Matthew 11:2-6
Is Jesus the One?
James Sledge December
11, 016
“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait
for another?”
asks John the Baptist from his prison cell. This is same John who did not want
to baptize Jesus, who said, “I need to be baptized by you.” Perhaps
John had expected more of Jesus, more vivid signs that God’s reign was indeed
arriving. After all, John had announced the kingdom was coming. He had told
people to repent, to change and get ready for it. But now he was in prison,
soon to be executed, and the world didn’t look very different. Maybe he’d been
wrong about Jesus.
Is
Jesus the one? I think a lot of people still ask that question. Maybe not out
loud, but it’s there, unspoken. In less than two weeks, our sanctuary, like
many other sanctuaries, will fill to overflowing with people celebrating
Christmas. I suspect that most will want the message of Emmanuel and Peace on
earth to be true. They hope it might be and come on Christmas Eve, hoping to
glimpse signs of it.
But
soon enough, they will look around, see that the world still looks unchanged. Like
John the Baptist, they’ll have trouble holding onto the hope of Christmas and believing
that Jesus really is the one. Hope may stir once again next Christmas, but it
is hard to maintain during most of the year.
When
John’s question is brought to Jesus, he says to go and tell John, “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.” This is the proof Jesus offers John.
It’s
a curious list Jesus provides. It includes some pretty impressive miracles and
healings, but such things were not unknown from Israel’s past. Old Testament
prophets Elijah and Elisha healed the sick and even raised the dead with no
expectation that they were about to bring God’s reign. So why would Jesus’ miracles
be proof that God’s new day was close?
I
wonder if Jesus’ point isn’t more about the last item in the list, “the
poor have good news brought to them.” Come to think of it, most of the
people on the list were poor. There was no social safety net in those days, and
the lame, blind, and deaf mostly survived by begging. For Jesus to end his list
with the promise of good news for the poor suggests that he’s not just making a
point about his ability to do miracles. He’s saying that he is the fulfilment
of prophetic hopes that God would one day lift up the poor, put an end to
oppression and exploitation, raise up those at the bottom, and pull down those
at the top.
Is Jesus the one? The Church says he is,
and so we might expect that the Church would be largely focused on good news
for the poor. But somewhere along the way, the Church’s message became more
about personal salvation.
In
a sermon she preached recently, Diane told a story about Clarence Jordan and
the interracial community he helped found in 1942 in Sumter County, Georgia.
Jordan, a New Testament scholar also known for his Cotton Patch Gospel, called Koinonia Farm “a demonstration plot for
the Kingdom of God,” and the programs there would also give birth to Habitat
for Humanity. The farm still operates, but in the early days it faced all
manner of threats and terror attacks by the KKK, including one Diane mentioned
in her sermon.
Recently
I read another story about Jordan and Koinonia Farm that also occurred in those
early days. Jordan had asked his brother, Robert, to join him. Here’s what
happened.
Robert was
keenly aware of the community’s hardships: Local citizens boycotted the farm,
the Ku Klux Klan bombed the produce stands, and ominous letters flooded the
mailbox. The cost weighed heavily on him.
“Clarence, I
can’t do that,” Robert said, declining his brother’s request. “I follow Jesus,
Clarence, up to a point.”
“Could that
point by any chance be—the cross?” Clarence replied.
“That’s right. I
follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I’m not getting myself
crucified.”
Then I don’t
believe you’re a disciple. You’re an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of
his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them
you’re an admirer, not a disciple.
“Well now,”
Robert replied, “if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn’t have a
church, would we?”
“The question,” Clarence said,
“is, “‘Do you have a church?’”[1]
I wonder if John the Baptist’s question
and Clarence Jordan’s question aren’t related. Is Jesus the one? Do we have a church? Most all of us are frightened of the
cross and struggle with Jesus’ command to take up ours and follow him. But if
Jesus is indeed the one, then
shouldn’t we who say that he is be focused on the things that he says make him the one?
________________________________________________________________________________
Soon
we will sing, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her king.”
And after that, we who say Jesus is the
one will have endless opportunities to follow him, to live as his
disciples, and to show people hopeful signs that Jesus is indeed the one
they’ve been waiting for.
[1]
From a story originally told by theologian James William McClendon and shared
by David Russell Tullock
on his Facebook page.
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