Isaiah 35.1-10; Psalm 146.4-9; James 5.7-10; Matthew 11.2-11
“God keeps his promise forever.” That line from today’s psalm is a fixed point to guide our faith. It’s as dependable as the star that led the Wise Men to the infant Jesus. “God keeps his promise forever.” That one verse puts the emphasis of life in God in the proper place. It is God’s faithfulness to us, not ours to God, from which a life of faith springs and grows. “God keeps his promise forever.” Yet it’s one thing to hear that word of reassurance; another matter entirely to trust it, especially when God’s promise and presence don’t appear as expected.
The assurance of God’s faithfulness, and questions about whether God realty does keep his promise forever, is in the background of today’s gospel. For a second week in a row, the gospel reading focuses on John the Baptist. But instead of the unquestioning, fiery preacher we met last week standing on the banks of the Jordan River calling sinners to repentance, this week John is in prison.
King Herod had taken exception to John’s preaching, particularly John’s criticism directed at Herod. Herod had married his brother’s ex-wife, and John had some fiery things to say about that. (Politicians, it seems, have never liked being criticized.) In an attempt to silence John and turn down the heat, Herod locks John up.
That’s when today’s gospel begins. From prison, John raises questions about Jesus, has doubts, wonders if pointing to Jesus as God’s Coming One has been pointing in the wrong direction. John’s experience has not met his expectation. He sends messengers to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”
In John’s eyes, and in many ways, Jesus’ ministry was unexpected from the start. The scriptures have plenty of references to a Messiah coming with both judgment and blessing. Yet John, in his preaching, had focused on a larger measure of judgment than he was seeing in Jesus.
You recall John’s sermon last week? “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” John’s message was about axes chopping, threshers separating, and judgment like fire—the wrath to come. Immediately after that sermon, Jesus steps on the scene. But instead of baptizing with fire, Jesus is baptized by John in water. Instead of taking a stand against sinners, Jesus stands with sinners; he is, the gospel says, “A friend of tax collectors and sinners.” What do you do when God’s promise and presence don’t appear in your life as you expected. That’s John’s question; perhaps ours, too.
Now it is true that Jesus taught with both power and authority. Yet he exercised that power in ways so different than expected that it hardly looked like ‘power’ at all. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, Jesus forbids his followers from payback and revenge. Instead, he calls them to a life of quiet faithfulness: deep respect for all people; integrity in word and actions; and faith that doesn’t attract attention to itself. When it came to how his followers lived with others and in the world around them, Jesus cautioned that they would face challenges for no other reason than that they followed him. And what was Jesus’ guidance and counsel in how we are meant to live with our enemies? To love them and pray for them, not mock them or seek revenge.
John the Baptist had a particular vision, a fiery vision, about the coming Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus seems to have ignored the script; he was less cataclysmic than John expected. That’s why John asks, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”
Along with John’s question about divine strategy in the world, there is the more personal question of whether God is steadfast and faithful in our lives. Nearly any time that our expectation doesn’t meet our experience—when God’s promises seem to have failed—John’s question becomes ours. “Are you the one?” Or is trust in Jesus just talking into thin air?
Such questions become especially heightened this time of year. We’re told, for example, that the holidays are supposed to be joyous, happy, filled with warmth and togetherness. That’s the expectation. The experience, however, is more complex. Loneliness, grief, financial strain, anxiety, and unresolved conflict are magnified. And when any sense of harmony or well-being are missing—when expectation doesn’t match experience—we wonder if maybe the packaging has promise more than the product can deliver.
The Bible itself acknowledges this question. The letter of 2nd Peter looks around at the world as it is and sees how little things seem to have changed. “Where is the promise of God’s coming?” But the scriptures continue to point to where and how God is at work; of how God, in steadfast love, will not let us go or abandon us. Scripture offers hope not by avoiding our questions or denying the complexities, but by proclaiming that Jesus Christ is real light for our real darkness; that God is faithful and comes to us where we are. “God keeps his promise forever.”
“Are you the one? So much rests on the answer to that question, for John and for us. The way Jesus answers is by looking back to a passage from Isaiah, today’s first reading, then asking us to make the connections between what God does in Isaiah and who Jesus is. Isaiah says that God brings joy to the least likely places, makes the desert rejoice and flourish.
Now there are two ways to read texts like this, texts about geographical places in the Bible—places like Lebanon, Mount Carmel, and Sharon named today. First, as real, on-the-ground realities of a particular place and time, reminding us that our faith is grounded in history. But also as words that transcend place and time. Through words written in the past, God speaks to us in the present; beyond the geography of the Middle East, these words can speak to the landscape of our life and heart and soul. They are God’s word for us in our place and time.
“What have you seen and heard?” Jesus asks. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” These words are for people who know their need of God, today and every day. For you, too. Even in the complexities of life, God is with you. Jesus Christ is real light in our real darkness. “God keeps his promise forever.”
Jesus himself is good news for us and for the whole world. What he says and does reveals who he is—the in-the-flesh presence of God for us. And if God is for us, as St Paul asks, who can be against us? Paul’s answer: no one. Jesus, born as a little child in the least of Judah’s towns and places, Bethlehem, brings hope to the last, the lost, the least, and the little; gives us a way to live and to find our way through sin and sickness, pain and doubt; guides us through our desert places, even and especially when God’s promises and presence don’t appear as expected.
And through it all, the psalm’s pledge that “God keeps his promises forever,” is the fixed point to guide us. This is God’s pledge for you and for everyone struggling and carrying too much, renewing you through forgiveness and hope. In Jesus Christ, “God keeps his promises forever.”
“Strengthen the weak hands,” Isaiah says today, ‘and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those with a fearful heart, ‘Be strong. Do not fear! Here is your God.’” These words are echoed in our reading from James, “Strengthen your hearts, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.” Where does that strength come from, the strength to ask questions of faith like John the Baptist, the strength to find our way through the present moment, the strength to hold firm until the coming of the Lord? It comes from God. Your God will come, says Isaiah. God will come and save you. God’s promise of geographically places in the past speaks to the landscape of our lives in the present. ‘Be strong. Do not fear.’
“God keeps his promise forever.”
Write a comment: