John the Baptist was no “reed shaken by the wind.” (Matthew 11:7) No, he was quite
an unshakeable ramrod of a man, a person whom Barbara Brown Taylor has described in this
fashion: (“The Marginal Messiah,” in The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons on the Gospel of
Matthew [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004], pp. 10–11)
“Everything about John set him apart as a holy man: his way of life, his clothing,
and above all his message. No one had heard anything like it in five hundred years.…
“Where were the prophets who had once spoken for God to the people? Where was Nathan,
opening King David’s heart to the full impact of his affair with Bathsheba? Where was
Elijah, calling down fire from heaven so that no one who saw it could doubt the power of
God? Where was Amos, shouting himself hoarse about God’s disgust with Israel’s obscene
wealth and empty religion?
“Those voices had been missing in Israel for a long time when John the Baptist
appeared in the wilderness sounding like God’s own air raid siren. [At last] someone was
speaking God’s language again—talking about sin instead of profit, about repentance
instead of compromise.” You see, John was seeking to prepare people to enter God’s
kingdom when soon the Messiah would appear. So John was ready to condemn anyone who
stood in the way of people’s preparing to recognize and receive the Messiah.
“[Thus, for example,] John let [the ruler] Herod [Antipas] have it for being an
all-around evil man. [And h]e let the Pharisees and Sadducees have it for teaching
religiousness instead of righteousness.…
“[Well,] Herod’s soldiers [eventually showed up] with a warrant for John’s arrest,
and the man who had lived as far as he could from human corruption found himself caged in
Herod’s basement like a rat.… [Yet, s]omehow or another,… John’s disciples found [a] way to
get messages to him, and to carry his messages back.”
Included in the disciples’ reports to John must have been news about Jesus and his
ministry of preaching and healing throughout the Galilean countryside. For in today’s
Second Lesson we find the imprisoned John wondering whether Jesus is or is not the one whom
people have long hoped for, whether Jesus is or is not manifesting in his ministry the
tell-tale signs of the Messiah’s coming?
All of which, of course, raises the question, “What exactly were the tell-tale signs
of the Messiah’s coming—the signs John was looking for?” Well, if John’s hopes were anything
like those of most people back then he was probably looking for “a tidal wave of a Messiah—someone
who would be impossible to miss, who would make a clean sweep of things, who would [offer]
witness to the omnipotent righteousness of God.” (Taylor, p. 12)
Yet we find John wondering whether or not Jesus’s ministry fits this description. Is he or
isn’t he the Messiah? Finally, John gives up on trying to solve this puzzle on his own, and he
sends off a message to Jesus asking him directly, “Are you the one who is to come, or are
we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3)
John asks Jesus directly, but Jesus answers John indirectly, offering something other than a
straightforward “Yes” or “No.” He tells John’s disciples to report back to their teacher the
things they’ve observed Jesus doing. (Matthew 11:4–5) Jesus understands these things to be signs
of the Messiah’s coming. Does John?
A contemporary poet whose name is unknown to me has summarized in this way the message Jesus
wanted John’s disciples to deliver:
“The signs of [the Messiah’s] presence
are blind people who can see,
the lame who walk again,
those whose skin diseases are cleared,
the deaf who can hear,
the dead who are brought back to life,
and the poor who have reason
for delighting in the good news they hear.”
And then this poet goes on to exhort his contemporary readers:
If these are the signs of [the Messiah’s] presence
and we are the ones who say he is coming,
what are we going to say
when they ask where he is?
What are we going to do
to justify our [Advent] claim
that he is on his way?
Singing carols
with mince pies afterwards
is not enough.
(from “The sign of his presence,” in Exceeding our Limits: Prayer Handbook 1991,
Graham Cook [ed.], [London: United Reformed Church, 1991], Week 50, December 15)
Yes, the Advent task of preparing the way of the Lord is not one we can faithfully discharge
by filling our days with carols and pies. No, the Advent task of preparing the way of the Lord
is one we can faithfully discharge only by bringing into existence for our own time and place the
signs of the Messiah. And we can bring the signs of the Messiah into existence for our own time
and place only by continuing and extending the work of Jesus’s ministry—only by continuing and
extending his work of healing the sick and fostering the well-being of the poor. Yes, the signs
of the Messiah can be brought into existence for our time and place only when people like us join
with God and others in the cooperative task of setting matters right, in the cooperative task of
repairing the world. So this Advent, our means for preparing the way of the Lord is our work of
repairing the world! Or, to express this truth in three quite easy-to-remember words “Preparing
Is Repairing!” “Preparing Is Repairing!”
