instructions, tells of a family being interviewed by 60 Minutes. The family included a devout mother in her thirties; an older, painfully shy father; and their ten-year-old daughter bound to a wheelchair by spina bifida. Every year this family traveled to Lourdes where healing is reported to occur. In the interview, Ed Bradley was giving them a hard time for being so gullible. At one point he turned to the daughter and said, “When you pray, what do you pray for?” She replied, “I pray that my father won’t be so shy. It makes him terribly lonely.”

Bradley was caught off guard for a moment. But he recovered quickly and pressed on, questioning the family’s wisdom in spending thousands of dollars every year going to Lourdes and they still didn’t have a miracle. The mother answered, while looking at her daughter, “Oh, Mr. Bradley, you don’t get it. We have our miracle.”

Commenting on this story, William Willimon wrote, “Bradley had his expectations, and the only miracle worth noticing, the only miracle that would count, was the one that fit his definition: the little girl would get up out of the chair and walk. But he missed the miracle of the daughter’s growing love, the miracle of a family held together in faith. He missed the miracle of joy growing in soil that should not, by all rights, sustain it” (Journal for Preachers, Advent 1999, pp. 13–14).

You may be missing who our Messiah is because you are expecting someone else. You may be looking for a Messiah who will protect you, who will fix everything, who will make people do the right thing, and brings consequences for those who don’t. You may be looking for a Messiah who provides all the answers and spares you from any suffering in life. But that’s not who our Messiah is. Jesus Christ as the Messiah transforms hearts. He provides us with the strength, hope, and abiding presence to sustain us through all suffering and to redeem our lives. He shines light into our darkness and turns hatred into love.

It is the transforming power of Jesus Christ as Messiah that leads people such as Nelson Mandela to say, “No one is born hating another because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

“Is Jesus the one, or shall we look for another?” That is the question Advent puts before us. Pastor Eugene Bay preached, “As with John back there in prison, so with us here in this house of worship: in the ministry of Jesus there is more than enough to warrant our taking the leap of faith, but there is not so much to spare us from the leap. We must decide. And if we cannot make up our minds, we cannot go long without making up our lives” (Eugene C. Bay, Are You the One?, sermon preached at The Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, 15 December 1996). We cannot go long without deciding whether or not Jesus is the one with whom we entrust our lives, to whom we will listen, whose way we will follow.

If your answer is yes, Jesus is the Messiah, then you are saying that in Jesus you see what God is about in the world, what the reign of God looks like on earth, says Fred Craddock: to say yes to that is also to say yes to what you yourself are to be doing and being (Fred Craddock, Interpretation: Luke, p. 100).

We are to manifest the Spirit of Christ in our attitudes and actions, in our seeking liberation and justice for all people, in extending God’s unconditional love, especially to those who are oppressed, poor, and outcast. To say yes, Jesus is the Messiah, means what preacher Howard Thurman wrote:

When the song of the angels is stilled
When the star in the sky is gone
When the kings and princes are home
When the shepherds are back with their flock:
The work of Christmas begins;

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among [enemies],
To make music in the heart.

In your doing of these things you bear witness that for you, yes, Jesus is the one.