Isaiah 35:1-10 • Psalm 146:5-10 • James 5:7-10 • Matthew 11:2-11
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: 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. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me." As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, 'See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.' Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."
A few years ago, the Washington Post did an experiment. The goal was to see whether people in a subway station would really stop and pay attention when something unexpectedly and extraordinarily beautiful broke into their midst. The scheme was hatched, the plan was set, everything was put in its place: a professional solo violinist would stand at the entryway to a crowded Washington, D.C. metro train station, seeing how many people would stop and listen. Out of almost eleven hundred people who passed this performer in 45 minutes, how many would we guess stopped for at least 30 seconds? 150? 200? 300? Out of those 1100 about 70 stopped with only a handful of those staying for more than a few moments. A total of about 30 dollars was collected. Just a few nights earlier, people had paid well over 100 dollars to get a cheap seat to see this violinist play a Boston concert hall. International violin virtuoso Joshua Bell, who was playing his multi-million dollar Stradivarias instrument, was himself shocked by this performance experience. Person after person whisked by him, as if not hearing anything at all, let alone a world renowned performance. (Workingpreacher.org, David Lose, “Do You See What I See?”)
Why did so many people not stop? Why did such an extraordinary event fall into people’s lives as another part of the ordinary wall of sound surrounding them, rather than the extraordinary event it truly was? Were people late for work, listening to their iPods, rushing to get home, or did they just not care?
Most of us have specific moments and times when we expect the magnificent to occur in our lives. In this case, people would have expected this kind of surprise appearance at a concert hall setting. But do we expect and anticipate and hope…that the ordinary can indeed be an opening for something extraordinary?
John the Baptist has fallen into this trap with God. In last Sunday’s Gospel, before he meets and baptizes Jesus, he sounds confident and sure that God was about to do something big: The Messiah has come! “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” (Mt. 3:3) This week, John doesn’t sound so sure. He’s been imprisoned by Herod, and receives word of the early ministry of Jesus, full of miracles of healing and acts of mercy. Huh? That’s all this Messiah is up to? Sounds so…ordinary, John thought. As he dispatches this message to Jesus from his cell, he wonders if he had been wrong all along: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Mt. 2:3) Perhaps John wondered if Jesus was not fulfilling his role as Messiah in showing mercy to the sick, blind, deaf and others he was healing…and instead could be doing even more powerful acts of amazement…perhaps even freeing John from prison.
Jesus’ answer to John may not be as extraordinary as John wants. But yes, it is in these extraordinarily “ordinary” ways, if they can be called such, that the prophet Isaiah’s dream of a Savior comes true: Jesus gives sight to the blind, raises the lame, cleanses lepers, opens the ears of the deaf, raises the dead and brings good news to the poor. (11:5) In a way, the whole rest of the Gospel of Matthew can be considered a response to John’s question, “Are you the one who is to come?” From that point, Jesus’ continues his healing and proclaiming ministry of to lavishing his extraordinary mercy into ordinary lives, all the way to the cold walls of Jesus’ own prison cell of a tomb. He turns that place into an opening for the pathway of his mercy ministry to enter in, and lead us to new life. John may wall in his expectations of who Jesus is from within his own cell, but that will not stop the whole of Jesus’ ministry from breaking down the walls of doubt and fear that try to keep us captive from hearing and receiving the extraordinary music of Jesus’s love and justice.
Jesus may not answer John in the way John wants to hear, but Jesus in his response proclaims to John…and to us…that we do not need to go and find Jesus for Jesus to show up in our lives. John does not need to break out of his own prison to find the Messiah. John does not need to look or listen for one, big, spectacular event for Jesus to show that, yes, he himself is the one John is looking for. Jesus always comes to us, precisely in the ordinariness of where we are…whether it’s a prison cell, office desk, street corner, church pew, or train station. Jesus paves his way to us not with yellow bricks, or paved interstate highways, but with his deeds of mercy…deeds that conquer death with new life, deeds that speak of what he comes to reveal: God’s saving love for us all.
Of the few who did stop that day to listen to that violinist in the train station, many of them stopped because children were tugging at their sleeves to stop and pay attention to this holy disruption into their routine. Shortly after Jesus’ reply to John, he echoes the power children can have in speaking God’s mercy to us: “I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants…” (11:25) Jesus’ advent comes in the form of a child, in the birth of a baby who is coming…who is tugging on our sleeves to stop, watch and notice God’s merciful work, active in the world, waiting to burst into our captivity, to break down walls and break forth into a song we can share together.
What places is Jesus coming to us this Advent? Does the Advent hope of “religion made real” and of a “shoot growing from the stump of Jesse” still seem far off? Jesus comes into this place, the church, in ordinary things—in bread and wine, water and word—holy things that carry holy promises. Ordinary things that put us in harmony with the music of God’s mercy for us. But Jesus breaks in not just in this place, but out in the world, amidst the ordinariness of our daily lives. Jesus’ path to revealing himself goes straight into the unemployment office, the hospice room, the widows’ kitchen table, the homework desk. Jesus sends us out today, to sit with our brothers and sisters for whom these ordinary places and any place has become a prison cell. Jesus promises that when we go there, we will find him too, along with John…rejoicing that the music of God’s mercy always finds a way to us when we see no way out. Amen.
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