In the aftermath of last month’s national election, the Zogby International Poll asked voters,
“Which moral issue most influenced your vote in this election?” Only 5.2% answered “health care,”
and only 7.6% answered “poverty” (as reported in The Christian Century, December 14, 2004,
p. 7).
Yet in this morning’s Second Lesson it is the repairing of poor people’s well-being and of all
people’s health that Jesus identifies as the two tasks standing at the very heart of his messianic
mission (Matt. 11:3–5).
And we find also in this morning’s First Lesson that the restoring of people’s health and of
the poor’s well-being is central to God’s work on behalf of humankind (Psalm 146:7–9). And if
such is central to the work of God, how can it be anything less than central to the work of God’s
people? Yes, “Preparing Is Repairing!”
In the year 1931 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Jane Addams. Some forty years earlier,
in 1889, in the city of Chicago, Addams had co-founded Hull House, having been motivated to do so
by Jesus’s concern for the poor and the sick. She set up Hull House to serve as a community
center for the neighborhood’s sick and poor—providing clinical health services, food, and
kindergarten classes, as well as educational and recreational activities for laborers.
Addams and Hull House went on to become heavily involved in advocating broad-scale social,
economic, and political reform, for she came to understand that to move the mountains of
disadvantage that obstruct the path of the poor to well-being takes much more than a local effort
by a small group of neighbors. It requires the collective effort of society as a whole. And
through the unrelenting advocacy of Addams and of many, many others, the responsibility for
providing well-being for the sick and the poor did come to be seen as belonging to municipal,
state, and federal governments as well as to private beneficence. The kindergarten classes
established by settlement houses were largely taken over by the public schools, and their health
services, by government-funded hospitals. And Addams, who died in 1935, lived long enough to see
at least the first phase of the sweeping reforms implemented by Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part
of the New Deal. Indeed, it was in the very year of Addam’s death that our Social Security system
was created.
How sad and ironic it is that the current administration in Washington is trying to reverse
the earlier Christian vision of Jane Addams and of others—the vision that the overcoming of poverty
and disease is a task best achieved when all the citizens of a democratic commonwealth are asked to
share in it. How sad and ironic it is that our current government in Washington seems intent on
dismantling the very structures and institutions that an earlier generation of Christians and other
persons of goodwill constructed in order to expand our society’s concern for the sick and the poor
beyond programs of the scope that private charities can mount to programs on a national scale able
to meet the needs of so many more people.
How sad and ironic it is that the current administration, with all of its professions of
religious belief, seems so intent on dismantling so many of the national structures and
institutions that have served to set matters more right, that have served to repair the world.
This Advent, it’s awfully important for us to be asking, “In our society today what would signs
of the Messiah look like? Here in America today, what would signs of Jesus’s concern for the poor
and the sick be?” For if we know what signs people should be looking for, we then know what signs
we followers of Jesus need to be creating.
I’d say a living wage as a minimum wage would be a sign of Jesus’s concern for the poor. I’d
say health insurance for all would be a sign of Jesus’s concern for the sick. I’d say providing
affordable housing for all would be yet another sign of the Messiah. And so, too, would be
providing a dignified retirement for all by repairing the present Social Security system without
changing its basic premise—that we all have the responsibility of caring for one another.
And if these are the signs of the Messiah that we should be bringing into existence in our
society, then we really do have our work cut out for us, for time and tide do seem to be running
against us. So please remember this season’s motto: “Preparing Is Repairing.” And have a busy
Advent. And then, come January, please consider joining our church’s Peace & Social Justice
Network in order to help us in the work of creating signs of the Messiah.
Let us pray:
O God, both grant us the will to create the signs of Your Messiah right here and right now in
our own society, and show us the way to do these things. In the name of Jesus, the Messiah, we
pray. Amen.